Let's take a look at the Client & Contact Structure.

In this video:

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You may wonder, what is the difference between a Client, Contact, and Contact Group?

Canopy allows you to organize the people you complete work for into Clients, Contacts, and Client Groups. Let's start by defining each one:

Let's look at an example to see how this organization works.

Let’s look at the Costa Family. Your firm does the Costa family taxes and the occasional consultation.

The Costa family is an Individual client.

Let's take a quick look at their client record. We have them listed as Costa, Kim & Alessandro, and as you can see under this client we have three contacts listed.

Contacts

Kim Costa is the primary contact, her spouse is Alessandro Costa and their dependent is Sally Costa. Each contact has their own login and access to the client portal for this client where they can access files you have shared with them, view invoices, and complete any to-dos you have sent them.

The client record allows us to see and edit the contacts, view and organize their files, create and manage tasks, send invoices track payment details and so much more.

Kim Costa also has a Business, Kim’s Cafe. Your firm does the cafe’s taxes and bookkeeping.

This is the client record for her business. This client record is organized the same as an individual client and will house their files, billing information, and tasks specific to the business.

Again you can add contacts to business clients as well. Here we have Kim listed as the primary contact as well as the two managers of the cafe. These contacts can all have access to the client portal for this client. Kim since she is a contact on both will be able to switch between the client portal for her family and her cafe.

You can also create client groups to help organize any businesses or client accounts under the same organizational structure.

In the Kim Costa Group are both the Costa Family Record and Kim’s Cafe record. This is a great way to organize and keep track of the entities that are related or share the same contacts. You can invoice a client group at once, and easily share files with clients in the same group.

Let's look at a couple of features to help you navigate all your clients, contacts, and contact groups.

First, let's look at the client search.

When you click on Clients in the global navigation bar you can search all your clients and contacts here.

Begin typing, you can see a list of clients, and contacts. You can also see any email addresses that are related to your search.

Down at the bottom, you may notice that you can also search by phone number or external ID if you want!

Let's take a closer look. Under each client in this search, it will state if it is an individual or business client. Click on any client to go straight to their client record.

With contacts (and emails) you will notice that a contact will appear for every client record they are associated with. For example, Kim Costa is listed here three times because she is a contact on Kim’s Cafe, for her family record, as well as Sally Costa. When you click on a contact it will take you to the client record listed below their name

Let’s also look at the communication tab in the client record. This is a great place to send emails and keep track of the communication between you and your clients.

This tab is pretty straightforward, You can see an email communication here, as well as send new emails.

As you create a new email, you will notice that it defaults to the primary contact, or business email first. You can click in the To: box and you will see a list of the other contact's emails associated with this client. You can also type a new email and press enter to add an email not listed here.

As you navigate to different tabs you may want to review the Client and contact information. Simply click on the blue Client Info at the top and a window flies in with all the client information and contact information ready for you to review!