Adjusting Client/Contact Information

BigTime enables you to track client information and contact information for every project. By default, you will have at least a client name and a primary contact (integration with QuickBooks also requires a Billing Contact). You keep track of all that information in the client/contact pages of the Project Dashboard.

Select the Client menu at the top of the dashboard and choose either General or Contact(s) to edit this information. Most of it is fairly easy to understand, but there are a few items of which you should take special note.

• To connect a contact to the main client address, check the USE MAIN ADDR box on the contact's detail. This will make sure that every change to the client's address is reflected in the contact's information.
  • QuickBooks users should note that this check box is NOT checked by default when you import projects. That's because QuickBooks treats every project's contacts as a separate name, and updates to one never effect the others. So, if you have 12 projects in QuickBooks-each with the exact same contact information- QuickBooks will treat these as 12 separate contract/address records.
  • To 'clean up' this data, you can delete all but one of those contacts from BigTime and then link all of your projects to that single contact. Then, when you update your contact in BigTime, all 12 projects in QuickBooks will be updated.
  • Re-connect each project to a new billing contact if you delete any of the duplicate contact records added during your import from QuickBooks. If you forget, your sync with QuickBooks will generate errors, and BigTime will try to fix them by adding back the contacts you deleted!
• Editing CLIENT information on one project will update that information on every one of that client's projects. That information is "shared" among all of your projects, so project-specific name/address data should be stored in that project's contacts (not in the overall "client" record).
• You can have an unlimited set of contact names listed for your clients, but each project in the system can have up to two specific contact records attached to it. Typically, you will designate one of those contacts as your "primary" contact on a specific project, and you can designate another person as the "billing" contact. Invoices are always addressed to a project's "billing" contact.
• Each contact can have their own address, and you can provide a different "company name" for each contact if that's appropriate. If you'd like to just use the main "corporate" name and address, then you can check off the "use main address" box on the contact's information page.

Adding New Contacts

You can add new contacts to the system by Opening up any Project Dashboard and going to the Client...Contacts page. Click the Add button on that page to add a new contact to the client to which the dashboard's project is attached.

Deleting Contacts

You can delete contacts from the Client...Contacts page as well. Just click on the contact you'd like to delete and then click the DELETE button on that contact's detail page.

If you don't want to delete the contact, but you would like to disassociate the contact from the project you are editing, then you can turn OFF the check box on the Client...Contacts page next to that contact's name. Or, you can just choose a different contact to act as the project's primary/billing contact.