How Do I Group Contacts Together?

Aaron Aldrich Updated by Aaron Aldrich

How Do I Group Customers Together?

When you first start using any software platform, you have to start considering your data structure, including your customers and contacts. You need to decide on naming conventions etc. To learn more about how to group Customers together check out this article.

Grouping is set inside the customer while Department is set inside of a contact to help you group, organize, or compartmentalize your customers and contacts. This article attempts to give you an idea of how to use each effectively.

Contact Departments

shopVOX has a Department field within the customer contact (not the customer). Departments is designed to help you organize your contacts within a customer (an organization, or sub-organization). Customer groups are for grouping multiple customers together, and they show up on select reports. Departments is great for grouping and compartmentalizing contacts together within a "Customer"

How do I add a contact to a specific department?

Find the contact you wish to add to a department, then edit the contact. In the department field enter the department you want to group this contact with. Here is an  example of how you might use departments inside 1 or more contacts:

Example: Business

Let's say our customer is ABC Supply Co, and they have many departments that order products from us.  However, purchases are billed to and paid by their Purchasing Department only.  All the departments have the same payment terms, so you can create one customer (instead of having multiple customers), and enter the department that each contact belongs to one contact at a time to keep your contacts organized. You might assign one contact to "Purchasing", another to "Sales", and another to a "Production" department. Now when you click on the customer (not the contact) you will see a tab that displays all contacts for the customer, and their respective departments. 

This will help remind you that you should invoice Dan V instead of Zack or Mehmet, it might also help you in your marketing efforts to know that Zack needs outdoor signage, and Mehmet needs indoor signs.

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