Contacts: General Information

You can create contacts in MYOB Acumatica to represent the people associated with leads and business accounts (and later customers, if a sale occurs, or even vendors). This topic provides information about creating contacts in MYOB Acumatica.

Tip:
Contacts can be associated with a variety of entities in the system. In this chapter, we focus on contacts as they relate to the customer relationship management (CRM) functionality. That is, the chapter primarily discusses the contacts associated with prospective customers before they have purchased your company's products or services.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will do the following:

  • Become familiar with ways of creating contacts
  • Learn about using sales territories for the distribution of contacts between owners
  • Learn about the synchronization of settings in leads, contacts, and business accounts
  • Create a contact manually
  • Create a contact by using the MYOB Acumatica mobile app
  • Create a contact by using the MYOB add-in for Outlook

Applicable Scenarios

You may want to learn how to create contacts in scenarios that include the following:

  • An employee of your company has contacted a lead and confirmed the contact information and the interest in company's products or services, and you need to convert the lead to an opportunity.
  • You have been assigned to a lead whose contact information and interest in the company's products or services has been confirmed.

Contacts in MYOB Acumatica

In MYOB Acumatica, a contact is a record on the Contacts (CR302000) form that represents an individual and that can be associated with a variety of entities in the system. When you create a contact record, you enter the settings related to the information you have obtained, such as the individual’s name, address, email address, and phone number.

If you have created a lead in the system before you create the related contact, you specify the lead’s basic contact information on the Contact Info tab of the Leads (CR301000) form. When you create a contact for this lead, the system copies the contact information of the lead to the associated contact.

Any contact can be associated with one lead or multiple leads and with only one business account. You can synchronize contact information in the associated lead, contact, and business account to keep your data consistent and reliable. You can also easily navigate between the associated contacts, leads, and business accounts. For more information on business accounts, see Creating Business Accounts.

Contact Creation in MYOB Acumatica

In MYOB Acumatica, you can create contacts in multiple ways depending on your company’s business processes and maintain them on the Contacts (CR302000) form. If you use customer relationship management (CRM) functionality and you are processing a lead for which the contact information and interest in buying the company's products or services have been confirmed, you can convert the lead to an opportunity, which may involve the creation of a business account and a contact for this lead. You can validate an individual lead for duplicates before you create a contact. For details, see Validating Records for Duplicates. You can also create a contact manually if needed.

In MYOB Acumatica, you can create a contact in any of the following ways:

  • On the Leads (CR301000) form when you convert the lead selected on the form to an opportunity: You click Convert to Opportunity on the More menu. In the Create Opportunity dialog box, which opens, you specify the opportunity and business account settings. (The system automatically inserts the basic settings for the contact based on the settings of the lead, but you can override any of them.) You then click Create or Create & Review to create the opportunity and contact. For detailed instructions, see Lead Qualification by Sales Teams: To Convert a Lead to an Opportunity.
  • On the Leads, Business Accounts (CR303000), Opportunities (CR304000), Vendors (AP303000), or Customers (AR303000) forms if you create a contact associated with the entity selected on the form: You click Create Contact on the More menu. In the Create Contact dialog box, which opens, you specify the basic contact settings, and then you click Create or Create & Review to create the contact. (You can specify additional settings on the Contacts form.)
  • On the Leads or Opportunities form if you specify the settings of the primary contact when you create a business account for the selected lead or opportunity: You start to create the account by clicking Create Account on the form toolbar. In the Create Account dialog box, which opens, you specify the basic business account and contact settings, and click Create or Create & Review to create the business account and contact.
  • Directly on the Contacts (CR302000) form: In this case, you add a new record and manually enter the settings of the new contact.
  • By uploading new contacts from an Excel file on the Marketing Lists (CR204000) or Marketing Campaigns (CR202000) form. For details, see Marketing Lists: General Information and Marketing Campaigns: General Information.
  • By creating a contact from the Acumatica add-in for Outlook, based on the details of the selected email recipient or sender: For detailed instructions, see Contacts: To Create a Contact by Using the MYOB Add-In for Outlook
  • Directly by using the MYOB Acumatica mobile app: For detailed instructions, see Contacts: To Create a Contact by Using the MYOB Mobile App.
  • By using import scenarios to import lists of contacts on the Import by Scenario (SM206036) form. You can use the predefined Import Contacts from Excel import scenario.

The system assigns the Active status to a new contact; this status, displayed in the Status box of the Summary area on the Contacts form, indicates that the contact is available in lookup tables for the Contact element on various forms. If the contact is no longer applicable (for example, the person represented by the contact has resigned from the company you are working with), you can select the Inactive value in the Status box. If a contact is inactive, this contact cannot be selected in lookup tables for the Contact element on forms.

