Clients & contacts

Add a client

Create a client record — individual or entity — and understand which fields matter later.

3 min readUpdated July 24, 2026

A client record is the anchor for everything else in LedgerOS. Jobs, documents, invoices, messages, and portal access all hang off it. You can create one in under a minute and fill in the rest later.

Where to find it

ClientsNew client

You can also press the quick-add button from anywhere in the app and choose New client.

Create the record

Click New client.
Pick an Entity type.
Fill in the name fields — these change depending on the type you picked.
Add a Taxpayer email and Taxpayer phone if you have them.
Click Create client.

Everything except the name and entity type can be added later.

Entity types

Twelve types are available: Individual, Sole proprietor, Partnership, LLC, LLP, S-Corp, C-Corp, Professional LLC (PLLC), Professional Corporation (PC), Trust / Estate, Nonprofit, and Other.

The choice matters for two reasons. It drives which name fields you see, and it's one of the things you can filter the client list by later. If you're unsure, Other is safe — you can change it afterwards in the client's Settings tab.

Individual

Choosing Individual gives you First name and Last name as separate fields. LedgerOS composes them into the display name your firm sees everywhere else, using the format your firm has set — either First Last or Last, First.

That means you don't type the name the way you want it displayed. Type the parts, and the format setting handles presentation consistently across every client.

Everything else

Every other entity type gives you a single Display name field. Enter the legal or trading name as you want it to appear — for example, Acme Holdings LLC.

There's also an optional EIN field for non-individual types.

The taxpayer email and phone on this form belong to the client record itself. They're not the same as a contact person, and adding an email here does not invite anyone to the portal.

What happens next

The client appears immediately in the client list and is searchable from anywhere in the app. Nothing else is created automatically — no job, no portal user, no folder structure. Those are separate deliberate steps.

The usual next moves are adding the people you actually deal with, and starting the first job.

Notes and limits

Nothing prevents two clients with the same name. If you serve several entities in one family, the group feature is a better answer than creative naming.
Changing entity type later is allowed and doesn't affect existing work — but switching to or from Individual changes which name fields apply.
The individual name format is a firm-wide setting, not per client. Changing it affects how new individual names are composed.

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