To see contact records for a business, the fastest way is to type part of the business name or reference in the search box and click on the relevant contact that appears below the seach box. To see a list of all businesses click View>Business from the menu.
Contact records for businesses are show in a familiar business-card format. Around the outside of the business card are a number of icons. These icons provide access to important functions to do with the business; for example sending them an email, making a note of a phone call and so on.
– Edit the card for this business.
– Show the history for this business (emails, files etc).
– Send an email to this business.
– Write a letter to this business.
– Send a text message to this business.
– Show a map of the address on this card.
– Create a new Jobbag or Project for this business.
– Schedule a meeting for this business.
– Upload some files to this business record.
– Create a note for this business that is stored against their history.
– Open the remote folder associated with this business.
– Schedule a callback for this business.
When editing, or creating a new contact record for a business, a substantial number of fields are available. The number and type of these fields will vary from system to system depending on your configuration. But most contact records for businesses will be as show below.
The contact record is split into a number of tabbed sections:
The Name and Address tab.
This tab contains the primary contact details for a business.
The Address fields are used elsewhere in HQ to create labels, address letters and provide mapping information so their accuracy is important.
The Contact First and Last name fields provide the space to record the primary contact at the business.
VOIP is an abbreviation for Voice Over IP and is the place to record addresses for alternative communication channels such as Skype, MSN voice, Google voice and so on.
Like all textual information is HQ, address field are text-indexed making searches for any word in the address extremely fast.
The Categories tab
Categories are used extensively in HQ and are an extremely powerful way of subdividing contacts into groups.
Any business can be associated to none, one or many categories. You can find out more about categories in HQ here.
To add a new category to the categories list, type the new category name and click “Add Category”.
Categories can only be removed by the Administrator.
To associate a business with one or many categories, simply click the checkboxes alongside the relevant category names.
Similarly to remove a category from a Person, simply uncheck the relevant category and click “Save”.
The Associated People tab
Each business in HQ can be associated with any number of people. Typically these will be employees but may also be freelancers or consultants. The purpose of associating people with a business is so that your dealings with a business can be looked-at in its entirety – with all emails, notes, sms’s, faxes and so on being pooled together in one place.
To associate a person with a business, simply type-in part of the name of the person into the Find box. HQ will look for all possible matches and put them in the “Possible Links” box. If any of these is appropriate then click the right arrow alongside the person to move him or her into the “Selected Links” box.
This operation can be repeated as many times as you wish to associate any number of people with this business.
To remove an association, click the X icon alongside the relevant person.
The associations between this business and the selected people will be saved when you click the “Save” button.
The Notes and Files tab
Notes: This is simply a convenient location to store extra notes about this business – remembering that these notes will be text-indexed, making them very easy and fast to search for.
Location: This can either be a convenient place to remember where files are stored on your PC or server or, after installing an optional extra program called “HQI extensions” is a way of popping-up a Windows File Manager window already opened at the location where these files are stored.
The Commercial tab
Here is the place to record the commercial profile of a business; what industry they are in, where they heard about you and what type of business they are. These are useful pieces of information for analysing your customer base.
In addition, the Score tab provides a way for you to record you team’s views about working with this business.
Accountancy Extensions for Business
If the Accountancy module is enabled and the business status is set to customer a number of extra tabs will be displayed.
The Services tab.
The services that you provide for this business.
The services displayed are dependant on what modules you have installed on your system.
The following services must be checked in order to run their respective automated jobs:
- Accounts & Business Tax
- Bookkeeping
- Payroll Processing – this also includes PAYE
- Annual Returns
The bookkeeping and payroll intervals are set here which are used when automatically creating Bookkeeping and Payroll jobs.
If you want to keep track of how much you are charging for services enter them here for your reference.
The Standing Order tab
The standing order details for this business.
The Accounting tab
This contains the accounting details for the client.
The Year end month and day are required when automatically creating Accounts & Business Tax jobs.
The Tax & VAT tab
This contains the details relating to Tax and VAT.
The PAYE period is required when automatically creating PAYE jobs.
The Returns End is required when automatically creating Bookkeeping jobs
The Sundry tab
Miscellaneous data.
The Company tab
If the business type is set to Limited Company this tab will be shown.
The Annual Return date is required when automatically creating Confirmation Statement jobs.
