Contacts are the individual people your organisation works with: supporters, volunteers, trustees and people you support. This guide covers adding a contact, editing their record and the actions in the record’s Caution zone.

Before you start

  • Viewing contacts needs relationships:read:contacts; adding, editing, archiving and deleting need relationships:write:contacts.
  • Changing who can see a contact also needs relationships:manage_contact_access.

Find a contact

Open Relationships → Contacts. Find a contact lists recent contacts; type at least two characters of a name or email to search. Archived and deceased contacts are hidden unless you turn on Show inactive, and are then marked Archived or Deceased. Contacts you don’t have access to aren’t listed.

Add a contact

  1. On Find a contact, choose New contact.
  2. Enter First name and Last name (both required), and a title if you use one.
  3. Choose at least one subtype. The form won’t save without one.
  4. Add an Email address and Phone if you have them. Tick Shared email address when the address belongs to more than one person, such as a household.
  5. Under Classification, tick Beneficiary, Donor or Child as appropriate. Marking a contact as a child locks their consent to No.
  6. Under Communications consent, record anything they’ve told you.
  7. Under Access control, review who will see the record. It’s visible to you and your teams by default; add more Teams or Individuals if needed.
  8. To record more, choose Add a field and pick a block: Postal address, Alternate email, Other names, Link an organisation, Link a resource, Date of birth, Internal note or Gender.
  9. Choose Create contact.

You’ll see a message that the contact has been submitted. It can take a moment to appear in the list and in search.

Edit a contact

  1. Open the contact’s profile and choose Edit.
  2. Use the section list to move between Identity, Consent, Contact details, Relationships, Custom fields, Notes, Access control and Caution zone.
  3. Make your changes. The bar at the foot of the page counts unsaved changes; Discard changes undoes them.
  4. Choose Save changes.

You’ll see “Contact update accepted. Changes will appear shortly.” Changes in the Relationships section (connections) are saved as soon as you make them, without Save changes.

The edit page is where you set National ID, Gender, Child and the contact’s subtypes. If some of the contact’s details are restricted from you, you can’t change them here; see Restrict who can see a record.

Archive, mark as deceased or delete

These actions are in the Caution zone at the foot of Edit contact. Each asks you to confirm first.

Action What happens
Archive Hides the contact from the default list and search. Their record and history are kept. Restore brings them back
Mark as deceased Records that the contact has died, with an optional Date of death (optional). They’re hidden from the default list and excluded from communications. Remove deceased status reverses it
Delete permanently Permanently removes the contact and their record

Deleting a contact can’t be undone. Archive the record instead if you might need its history, for example for Gift Aid claims or audit. You can’t delete a contact if any part of their record is restricted from you.

If something goes wrong

  • “First name and last name are required.” Fill in both names.
  • “At least one subtype is required.” Choose a subtype before creating the contact.
  • National ID must use letters, digits, spaces, dots, slashes or hyphens only, starting with a letter or digit, and be 32 characters or fewer.