Regardless of how you create the contact, you can select a contact class on the Contacts form or in one of the dialog boxes mentioned above, which causes the system to insert default settings for the contact, easing the process of contact creation. (For details, see Defining Contact Classes.)

The Contacts form contains the complete settings of the contact, which you can view and edit. On the Activities tab of this form, you can create and work with all the activities related to the contact, including planned, current, and completed activities. For details, see Managing Emails and Activities.

Assigning Sales Territories to Leads, Contacts, Business Accounts, and Opportunities

A sales territory is a territory that in most cases is determined based on the geographical location of the lead, contact, business account, or opportunity. By using sales territories, you can distribute the lead, contact, business account, and opportunity records between different sales territories and the sales representatives who are responsible for the sales territories.

To configure the sales territory functionality, you need to create each sales territory on the Sales Territories (CS204100) form, which is available if the Customer Management and Sales Territory Management features are enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form. You can assign each sales territory one of the following types:

  • By Country: A territory made up of a country or multiple countries
  • By State: A territory made up of a state or multiple states of the selected country
  • Other: Another type of territory that can be assigned only manually

After sales territories have been created on the Sales Territories form, the system automatically assigns a sales territory (excluding territories with the Other territory type) to records during record creation or if a user changes a country, a state, or both of these for an existing record. You can also assign countries and states of a country to an existing sales territory directly on the Countries/States (CS204000) form.

You can see the sales territory to which a record has been assigned on the CRM Info tab of the following forms:

You can manually specify a sales territory if the Override Territory check box is selected on the data entry form for a record. In this case, the sales territory is not updated automatically if you change a country, a state, or both of these in the address settings of the record. If another record is created based on this record, the system copies the state of the check box and the selected sales territory to the target record.

You can also use the sales territory ID as a setting on the Conditions tab of the Assignment Maps (EP205010) form, based on which the assignment of leads, contacts, business accounts, or opportunities to owners proceeds in the following cases:

  • The creation of new records if the Assignment Map option is selected in the Default Owner box of the appropriate form to define a class of leads, contacts, business accounts, or opportunities
  • Mass-assignment of records to owners by using the following mass-processing forms: Assign Leads (CR503010), Assign Contacts (CR503011), Assign Business Accounts (CR503310), and Assign Opportunities (CR503110)

Synchronization of Settings in Leads, Contacts, and Business Accounts

In MYOB Acumatica, you can easily synchronize the contact-related settings of a lead with the same settings in the contact and business account related to that lead. With this synchronization turned on, changes to the contact information of any of these entities causes the settings in the related entities to be updated as well.
Tip:
The synchronization or overriding of settings applies to all the settings on the Contact Info tab of the Leads (CR301000) form, all the settings on the Details tab of the Contacts (CR302000) form, and the contact and address settings (of the primary contact of the business account) on the General tab of the Business Accounts (CR303000) form.

You can synchronize contact information in leads, contacts, and business accounts by using the Override check box on the Details tab of the Contacts form as follows:

  • If the check box is cleared and the business account related to the contact has not been extended as a customer or a vendor yet, the contact information of the contact on the Contacts form is synchronized with the contact information of the related lead and business account on the Leads and Business Accounts forms, respectively, and can be updated in both directions. That is, if you update the contact and address settings on any of these forms, the settings will be also updated on the related forms.
  • If the check box is cleared and the business account related to the contact has been extended as a customer or a vendor, the address settings of the contact on the Contacts form are read-only and can be updated automatically only in one direction, from the Business Accounts form to the Contacts form.
  • If the check box is selected, the contact information for the selected contact on the Contacts form can differ from the contact information of the related lead and business account on the Leads and Business Accounts forms. If contact information is updated on any of these forms, the changes are not applied to the other forms.

Contact Relations with MYOB Acumatica Entities

Once a contact has been defined in the system on the Contacts (CR302000) form, it can be associated with any of the following entities in MYOB Acumatica:

