Contact list

This article will walk you through using the contact list. Whichever contact list display method your site administrator has enabled on your site—a single Contacts module or separate Companies and People modules—the list view functionality remains the same, allowing you to filter, search, organize, and take action on your contact data efficiently.

1. Customizing the contact list view

1.1. Filtering contacts

Use filters and the search bar in the contact list to narrow down your list to exactly what you need.

Click the Filter button to open the filter panel. You can filter your list by any standard or custom field, such as:

• Manager – see contacts assigned to specific team members
• Categories or Tags – view contacts grouped by specific labels
  • To see contacts of a specific category, click on the category initials under the Category column.
• Location – filter by country, city, or address
• Activity – find contacts based on their last activity date or upcoming tasks

You can also choose whether to display only contacts with or without all the necessary details (such as the phone number, e-mail, and postal address):

1. Click the View button, then click the View options button.
2. Enable or disable the Display only incomplete entries and Display checkbox (depending on what you want to view), and click Display.

1.2. Customizing data columns

To customize what data columns are included in the contact list:

1. Click the View button, then click on Data columns.
2. Choose the data columns you want to see in the list view. You can adjust the order of the data columns by dragging and dropping them into the correct order.

1.3. Adding a summary bar

To add a summary bar above the contact list for displaying key contact metrics: 

1. Click the View button, then click the Summary bar button.
2. Enable any of the available metrics – Total, Clients, Suppliers, Prepayment – you want to display above the contacts. At least one metric must be selected for the summary bar to appear.
3. Enable the Round numbers checkbox if you prefer to see rounded values. Click Display.

To remove the summary bar from the contact list, simply disable all the selected metrics.

1.4. Sorting contacts

You can also sort the contact list data by almost all data columns. Simply click on the column title to sort by it in ascending or descending order. Click again to change the sorting direction.

2. Searching for contacts

The search bar at the top-right corner of the contact list allows you to look up contacts by:

• Name (Company or Person)
• Contact details (Email, Phone number)
• Custom field values (if searchable)

Additionally, you can use the Ignore filters button on the left of the contact search bar to search the full contact database or only the filtered contact list view.

3. Managing contacts from the contact list

There are various actions you can take from the contact list view to manage your contacts:

• Click the icon to the left of the contact name (a building icon for companies and a person icon for people) to open the contact modify view.
  
• Click the contact name (person or company) to open the contact card, which provides a full overview of everything related to that contact.
  
• To quickly create a task or event linked to a particular contact, hover over the contact row, click the plus icon that appears, and select either New task or New event.
  
• To view the contact card for a company’s related person, click their name in the Relation column.
  
• Hover over the activity date under the Activity, Last activity, or Next activity column to see a preview of the activity, or click on the date to open the activity modify view.
  

4. Bulk actions

Instead of updating contacts one by one, you can perform actions on multiple contacts at once – all from the contact list view. Select the contacts using the checkboxes on the left of the contact row, and an additional bar will appear with the following bulk actions:

• Tag – select the necessary tag to quickly assign it to the selected contacts. You may be prompted to choose whether you want to add or remove the selected tag from those contacts.
• Category – assign or change the category of the selected contacts.
• Account manager – reassign multiple contacts to a different account member.
• Profile – assign or change the client profile for the selected contacts.
• Reminder profile – assign or change the invoice reminder profile for the selected contacts.
• Merge – if you've selected duplicate records, you can merge them into a single record.
• Delete – remove the selected records from your database (requires appropriate permissions).
• New task or Add task bundle – add the same new task or a task bundle to all selected contacts at once.
• Link with project – link the selected contacts to a project.
• Export – export the selected contacts. For more guidance, see the Exporting contacts section of this article.

The additional actions bar in the contact list may also show quick action buttons for integrations enabled on your site (e.g., Xero actions, QuickBooks actions).

Sorting can be done by name, address, relation, project, tax, reg. no., prepayment, and activity. Just click on the column header to sort the list.

5. Exporting contacts

Users with the data export permission can export contacts straight from the contact list view:

1. Select the contacts you want to export. An additional bar with bulk actions will appear at the top of the contact list.
2. Click the Export button, then choose whether to download the contacts as a CSV or an XLS file. If you have separated Companies and People, you can choose to export only companies, only people, or both companies and related people.

6. Frequently asked questions

Why are some contacts missing from the contact list?

Depending on the contact module permissions in your permission set, you may see only your contacts or those of other users as well. Check with your site administrator to ensure you can access all the necessary contacts on your site.