Contacts and people
Add the people behind a client, assign roles, and rename those roles to match how your firm talks.
A client is an entity. Contacts are the humans attached to it — the taxpayer, the spouse, the bookkeeper, the attorney you email once a year. One person can hold a role on several clients.
Where to find it
The Contacts card sits on the Overview tab.
Add a contact
- On the Contacts card, click Add.
- Search under Find person by name or email. If they already exist elsewhere in your firm, pick them — don't create a duplicate.
- If they're genuinely new, click Create new person.
- Fill in First name and Last name, plus an optional Title.
- Choose a Role.
- Add Email addresses and Phone numbers. Both accept several entries.
- Save.
The Find person step matters. Contacts are shared across your firm, so a bookkeeper who serves four of your clients should be one person with four roles, not four separate records. When you attach an existing person the editor shows a Covers: line listing the other clients they're already on.
Roles
Eight roles ship by default: Taxpayer, Spouse, Dependent, Owner, Officer, Bookkeeper, Attorney, and Other.
Tax roles — Taxpayer, Spouse, and Dependent — are visually distinguished from the rest, because those are the ones that drive tax autofill. The remaining roles are relationship labels.
Taxpayer and Spouse also get dedicated slots at the top of the Contacts card rather than sitting in the general list, since for individual clients those are almost always the two you want first.
Renaming and hiding roles
Your firm's vocabulary is probably not the default vocabulary. Click Edit roles on the Contacts card to open the role editor, where you can:
- Rename any role — if your firm says Principal rather than Owner, say Principal.
- Hide roles you never use, so they stop cluttering the picker.
These settings are firm-wide, not per client.
Portal access
A contact with portal access shows a portal indicator on their card. Adding a contact does not grant portal access — that's a separate invitation.
Notes and limits
- The first email on a contact is treated as their primary address.
- Removing a contact from a client doesn't delete the person; they remain on their other clients.
- Hidden roles stay on any contact already using them — hiding affects the picker, not existing data.
- There's no limit on how many contacts a client can have.