  • Leads: A lead or multiple leads can be associated with a contact. On the Leads tab of the Contacts form, you can see the list of leads associated with the contact.
  • Business accounts: In the Business Account box of the Summary area of the Contacts form, an associated business account may be specified for a contact. Multiple contacts can be associated with one business account, but only one primary contact can be selected for an account. For details, see Creating Business Accounts.
  • Marketing lists: A contact may be added to a marketing list and subscribed to newsletters and other mailings. On the Marketing Lists tab of the Contacts form, you can see all marketing lists that are created and active. For more information about marketing lists, see Managing Marketing Lists.
  • Marketing campaigns: On the Campaigns tab of the Contacts form, you can view a list of all completed, ongoing, and planned marketing campaigns in which the contact is involved. For details about campaigns in MYOB Acumatica, see Managing Marketing Campaigns.
  • Opportunities: The Opportunities tab of the Contacts form lists all opportunities linked to the contact.
  • Cases: The Cases tab of the Contacts form contains a list of all cases associated with the contact.
  • Users: A contact may be associated with an external user (which is the same person as the contact represents) that may have access to the system. You can use the User Info tab of the Contacts form to view and edit information about the user account associated with the contact and to select a role that defines a set of the user's access rights to the system.
    Attention:
    If the contact associated with the user account becomes inactive, the user account will then be disabled, and you cannot enable it until the contact is active again.
  • Employees: When the employee record is created and saved in the system, the system creates a contact for this employee and associates this employee record with this contact record. You can see the contact information on the Employees (EP203000) form, in the Contact Info section on the General tab.

As you work with a contact in MYOB Acumatica, you can track the records associated with the contact on the Relations tab of the Contacts form. For details, see Managing Relations.

Ability to Add User-Defined Fields to CRM Forms

User-defined fields are site-specific elements that have been defined to track information deemed as important to the organization. A customizer—a user with particular access rights in the system—can add user-defined fields to the Leads (CR301000), Contacts (CR302000), Business Accounts (CR303000), Opportunities (CR304000), Sales Quotes (CR304500), Cases (CR306000), Activity (CR306010), Task (CR306020), and Event (CR306030) form. From any of these forms, the customizer can open the Edit User-Defined Fields (CS205020) form by clicking Manage User-Defined Fields in the Customization menu on the form title bar and specify a set of user-defined fields for the form.

For a lead, contact, business account, opportunity, sales quote, and case, the set of user-defined fields is applicable to either a particular class of the entity or all classes of the entity. For a class, each user-defined field can be defined as required or hidden; also, a default value can be specified for the field.

If user-defined fields have been added for a data entry form of a lead, contact, business account, opportunity, sales quote, and case, the original information in the Summary area of a record's form is displayed on the Document tab. The added user-defined fields are displayed on the User-Defined Fields tab. On this tab, by using these fields, you can easily specify additional information about records they are working with. For details, see Attributes and User-Defined Fields.

Copying of User-Defined Fields Between Records

The values of user-defined fields can be copied between related records—such as CRM entities, project quotes, customers, and vendors—when a new record is created from an original one. For details, see User-Defined Fields.

If both records have the same user-defined fields on their respective User-Defined Fields tabs, the system automatically copies the field values from the original record to the new one.

The system also copies user-defined fields when a user creates any of the following new records from the noted starting point:

  • A lead, opportunity, or case created by clicking the button on the table toolbar of the Leads, Opportunities, or Cases tab, respectively, of the Business Accounts or Contacts form
  • A sales order or invoice created by clicking Create Sales Order or Create Invoice on the More menu of the Opportunities form
  • A sales quote created by copying an existing one on the Quotes tab of the Opportunities form or by clicking Copy Quote on the More menu of the Sales Quotes form
  • A project quote created by clicking Copy on the More menu of the Project Quotes (PM304500) form
  • A service order created by clicking Create Service Order on the More menu of the Cases (CR306000) or Opportunities form
  • An appointment created by clicking Create Appointment on the More menu of the Opportunities form

In addition, the system copies user-defined fields if a user creates a new record by using the following dialog boxes:

  • Create Contact on the Leads (CR301000), Business Accounts (CR303000), Opportunities (CR304000), Sales Quotes (CR304500), Customers (AR303000), and Vendors (AP303000) forms. The set of user-defined fields is determined by the class of the new contact.
  • Create Account on the Leads, Contacts, Sales Quotes, and Opportunities forms. The set of user-defined fields is determined by the class of the new account.
  • Create Opportunity on the Leads form. The set of user-defined fields is determined by the class of the new opportunity.
  • Create Quote on the Opportunities form. In this case, the set of user-defined fields is determined by the selected type of the quote (Project Quote or Sales Quote).

For a record that a user creates by using a dialog box, the user-defined fields that are required for the new record will appear on the User-Defined Fields tab of the dialog box, even if these fields were not specified in or required in the original record.

If a user-defined field is not required on the new record's form, it will not appear in the dialog box. However, if default values for the fields have been specified in the original record, then the system will copy the default values automatically to the new record.

The user can change the values in user-defined fields of any record at any time if the record's current status gives the user the ability to edit the settings' values in the record.

Additionally, the user can select values for the user-defined fields when merging duplicate records. For details, see Record Validation for Duplicates: General Information.