Summary

Contacts play a major role in collections, dictating who is emailed and when to best ensure an invoice is paid and reconciled. We ALWAYS advocate contacts be managed in the ERP system itself as we pull contacts from each and all of them (Each with their own specifications) however, we do allow users to manually enter or edit contacts within the system as well.

 

Configuration

The first thing needed is to enable contact support via (Admin > Settings & Utilities > Site Options > (Options)) under the "SYNC WITH ERP SYSTEM" section, these flags will be covered more in further down but the overview can be seen below:

• Contacts - Yes, no. or New Customers Only (Which will mean we only pull contacts for customers when we initially sync them)
• Primary Contact - Yes or no flag, this will be detailed further on
• Contact Include in Email - Primary, none, or all*
• Contact Include in Text - Primary, none, or all*
• Contact Include in Voice - Primary, none, or all*

* - Only the primary contact for each customer will be flagged, none will be flagged, or all contacts for each customer will be flagged.

 

The Different Types of Contacts

Internal/Personal Contacts:

Overview -

In SARA, we have the option to use internal contacts that are NOT customer specific (such as other collectors or credit managers) and these can be added to any communication across any customer.

Configuration -

These are managed in the communication/activity window when creating a manual activity and on the "Email" tab.

• Select any account and go to account overview (alternately you can select the "Quick Communicate" buttons if enabled and a customer is selected)
• Select the "New Activity" button
• Select the "Email" tab
• Select the "To" button
• Select the "Personal Contacts" button
• From here you can add, delete, or edit personal/internal contacts with their name and email

Note: These can only be applied to manual emails and email templates, they do not appear elsewhere in the system.

External Contacts:

Overview -

These make up a majority of contacts and are primarily pulled via the ERP system and exist for each individual customer and any customer can have any number of contacts.

Configuration -

As previously mentioned, while MOST of the time the customer contacts are pulled via the sync, we do have the option to both enter and edit manual contacts (Note: ERP pulled contacts can also be edited but you may want to deselect the "Keep in sync with ERP" option to prevent the changes from being overwritten) and this can be done via the customer drop-down.

• Enter any customer into the customer search bar
• Select the "Contacts" tab
• Select "Edit" or "Add" to edit or create a new contact

Viewing -

Any external contact can be viewed on a contact level grid (such as (Inquiries > By User > Contacts) and (Inquiries > By Account > Contacts)) or via the customer drop-down.

 

Contact Flags/Fields

Summary:

There are a plethora of available fields and flags for contacts to utilize and better categorize them, below I will go into detail each of their uses.

Flags/Fields:

Flags -

Each of the following* flags serves as categorizations that allow us to use snippet codes (discussed further down) and send emails to said categories.

• Include In Email* - Functions with the @CustAllEmail snippet code
• Include In Email 2 - Functions with the @CustAllEmail2 snippet code
• Include In Text* - Functions with the @CustAllText snippet code  
• Include In Voice* - Functions with the @CustAllVoice snippet code 
• Primary* - Functions with the @CustPrimary snippet code
• Keep In Sync With ERP - Determines if we want to keep this contact in sync with the ERP system
• Statement - Functions with the @CustStatement snippet code
• Invoice - Functions with the @CustInvoice snippet code

* - 

• For Include In Email, Include In Text, Include In Voice, and the Primary flags they require some site options configuration shown under the configuration section
• For the Primary flag, a customer can only have ONE primary contact and setting it on a new contact will cause it to overwrite the existing one.

Fields -

The remainder of the fields serve as reference information for a collector, without giving too much detail on each of them (as they are fairly self explanatory) they can be seen below

Standard fields

• Name 
• Print As - Serves as a name if the ERP system has unconventional naming methods for contacts
• Email 
• Email 2 - A secondary email address
• Title
• Addr
• Phone
• Fax
• City
• Zip
• Phone Ext
• Fax Ext
• State
• Country

Unique Fields

• Insert Date - The date we pulled or created a contact (When it was inserted into our database.)
• Update Date - The date a contact was last updated (Re-inits will make this always the date the sync is ran.)
• Is Inactive - A flag required to manually delete contacts, not used in any other regard at this time.
• Comment - This varies by ERP if pulled but functions simply as a comment for the contact.

 

Using Contacts

Summary:

Contacts are obviously used to contact a customer or internal resource but this section will detail methods in which we can use contacts to do just that.

Communication Templates:

The primary method of contacting a customer is via credit class processing. This often requires a communication template that dictates the contacts we reach out to as well as the body of the communication itself. 

Configuration -

To configure (Either add, delete, or modify) a communication template simply navigate to (Admin > Master Files > Communication Template)

• Select "Edit" on an existing template or select "Add New Communication Template"
• Add a Template ID (This is just a string (that must be unique) to identify the template)
• Add a description of what this template is
• Select either "Email", "Voice Message", or "Text" depending on the type of communication you want
• Set the status to "Active" (Or "Inactive" if disabling them)
• Select the "To" or "CC" buttons to see all available snippet codes

Snippet Codes

Not detailing each and every snippet code and also ignoring both the invoice contacts and UDFs (To be mentioned further down) but as shown earlier with each of the flags on the contacts, snippet codes will populate with whatever email/phone number is associated with the contact with that flag.

Example: @CustPrimary will select all primary contacts and populate with their email/phone number depending on the type of communication. 

Manual Communications:

Similar to working using a communication template, you can also manually use snippet codes when making a manual activity. Simply open up an activity, select the "Email", "Voice Message", or "Text" tabs and enter the snippet code into the "To" or "CC" fields. 

Note: If you select the "To" button it will auto populate all the contact's information that are selected as "Include In Email".

 

Invoice Contacts and UDFs

Summary:

While UDFs aren't technically contacts and Invoice Contacts CAN function similar to the regular ones, they are both a little bit different and CAN require a bit more configuration to allow. As such I have included them here rather than the general contact overviews above.

UDFs:

Configuration -

UDFs TYPICALLY require more configuration to use as we normally pull them from the ERP system directly to populate the "To" or "CC" instead (or in conjunction with) normal contacts. 

However they can be input manually using the following configuration

• Navigate to (Admin > Settings & Utilities > Site Options > (UDF))
• Select an entity (only customer and contact UDFs can be used as a 'contact')
• Enter a label and select "Allow Edit"
• Save

Note: UDFs often require an Engineering Request (sent to the CS Engineering team) if they are meant to pull from the ERP system. Additionally, it is advised not to do the above configuration if this is sent up as sometimes UDFs need to be placed in specific slots and may need added/moved anyways.

Viewing -

Once a UDF is added into the system it can be added to the communication templates (or used in manual activities) via the @CustUDF1-10 (or @ContactUDF1-10) snippet codes. However to SEE this data being used it requires the user to check slightly different than the typical contact.

Customer UDFs

Customer UDFs can be viewed via the customer drop-down on the "Info" tab under the "User Defined Fields" section OR on any customer level grid (Such as (Accounts > All Accounts) or (Admin > Master Files > Customers))

Contact UDFs

Customer UDFs can be viewed via the customer drop-down on the "Contacts" tab by selecting the "UDF" button OR on any contact level grid (Such as (Inquiries > By User > Contacts) or (Inquiries > By Account > Contacts))

Invoice Contacts:

Configuration -

This varies by ERP and will be included in ERP system specific configurations down below. 

 

ERP Systems

Overview:

Each and every ERP system has their own nuances for how contacts are pulled, an ongoing project will be adding each of them to a list below with their own article detailing how/where contacts are pulled from.

 

ERPs:

• Intacct - Contacts | UDFs