Create Contacts

When you develop a business relationship to someone in another company, add them as a contact in Business Central. Then, add any information about them, or their company, that can be useful for future communications. On the Contact Card page, you can create the following types of contacts:

Person - Typically, this is when you've had direct contact with someone and have their contact details.
Company - For example, if the contact is not an individual person but an entity, such as a contractor or a bank.

The information that's relevant for each type of contact differs, so the fields and actions that are available are different. For example, you can only assign job responsibilities to a person, and an industry group to a company.

You can change the value of the Type field later. Alternatively, use the fields on the Inheritance FastTab on the Marketing Setup page to specify the data to share between a person and their company. For more information, see Setting Up Contacts.

When a contact is converted to a customer, for example, the contact person or contact company becomes the name of the customer. The record for the contact is kept, and you can link the contact and the customer so that their data is synchronized going forward.

[!NOTE] If you switch on the feature update for conversion templates, then you can also create vendors or employees from business contacts.

However, if you are already using the built-in functionality for creating customers or items automatically, then this feature update does not support custom fields, and newly created customers or items will not include such data.

To create a contact manually

Choose the icon, enter Contacts, and then choose the related link.
Choose the New action.
In the No. field, enter a number for the contact.

Alternatively, if you have set up a number series for contacts on the Marketing Setup page, you can press Enter to insert the next available contact number.
Fill in the remaining fields as required. Hover over a field to read a short description.

To create a contact from a customer, vendor, or bank account

If you have customers, vendors, and bank accounts that you want to create contact cards for, you can use the Create Contacts from batch jobs to create contacts from the existing data. When you create a contact this way, the contact information is afterwards synchronized with the related customer, vendor, or bank account information. For more information, see Synchronizing Contacts with Customers, Vendors, and Bank Accounts.

[!NOTE]
Before you can create contacts based on existing data, you must specify a business relation code for customers, vendors, or bank accounts on the Interactions FastTab on the Marketing Setup page. For more information, see Set up Contacts.

Choose the icon, enter one of the following, depending what you want to create contacts from, and then choose the related link.
- Create Contacts from Customers
- Create Contacts from Vendors
- Create Contacts from Bank Accounts
On the request page that opens, in the Customer, Vendor, or Bank Account section, set filters if you want to create contacts from specific customers, vendors, or bank accounts.
Choose the OK button to start creating contacts.

The next contact numbers in the number series are assigned to the new contacts. The business relations that are specified on the Marketing Setup page is assigned to the newly created contacts.

[!TIP]
You can also do this the other way around, namely by creating a customer, vendor, or bank account from a contact. For more information, see To create a contact as a customer, vendor, or bank account.

To create a customer, vendor, employee, or bank account from a contact

If you have a customer, vendor, employee, or bank account for the company that you want to create a contact for, use the Create as action. When you create a contact this way, the contact information is afterwards synchronized with the related customer, vendor, employee, or bank account information. For more information, see Synchronizing Contacts with Customers, Vendors, and Bank Accounts.

[!NOTE]
Before you can create customers, vendors, employees, or bank accounts from contacts, you must specify a business relation code on the Marketing Setup page on the Interactions FastTab. For more information, see Setting up Contacts.

Choose the icon, enter Contacts, and then choose the related link.
Select the contact you want to create as a customer, vendor, employee, or bank account.
Choose the Create As action, and then choose either Customer, Vendor, Bank, or Employee.
Choose the OK button.

The contact information is transferred from the contact card to a new customer, vendor, employee, or bank account card. You may want to add specific information to each of the cards, such as invoicing and payment details. For more information, see, for example, Register New Customers.

To link a contact to an existing customer, vendor, employee, or bank account

If you have a contact and either a customer, vendor, employee, or bank account for the same company, you can link the two entities to synchronize data.

Open the contact that you want to link.
Choose the Link with existing action, and then choose the Customer, Vendor, Bank, or Employee action.
On the page that opens, select the customer, vendor, employee, or bank account to link to.
In the Current Master Fields field, specify whose fields to prioritize in when there is conflicting information in fields common to the contact and customer, vendor, employee, or bank account. For example, if the salesperson code is different for the contact and customer, you can choose to keep the one on the contact card by selecting Contact.
Choose the OK button.

To remove a link between a contact and an existing customer, vendor, employee, or bank account

If you have wrongly linked a contact and a customer, vendor, employee, or bank account, remove the link between the entities so that data no longer synchronizes.

Open the contact that has the wrong link.
Choose the Business Relations action.
On the page that opens, select the customer, vendor, employee, or bank account to remove the link from.
Choose the Delete action.

[!NOTE]
Do not use the Business Relations window to change existing relations. Instead, remove the relation and use the Link with existing action. For more information, see the To link a contact to an existing customer, vendor, or bank account section.

Synchronizing Contacts with Customers, Vendors, Employees, and Bank Accounts

If some of your contacts are also customers, vendors, employees, or bank accounts, you can synchronize then with data from the contact and gain the following benefits:

You only have to update information in one place. For example, if you modify the phone number on the contact, the phone number is automatically updated for the customer, vendor, employee, or bank account.
If you have specified a number series for contacts, when you create a customer, vendor, employee, or bank account card, a contact is automatically created.
You can create sales quotes and orders, and purchase quotes and orders, from the contact.
You can record your interactions, such as printing orders, blanket orders, creating sales service orders, sending e-mails, and so on.
If you delete a contact linked to a customer, vendor, employee, or bank account, only the contact is removed. The customer, vendor, employee, or bank account remains.
If you delete a customer, vendor, employee, or bank account that is linked to a contact, the contact remains.

[!NOTE]
Certain details, such as invoicing and posting details, are not available for contacts. When you create contacts as customers, vendors, employees, or bank accounts, you may want to add them manually.

There are three ways to enable data synchronization between contacts and customers, vendors, employees, or bank accounts:

When you create contacts from customers, vendors, employees, or bank accounts. See To create a contact from a customer, vendor, or bank account.
When you create customers, vendors, employees, or bank accounts from contacts. See To create a customer, vendor, or bank account from a contact.
When you link contacts with existing customers, vendors, employees, or bank accounts from the contact card. See To link a contact to an existing customer, vendor, or bank account.

Choose the icon, enter Contacts, and then choose the related link.
Select the line for a contact, choose the Related Information action, and then choose the Customer/Vendor/Bank Acc/Employee action.

ms.topic: include ms.date: 12/20/2021 ms.author: edupont

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