A contact is a person. Companies are organisations; contacts are the individuals inside them you actually deal with. Holding them separately means one company can have a dozen contacts without the company record being duplicated, and a contact can be deactivated when someone leaves without touching the account.
Where contacts live
Contacts are managed under Catalog → Contacts, and are created against a parent:
- a company, or
- a customer profile — where a company trades under several arrangements and each has its own people. See Customer profiles.
Create a contact from the company or profile you want it attached to, so the link is made for you.
The record
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| First name, Last name | The person. |
| Their address. | |
| Phone number | Direct line or mobile. |
| Country | Where they are based. |
| Load type | FCL, LCL or AIR. |
| Status | Active or Inactive. |
Load type
Load type is the field people miss. It marks which traffic this person handles: full container, groupage, or air freight. In a forwarding business these are often different desks with different people, and sending an air enquiry to the FCL contact wastes a day.
Set it honestly. Where someone genuinely handles everything, pick the type they deal with most and record the rest in the company's notes.
Active and inactive
Set a contact Inactive when they leave or move on rather than deleting them. Historic records that referenced them stay coherent, and the person stops appearing as a live option.
Practical advice
- One contact per person, not per role. A shared mailbox like
ops@customer.comlooks convenient and then nobody knows who is answering. Create the mailbox as a contact if you must, but name the individuals too. - Keep the leaver's record. Deactivating rather than deleting keeps old correspondence explicable.
- Attach the contact to the right parent. A contact created against the wrong customer profile will not appear where the operations team expects it.
Last updated 13 September 2026