Contacts

What it is

One list of every business you deal with and the people who work there. A business carries the roles it has to you (client, subcontractor, supplier, consultant, head contractor, other), so a company that is both your supplier and your subcontractor is one record with one email, not two. Each business has its own page holding its details and people, its paperwork and ratings if it is a subcontractor, its price list if it is a supplier, and every job, tender, purchase order, claim and payment you have had with it. Estimators, project managers and whoever pays the bills all use it.

Before you start

• What you see follows the modules switched on for you: subcontractors come with the Subcontractors module, suppliers with Suppliers, clients and consultants with CRM. With none of them on, the page says so.
• Adding and editing needs an admin or team account. Everyone else can look.

How to

Find a business or a person

1. Switch between Businesses and People.
2. Type in Search: a business name, ABN, email, or the name of someone who works there. Narrow with the role chips (what they are to you), the Trade filter, and Status.
3. Open a row for the business's page.

Add a business

1. Press Add company.
2. Tick what they are to you first. The form then asks only for what that needs: a trade, licence and QBCC number for a subcontractor; what they supply, your account number and payment terms for a supplier.
3. Fill in the business name (required), ABN, email and phone, and the main contact. Tenders and purchase orders go to the main contact.
4. Bank details for payment runs and the website, address and notes are optional and folded away.
5. Save. If a business with the same ABN or name already exists, Base tells you so you can use it instead of making a second copy.

Let subcontractors sign themselves up

1. Press Copy subcontractor sign-up link and send it out.
2. Each sign-up arrives with status pending and a banner counts them. Press Show them to see the list.
3. Open each one. Approve it if it is a real business you will use; ask the assistant in chat to merge it into a business you already have if it looks like a duplicate (the row is flagged when it does); or delete it. A pending business is not offered when you choose who to send a tender or purchase order to.

Work with a business

1. Open its page. Details holds the name, ABN, ACN, phone, website, address, tags and notes; every field has an Edit control and saves straight away. The roles can be changed here too; taking a role away keeps the history.
2. The line under the name says who tenders and purchase orders go to and at what address, or warns that there is no email to send to yet.
3. Subcontractor shows trade and licences, the compliance documents they have supplied with expiry dates, your team's ratings (internal, never shown to them). Supplier holds their account number, terms and price list; prices are ex GST and live in your rate book as that supplier's book.
4. Work lists every project, tender, purchase order, claim and payment with them. Comms shows the emails, texts and documents filed against them. Public profile looks the business up publicly and reports what it could confirm.
5. Mark inactive takes a business out of the list and the pickers but keeps its history. Delete is refused when the business is used on a project, purchase order or claim.

Read a business's track record

Admins and team members see a Track record tab on the business's page. It is internal: the business never sees it.

1. Open the tab. The first line says, in a sentence, how they have performed in what they are to you: a subcontractor is read on turning up, tenders, quality, claims and your team's feedback; a supplier on deliveries and invoices against orders; a client on paying claims and deciding variations. Under it are the roles the business plays for you. Until Base has worked the record out, the line says so and asks you to press Refresh now.
2. Read the ratings. The ones that matter for their roles come first; any others sit under a line marked less relevant. Each shows how many facts it rests on, over what dates, and whether it is improving or getting worse. One with too few facts says "Not enough history" rather than guessing.
3. Check the counts. Six cards show tenders (invited, priced, priced on time, won), work with you (jobs and purchase orders, with See the work opening the Work tab for the list), on site (days, average hours a day, incidents, refused at the gate), communication (replies to your emails, typical reply time, unanswered, last contact), money (claims, disputed and, for a client, paid on time) and identity and public (the ABN, ACN and QBCC check results and their public website rating).
4. Read any flags. Each lists what it rests on, and every item links to the tender, defect, claim or sign-in behind it. A serious flag also shows beside the first line.
5. Press Refresh now to rescore from what Base has already gathered. Press Give feedback to rate them yourself; an open question about them links to Feedback requests.
6. Press Write a summary for a short internal read of the record by the assistant. Every line cites the facts it rests on; anything it could not back is left out. Not counted yet lists what Base still leaves out.

Add a supplier's prices

1. On the business's Supplier tab, add a single price by hand (description, their code, unit, price ex GST, category), or upload their price list.
2. A short uploaded list is previewed and imported here. A long one belongs in the rate book's Imports, where you approve it trade by trade before it prices anything. See Rate Book.

What happens on its own

• A business typed into a tender invitation is added to Contacts when you send; one already there with that email or name is used instead of a duplicate. A supplier named on a rate-book import is found in Contacts or created.
• A business's track record is worked out overnight from what Base has on record, and again within ten minutes of anything happening with them: a tender, a purchase order, a claim, a defect, a site sign-in or incident, a compliance document, an email, a variation. A project manager answering "would not use again" raises a serious flag at once. A subcontractor's reliability figure on the Subcontractor tab is learned from the weekly programme reviews and cannot be edited.

Things that surprise people

• Tenders and purchase orders go to the main contact, or to the business email only when the main contact has no email. If a send went to the wrong inbox, change the main contact on the business page.
• Deleting a business that is used anywhere is refused because it would take that history with it. Mark it inactive instead.
• Bank details are what a payment run pays into. When a business emails new bank details, call them on a number you already had before changing anything. It is the most common invoice fraud.
• A sign-up that looks like a business you already have should be combined, not approved, or you end up with two records and the history split between them.

Related

• CRM — the selling side: leads and the pipeline
• Rate Book — where a supplier's prices are imported and approved
• Tenders — where subcontractors are invited to price
• Feedback requests — answering "how did they go?" after a job