Contacts & Organizations

Every case, claim, order, or application involves people and companies: applicants, customers, attorneys, vendors, clients. Contacts & Organizations is QBO’s built-in relationship management. It keeps who they are, how to reach them, and what role they play on each record, so workflow, messaging, and security can use that information automatically.

• People are contacts: a name, address, and identifying details, attached to the record they relate to, in a defined role (such as “Applicant” or “Witness”).
• Companies are organizations: clients, vendors, partners, and your own offices. Organizations are shared across records and can have users, teams, and their own configuration, which is the basis of partner (extranet) security.
• Contact methods hold email addresses, phone numbers, and other ways to reach a contact, each with a primary flag and a valid date range.
• Licenses track professional licenses, insurance certificates, and W-9s, with effective and expiry dates and verification.
• Collections group contacts, users, or organizations into teams, distribution lists, and labels.

Addresses can be validated and geocoded with a mapping provider, sensitive identifiers such as Social Security numbers are masked unless a user has permission to see them, and each contact can be checked for active military status with Military Search.

Key concepts

Concept	In QBO	What it does
Contact	Contact	A person or address, bound to a parent record through Object and ObjectID.
Organization	Organization	A company. Extends Contact, so it has the same address and contact methods, but it’s reused rather than owned by one record.
Contact role	ContactTemplate	The role a contact plays on a record, such as a party to a case. Controls how many may exist and how they’re secured.
Contact method	ContactMethod	One email, phone, or other method of contact, typed by MethodType.
License	ProfessionalLicense	A license, certificate, or tax form, with dates and verification.
Collection	Collection	A named group of members, such as a team or distribution list.

Choose your view

Use the buttons under the page title. End user covers finding and maintaining contacts and organizations; Power user covers contact roles, contact method types, address validation, and collections; Developer covers the API.

Contact roles are one kind of template. Contacts are often the recipients of messages, and organizations are central to security.