> User Guide > Sales & Relationships > Contacts

Contacts

A Contact is an individual person, typically associated with an Account (organisation) or an Opportunity. For example, if Techco is the Account, then John Smith, Sales Manager at Techco, is the Contact. The Contacts module stores all information relating to these individuals and provides a single place to view every interaction — calls, meetings, emails, cases, and campaigns — associated with that person.

Contacts are usually created directly, converted from a Lead once qualified, or created automatically during Lead conversion.

Key Fields

Field	Description
First Name / Last Name	The contact’s name. Last Name is required.
Account Name	Links the Contact to their organisation. Populating this field creates a relationship with the Account record and causes the Contact to appear in the Account’s Contacts sub-panel.
Job Title / Department	The Contact’s role and team within their organisation.
Office Phone / Mobile	Primary contact numbers for the individual.
Email Address	Used for email communications, campaign sending, and system notifications.
Reports To	Links to another Contact record, allowing you to model a reporting hierarchy within an organisation.
Lead Source	Records how the Contact was acquired: Cold Call, Existing Customer, Self Generated, Employee, Partner, Public Relations, Direct Mail, Conference, Trade Show, Web Site, Word of Mouth, Email, Campaign, or Other. Useful for campaign attribution and reporting.
Do Not Call	Marks this Contact as someone who should not be contacted by phone. SuiteCRM respects this flag in calling workflows.
Email Opt Out	Marks this Contact as having opted out of email communications. SuiteCRM will not send campaign emails to a Contact with this flag set.
Campaign	Records which campaign this Contact is associated with, if any.
Opportunity Role	When a Contact is linked to an Opportunity, this field records their role in the deal, for example Decision Maker, Evaluator, or Influencer. Set from the Opportunity’s Contacts sub-panel.
Assigned To	The SuiteCRM user responsible for this Contact.

Field

Description

First Name / Last Name

The contact’s name. Last Name is required.

Account Name

Links the Contact to their organisation. Populating this field creates a relationship with the Account record and causes the Contact to appear in the Account’s Contacts sub-panel.

Job Title / Department

The Contact’s role and team within their organisation.

Office Phone / Mobile

Primary contact numbers for the individual.

Email Address

Used for email communications, campaign sending, and system notifications.

Reports To

Links to another Contact record, allowing you to model a reporting hierarchy within an organisation.

Lead Source

Records how the Contact was acquired: Cold Call, Existing Customer, Self Generated, Employee, Partner, Public Relations, Direct Mail, Conference, Trade Show, Web Site, Word of Mouth, Email, Campaign, or Other. Useful for campaign attribution and reporting.

Do Not Call

Marks this Contact as someone who should not be contacted by phone. SuiteCRM respects this flag in calling workflows.

Email Opt Out

Marks this Contact as having opted out of email communications. SuiteCRM will not send campaign emails to a Contact with this flag set.

Campaign

Records which campaign this Contact is associated with, if any.

Opportunity Role

When a Contact is linked to an Opportunity, this field records their role in the deal, for example Decision Maker, Evaluator, or Influencer. Set from the Opportunity’s Contacts sub-panel.

Assigned To

The SuiteCRM user responsible for this Contact.

Relationships

From a Contact record you can view and manage all associated records via sub-panels:

Sub-panel	Contains
Activities	Calls, Meetings, Tasks, and Emails logged against the Contact. Completed items move to the History sub-panel.
History	Completed activities and archived emails associated with the Contact.
Opportunities	Deals the Contact is involved in.
Cases	Support tickets associated with the Contact.
Bugs	Bugs linked to the Contact.
Documents	Files attached to the Contact.
Leads	Leads associated with the Contact.
Direct Reports	Other Contacts who report to this Contact, based on their Reports To field.
Campaigns	Campaigns the Contact has been included in, showing how they have responded.
Events	Events the Contact has been invited to or has attended.
Quotes	Quotes associated with the Contact.
Invoices	Invoices associated with the Contact.
Contracts	Contracts associated with the Contact.

Sub-panel

Contains

Activities

Calls, Meetings, Tasks, and Emails logged against the Contact. Completed items move to the History sub-panel.

History

Completed activities and archived emails associated with the Contact.

Opportunities

Deals the Contact is involved in.

Cases

Support tickets associated with the Contact.

Bugs

Bugs linked to the Contact.

Documents

Files attached to the Contact.

Leads

Leads associated with the Contact.

Direct Reports

Other Contacts who report to this Contact, based on their Reports To field.

Campaigns

Campaigns the Contact has been included in, showing how they have responded.

Events

Events the Contact has been invited to or has attended.

Quotes

Quotes associated with the Contact.

Invoices

Invoices associated with the Contact.

Contracts

Contracts associated with the Contact.

SuiteCRM includes a built-in Maps feature. A map panel showing the Contact’s address can be displayed on Contact records. See Maps for details.

Working with Contacts

Importing a vCard: create a new Contact by importing a vCard (.vcf) file. Select Import vCard from the Contacts module menu and upload the file. SuiteCRM will pre-populate the Contact fields from the vCard data.
Exporting a vCard: a vCard button can be made available on the Contact Detail View to download the Contact’s details as a .vcf file. This requires an administrator to replace the separate First Name and Last Name fields with the combined Name field using Studio.
Creating a portal user: if your SuiteCRM instance has the customer portal enabled, a Contact can be given portal access directly from their Detail View using the Create Portal User button. See your administrator for portal configuration details.
Creating contacts from leads: when a Lead is qualified and converted, SuiteCRM can create a related Contact automatically. See Leads for how conversion works.

Where to Go Next

For information on working with sub-panels and relationships, see Relationships & Subpanels.

For standard record operations including searching, editing, duplicating, merging, and importing, see Record Management.