Chapter 106 Contact Admin

Contact Admin covers several options to help your company use Contacts effectively.

If you have large customers with hundreds or thousands of ShipTo's that is easy to do.
If you have customers with several people who place orders, that easy to manage, too.

Contacts can be imported, updated, looked up easily and added on the fly to handle shipping addresses, contact information, and specialty settings like sales taxes, to start.


  Import Contacts

Big Business imports Contacts and includes Linking so you can link them to Customers as Additional Contacts or multiple Ship To's using Company Name or Customer Code.

This Solution describes using on this feature. (6248)

When importing Contacts you can choose Linking by:
• Company Name
• Code

These look for an exact match of Company Name, or between Contact Code and Customer Code, to link the Contact to a Customer Card where it will appear as an Additional Contact and be available to select as an alternate addess for Bill To or Ship To on Quotes, Sales Orders, and Invoices.

Use the Contact Search with the Link File search criterion to determine which Contacts are, or are not, linked to Customers.

On a Contact Card you can specify the link by choosing Customer as the Link File and then selecting a Customer in Contact Linked To.

  Matching Contacts

Matching Contacts is a new feature to help you control Update Duplicates on Import.

Choose a matching setting based on what information you have in the import and in your Contacts, and Big Business will match and update the right ones automatically.

For example, Contacts used as ShipTo's have an Shipping Address 1 entry at the least. Or, you might have Contact Codes or be using Ship ID 1 for your customers' id codes.


  Matching Ship ID

Ship ID 1 can be used for a store code or location code to id your customers' ShipTo's.

Load Addresses, Ship To, puts them on the Shipping tab. Dialog Prefs, Live List puts them on a popup for Ship To, Other that you can Filter (type an entry above column).

They can then be used for customizing order automation. And they can be used to update Contacts from a spreadsheet if Ship ID 1 is the way to find the ones to change.


  Matching Address

Matching Address lets you update Contacts used as Ship To's that do not have Codes.

If you have large customers with hundreds or thousands of ShipTo's, you might need to import a spreadsheet with changes. Matching Address helps change the right ones.

In an import of Contacts, you can choose Update Duplicates with Matching done by Shipping Address 1. This will find the contact using street address and make changes.