Additional contacts do not working as expected

Problem reported by Alex Curtis 11 years ago

Invoice view page

[/accounting/sales/view/]

The page doesn't show the Additional contact name, it incorrectly displays the primary contact name.

Invoice list page

[/accounting/sales/list-sent/]

Selecting an invoice with a check box and clicking the email button sends the invoice to the primary contact not the additional contact.

Sending an invoice to an additional contact

[/accounting/sales/email/]

The "First name" and "Surname" fields are always populated with the primary contacts name rather than the additional contacts name.

General problems

If you have multiple additional contacts but no primary contact, this can cause problems. For example:

If the primary contact email address isn't filled and an email is sent to an additional contact, the additional contacts email address is automatically populated into the primary contact field. Emails then sent to other additional contacts will go to the primary contacts email address.

With the other problems listed above, this can easily lead to invoice emails going to the wrong people.

Quote page

[/accounting/quotes/add/]

Quotes can't be sent to Additional contacts.

This problem has also been mentioned by Sarah Beach - https://secure.clearbooks.co.uk/network/ideas/view/send-quote-to-an-additional-contact-2035.html

9 Replies

Send quote to an additional contact : I have a customer, a company with two different people I do work for. I have set the customer up with one person as the primary contact and the other as an additional contact.

I want to create a quote for the additional contact, but can't see where I can choose the contact as I can when creating an invoice.

Hi Alex and Sarah,

Thanks for sending on your thoughts about what we could do with amending in terms of additional contacts and quotes.

The best thing to do is see how much more interest this post picks up and if enough people agree with you both it will be something we can look to add in to our road map, so get your colleagues who use Clear books to vote!

I realise this is an old post but I don't really understand the use of Additional Contacts. We invoice multiple people in the same company but there doesn't seem to be a way to easily select the various contacts when raising the invoice. Personally, I would like to be able to select a company and then have a contacts drop-down with the various contacts at the company and be able to select the appropriate one. Am I doing something wrong?

Whilst commenting on invoicing it would also be great to have a section to record our own comments against an invoice that doesn't get printed on the invoice. A free-text box would be very helpful.

This is a constant irritation for us also; we do a lot of work with universities and as such have multiple contacts not only within each university but also within individual departments. At the moment they all have to be listed separately as if not any auto generated reminder emails only go to the main contact, which has been quite embarrassing.

Also Tara, I have seen this issue described slightly differently by different people in different posts, I'm sure combined that they would have more sway - there needs to be better management of the ideas section by ClearBooks staff so that similar ideas can be grouped or merged.

I totally agree with Ian.

Why wait for more likes? I've the feeling only 5 - 10 persons are on this forum. And not everyone is having the same wishes, although. Some of them should work properly!

Why have the function of additional contacts if;

  • You can't find them when searching.
  • Use them as your contact when making an quote or invoice.

    ?

Michiel, I've just had another look and I now have the option to choose an additional contact when creating a quote or invoice. The name & email fields seem to be populated correctly and the correct email address is used if I email the quote directly from Clearbooks.

It would be nice if someone from Clearbooks updated the comments on ideas so we could see when progress had been made, rather than having to play 'spot the difference' each time we use it!

Hi Everyone,

Sarah is correct, you can have additional contacts. Within a customer > Edit > Additional contacts > Add contact.

Then, when you create quotes and invoices you will have the option to select additional contacts in the drop-down.

Chris

There needs to be an option to allow a quote contact list and an invoice contact list as additional contacts.

The way it works currently is that you have a selection of contacts to choose to send things too, however the primary contact might be either purchasing, engineers or accounts. Any of these require documents but they do not all require the documents and without a way of knowing who is who it is difficult to manage.

I think you need to have a contact option list where by you have a primary contact for quotes, orders, purchase orders, invoices, bill payment etc. Each email option we have there should be a contact you can allocate to it. When there is no primary contact selected in the additional contacts list then it should default to the main business contact.

Hi Andrew, That's a pretty interesting addition. Perhaps you could add this as an idea for future development on Community so that it can get discussed in its own right by other users?

Many Thanks

Chris

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