Contacts & Organizations

The people on a record appear in its Contacts panel; the companies you work with have their own organization pages. Keep both current, and everything that relies on them (letters, emails, assignments, partner access) stays correct.

Contacts on a record

Each contact on a record has a role, such as a party to a case or a reference on an application. The role decides what details are captured and how many contacts of that role a record may have; your administrator sets these up.

• Add a contact from the Contacts panel and choose its role. Enter the name, address, and any details the role asks for.
• Edit a contact to correct details.
• Include Relatives widens the list to contacts on related records, so you can see everyone connected to the matter in one place.

Ways to reach a contact

The Contact Methods panel holds email addresses, phone numbers, and any other method types your installation uses.

• Mark the preferred method of each type as primary.
• Record valid from and valid to dates when a number or address changes, so the history of how to reach the contact is kept.
• Message templates that address “the contact” send to the contact’s email methods, so keep them accurate. See Messaging.

Addresses

Normalize validates the addresses of the selected contacts with your mapping provider. When the match is confident, QBO corrects the address, city, state, postal code, and country, records latitude and longitude, and notes where and when it was verified. Addresses that can’t be confidently matched are left as you entered them.

Sensitive details

Social Security numbers are shown masked (XXX-XX- and the last four digits). Users with permission can reveal the full number, and every reveal is logged with the user and time.

Military status

Contacts can be checked for active military duty. The result, its source, and the date it was verified are stored on the contact. See Military Search.

Organizations

An organization page brings together everything about a company you work with:

Tab	What it shows
Activity	Messages, tasks, and other activity on the organization
Users	The people who sign in to QBO on the organization’s behalf
Teams	Groups of those users, used for assignment and messaging
Vendor Contracts / Client Contracts	Agreements where the organization is the vendor or the client
Contact Methods	The organization’s own email addresses and phone numbers
Licenses	Professional licenses, insurance certificates, and W-9s, with effective and expiry dates

Because organizations are shared, an update made on one organization page applies everywhere it’s used.

Note

Panel and tab names can vary by installation; your administrator can rename or hide them.