Client Data
Clients are the entities you provide services for, such as businesses or individuals. This is the record that represents the work your firm performs, like payroll, bookkeeping, or tax filings.
Contact Data
Contacts are the individuals associated with your clients. These are the people who may have access to the client portal, depending on your firm’s settings.
A few key things to keep in mind:
- Contacts are always individuals and should only be entered once in the system
- A single contact can be linked to multiple clients
- Contact data is separate from the client records they are associated with
Example
- Client: Jones & Smith Construction, LLC
- Contact: John Smith
- Contact: Bob Jones
- Client: John & Sally Smith
- Contact: John Smith
- Contact: Sally Smith
- Client: Sally’s Beauty Salon
- Contact: Sally Smith
In this example:
- John Smith can access the client portals for Jones & Smith Construction, LLC and John & Sally Smith, but not Sally’s Beauty Salon
- Sally Smith can access the client portals for John & Sally Smith and Sally’s Beauty Salon, but not Jones & Smith Construction, LLC