An introduction to contacts

Welcome to contacts in FreeAgent! This article is an introduction to contacts in FreeAgent and explains how to add and edit them.

Contacts are individual customers or suppliers who you need to add to FreeAgent in order to create invoices, estimates, bills and projects.

Viewing your contacts

The 'Contacts' section is where you can manage these customers and suppliers. To view your contacts, select the ‘Contacts’ tab at the top of the screen.

You can view your contacts either as a grid (default view) or as a list, by selecting the ‘List’ view option.

To filter by name, select the initial letter of the organisation, or if you haven't entered an organisation name, the first letter of the individual's surname.

To filter by type, for example customers with active projects or hidden contacts, select the relevant option from the drop-down menu. You can also hide contacts that you’re no longer working with so that they don’t appear when you’re creating a new estimate, invoice, bill or project.

You can see how much money each customer owes you and how much you owe each supplier in the bottom-right of their contact box. If no money is owed, that area is blank.

You can also see whether any active projects are attached to particular customers. Select the ‘Active Projects’ drop-down menu to see more information about the projects.

Adding new contacts

You can add new contacts by selecting ‘Add New Contact’ and entering the relevant details. You can also add new contacts when you’re creating an estimate, invoice, bill or project.

Alternatively, you can import contacts from your email provider or from Basecamp.

Managing your contacts

To view the details for an individual contact, select their name on the main ‘Contacts’ screen. Each contact contains a summary, projects, invoices, recurring invoices, bills, estimates, statement of account, account history and notes tab.

Summary

The ‘Summary’ tab shows the individual or organisation’s name, address and contact details. It also displays which invoice referencing system you're using for the contact.

This tab is also where you can change the status of a contact using the yellow drop-down menu. For example, if you want to hide or unhide a contact. You’ll also find an ‘Outstanding’ summary of any unpaid invoices and bills for the contact and an ‘All Time Totals’ view showing the total amounts received and paid.

Projects

The ‘Projects’ tab lists details for any active and completed projects for the contact.

Invoices

The ’Invoices’ tab lists all invoices issued to the contact along with the status of each invoice. Receipts and credit notes are grouped with each invoice, making it easy to see which invoices are only part-paid, and see the payment history related to a single invoice.

There's also the option to filter the invoices view by 'Open and Outstanding', 'Paid', or 'Unpaid/Written-off'.

You can see on average how late or early your contact pays you in respect to the payment terms you've agreed with them in the Invoice Payments panel.

Recurring invoices

The 'Recurring Invoices’ tab shows all the recurring invoice profiles for the contact, including the value, frequency and the next recurring date. You can also select the profile ID to make changes if you need to.

Bills

The ‘Bills’ tab lists all bills issued to the contact along with the status of each bill. You can choose to view all your bills, or some of them by date range, using the relevant drop-down menus.

Estimates

The ‘Estimates’ tab lists all estimates issued to the contact along with their individual and total value and the status of each estimate.

Statement of account

You can create and send a statement of account for a contact via the ‘Statement of Account’ tab. You can choose to include payments for invoices or bills, or just open and overdue invoices.

Account history

The ‘Account History’ tab is a full record of all your transactions with the contact. This includes invoices, bills, payments, receipts and any credit notes. These are listed starting with your most recent transactions and also include the status of individual items, for example whether an invoice or bill is open, overdue or paid.

Notes

The ‘Notes’ tab is where you can add relevant notes to a contact. You can also edit and delete notes.

Invoice Payments panel

At the right-hand side of the screen, you can view a contact’s Invoice Payments panel. This shows on average how late or early your contact pays you in respect to the payment terms you've agreed with them. Please note that if the selected contact hasn’t paid three invoices in full in the past year, this panel won’t appear.

If the panel does appear, you will see one of the following labels: the average number of days late, the average number of days early or a message that this contact usually pays on time.

You will occasionally see this information appear as part of the late payment Insight.

You can create a new project, invoice, credit note, recurring invoice profile, estimate or bill for the contact by selecting ‘Add new’ and choosing the relevant option from the drop-down menu.

Editing a contact's details

To edit a contact’s details, select ‘Edit Details’ at the top-right of the screen.

Deleting contacts

Once you've entered an estimate, invoice, recurring invoice, credit note bill or project for a contact, that contact cannot be deleted from FreeAgent. If you’re no longer working with the contact, you can hide them so they no longer appear as an option when creating an item in FreeAgent.

If a contact doesn't yet have any entries against it, there will be an option to delete the contact. Find out more about how to delete or hide a contact.