Big Contacts offers a unique interface for Business Contact Records. This contact record structure is available when choosing the "Account (Business) Centric" contact format in our system. This contact format greatly enhances the way you can organize information and manage a business relationship while juggling activity with multiple contacts within that business.

If you're working in an industry where you only need one contact record per account, you may want the simplicity of Contact Centric option. However, if you are going to want to track multiple contacts per account (business) then the Account (Business) Centric becomes the best option.

Below are some of the highlights of how you can use this Account (Business) Centric format to better organize information while managing your Business Relationships.

Determine the type of Contact Record you wish to create

When creating a contact record within Big Contacts, you can choose the type of contact that you wish it to be.

Note: An individual contact stands alone and is not linked (along with other contacts) to a Business Record.

Link an existing Individual Contact to an existing Business Contact Record

If at any time, you wish to link an existing individual contact to a Business Record, you can do so by selecting the "Link to a Business" link in the bottom center of the individual contact record - highlighted below. 

After you click on this link you will see a pop up that allows you to search for and select the Business Contact record that you wish to link this Individual Contact record to.  You can begin typing in the name of the company that you wish to link this contact record to and company names will begin to populate below (this works the same as searching for a contact record in the search box). You will then choose the company that you wish to link to and ALL history and notes for this individual contact will be migrated to, and organized under the history section for that Business Contact record.

If you do not find a matching business name you can create one and link the individual contact record from the same pop up.

Add a new Individual Contact to an existing Business Record

You can easily add an individual contact to an existing business contact record by selecting the link "Add a New Contact to..." in the bottom right corner of the contact record. This will open the "add a new contact" screen and allow you to enter the details for this individual. When you save this information the new contact will be displayed in the list of contacts under this business contact record.

View the entire Business Relationship

You can view the Business (Account) Level detail of a business contact record by selecting the company name in the contact record as highlighted below. The system will let you know the view that you are looking at by changing the display in three areas.

• The "contact header" for your view will turn a glossy black. Here you can see the company name is highlighted in black – telling us that we are in the Business (Account) level of detail.
• The name in the menu in the left hand column will tell you what contact you will be adding notes and history for if you choose to do so.
• The name in the "Status/ History" section will tell you what level of information you are viewing. Note: In the Account (Business) view, you will see all notes and activity associated with the individual contacts with which each activity occurred.

View Activity for an Individual Contact

You can select any one of the individual contacts that are associated with a business contact record to view ONLY the activity, notes, and history that are associated with that individual contact. It is important to note that you must check the view that you are currently in PRIOR to logging any activity in the system. All activity that is logged will be associated directly with that contact. You can enter notes, and history that are not associated with an individual contact by selecting the company.