How to add a new contact

This article explains how to add individual contacts into FreeAgent and how these are ordered in the dropdown menu when you create a sales invoice or add a supplier bill.

You can also import several contacts at once. 

If you need to change a contact’s details, find out how to edit a contact.

Begin by selecting 'Contacts' and then selecting 'Add New Contact'.

This brings up the ‘New Contact’ screen.

Contact Details

In the ‘Contact Details’ section, you can either enter a first name and last name (with or without an organisation name) or enter an organisation name on its own.

These will then show in the ‘Contacts’ area and drop-down menus when creating an invoice or adding a bill, in the following order: Organisation, Last Name, First Name.

When you select the ‘Contact’ drop-down menu, you can start typing the name of the contact and FreeAgent will jump down the list to the contact, to save you scrolling through the list.

You can also enter multiple email addresses in the ‘Email’ and ‘Billing Email’ address fields by separating each address with a comma. Please note that FreeAgent will send invoices and other communications to all of the email addresses you provide for each contact.

Invoicing options

If the contact is a customer rather than a supplier, you can enter payment terms, enable automatic invoice emails, choose a numbering sequence for invoices and choose to display their name on invoices in the ‘Invoicing Options’ section. You can also choose whether to charge them VAT, enter their VAT registration number and choose a language to issue estimates and invoices in.

Payment terms

If you want to set payment terms that are specific for this contact, you can enter that here. This will then be used on all new invoices and recurring invoice profiles that you create for this contact. It won’t change any existing invoices (including draft invoices) or any existing recurring invoice profiles.

Invoice emails

You can choose whether to automatically email invoices, invoice reminders and thank you notes to your contact. These defaults will be used on all new invoices and recurring invoice profiles that you create for this contact. It won’t change any existing invoices (including draft invoices) or any existing recurring invoice profiles.

Please note that when converting an estimate to an invoice, the 'Contact-level email settings' will not be automatically selected on the invoice created from the estimate

Invoice numbering sequence

You can tick this box to set a specific sequence for invoices you issue to this contact. For example, you might want to prefix the number with the customer’s or business's initials.

Display names on invoices

You have the option to display the contact's individual name as well as the organisation's name on their invoices. This is useful if you need to mark the invoice for a particular person's attention, for example the bookkeeper or purchase ledger clerk.

Please note that you’ll need to enter a ‘First Name’ and ‘Last Name’ for the contact in the ‘Contact Details’ section to do this.

Charge VAT

Depending on what you're supplying, and where you're supplying it, you may need to add VAT to the invoices you issue. You can choose to either:

• charge VAT if the client is based in the United Kingdom VAT area (this area includes the Isle of Man)
• always charge VAT
• never charge VAT

VAT registration number

You can also enter the customer’s VAT registration number.

Choice of language

You also have the option to issue invoices and estimates to your customer in several different languages. Choose the relevant language using the drop-down menu.

Once you've entered all of the relevant details, select 'Create New Contact' to save your new contact, 'Create and Add Another' if you want to save this new contact and add another one, or 'Cancel' to exit from this screen without setting up the new contact.