Getting started with contacts

Contacts are the core of your business data in Scoro. You can manage your contact database in the Contacts module in Scoro.

This article provides a general overview of how to organize your database, the relationship between different contact types, and where to manage your global contact settings. You'll find links to more contact-related articles in the See also section.

1. Contact hierarchy in Scoro

Scoro uses the following approach to linking businesses with the individual contacts:

• A contact can be either a company or a person.
• A company is the primary business entity (the organization).
• A person is an individual contact that can be standalone or linked to a company.
• One company can be linked to multiple people (and vice versa), but only one person can be set as the main contact. The main contact is the primary person you communicate with at that company, and it is taken into account when compiling and sending out quotes, invoices, and other documents.

2. Viewing all contacts together or companies and people separately

Your site administrator can choose in the contact settings how to display contacts on your site:

• In a single Contacts module containing all companies and people in a single list view
  
• In two separate Companies and People modules
  

Regardless of whether you’re using the unified or split contact modules, contact management generally works the same way in both.

For a more detailed walkthrough of the contact list, see our List of contacts (companies or people) article.

3. Contact card

The contact view, also called the contact card, is the “source of truth” for everything related to a specific contact.

The contact card contains the following information:

• General details – the company’s or person’s name, contact and address information, client profile, preferred language
• Linked people (if it’s a company) or companies (if it’s a person)
• Related companies (if it’s a company) or related people (if it’s a person)

All projects, activities, quotes, invoices, files, and other items and documents in Scoro linked to that contact appear on the contact card.

To add related people to a contact card:

1. In the People or Companies section (depending on whether you’re viewing a company or person), click the Add button.
2. Choose whether to add a new person/company or select from existing ones.
   • If you’re selecting an existing one, select the correct person or company from the dropdown field.

If you’re adding a new person or company, follow the steps described in the Adding, managing, and deleting a contact article.

4. Adding, importing, and merging contacts

There are multiple ways to populate contacts in your contact database:

• Adding contacts manually – ideal for adding records one by one as you meet new prospects.
  • For step-by-step instructions, see the Adding, modifying, and deleting contacts article.
• Importing contacts in bulk – prepare a contact sheet file and import it to Scoro.
  • For step-by-step instructions, see the Importing contacts article.

You can also merge duplicate contacts to keep your contact database organized. For step-by-step instructions, see our Merging contacts article.

5. Organizing contacts with tags and categories

To keep your contact database well-organized and easily filterable, you can set up contact tags and categories to create your own internal contact labeling system:

• Contact categories are structured groupings for a high-level classification (e.g., Client, Lead, Partner). A contact can belong to a single category at once.
• Contact tags are fluid, informal labels used for more granular filtering. Unlike categories, a contact can have multiple tags.

For a more detailed overview and instructions, see our article on Contact tags and categories.

6. Managing contact access to Customer Portal

If your site uses a Customer Portal, you can grant company-related people access to your site’s Customer Portal. This lets them see documents, collaborate with your team on projects, and participate in discussions through the portal.

For more information, check the articles in the Customer Portal section in our Help Center.

7. Global contact settings

Site administrators can manage the following contact-related settings under Settings > Site settings > Contacts:

• Default category for new contacts – select a category from the dropdown to apply it to all new contacts by default. For more information, see our article on Contact tags and categories.
• Add new person to the client list by default – enable this checkbox to ensure the Display in client list checkbox on the contact card is always selected by default.
  • This is just the default preference; you can always deselect this checkbox when adding or modifying a contact.
• Companies and people are displayed – choose how you want the contact module to appear on your site:
  • Select In one list to enable a single Contacts module
  • Select In two separate lists to enable separate Companies and People modules

8. Permissions for contact management

To manage which users can see and manage your site’s contact database, you can modify the permission sets under Settings > Site settings > Permission sets:

• If you’re using the single Contacts module on your site, all contact-related permissions will be grouped under the Contacts permission.
  
• If your site uses the separate Companies and People modules, permissions will be grouped under the relevant module.
  

To control access to the whole Contacts, Companies, or People module(s) for a permission set, disable or enable the respective module permission checkboxes accordingly. Once enabled, additional permissions will appear for more granular control of what users of that permission set can do in these modules:

• Add companies and Add people
• View details of companies of other users and View details of people of other users
•  Modify companies of other users if related and Modify people of other users if related
• View the list of companies of other users and View the list of people of other users
•  Delete people and Delete companies

For step-by-step instructions on modifying a permission set, see our Permission sets guide.