Contact Information: Where does it belong in Dynamics NAV and Business Central?

One of the first things I notice when reviewing business processes for Accounting teams in almost every site I visit is Sales and Purchasing teams hijacking the contact information in the Address & Contact Fast Tab of the Customer and Vendor cards.

It seems reasonable for a Salesperson to want to use the Customer Card for their main source of information. NAV has great built-in functionality for your Sales team to manage all their information in one place, including the ability to prepare quotes for prospective Customers, giving control of the Customer Card back to the Accounting team. Contacts (Relationship Manager) gives your teams the flexibility to create and maintain as many contact points within a company as desired.

Let’s start by exploring what is in a Contact. On the Contact list view, we can see the main Contact (Company) and all related Person contacts associated with the Company.

Once in the Company card, it’s easy to see if this Contact is associated with a Customer, Vendor or Bank Account by selecting Company \ Business Relations on the Navigate tab in the ribbon.

When on the main Contact card, find all the Contacts associated by selecting Related Contacts in the Navigate tab on the Ribbon. I often suggest a small modification to this list view to add the Job Title field, giving users across departments to quickly filter out Contacts not related to their function.

There is so much flexibility and functionality in the Contact Card, which we’ll explore in the upcoming months, beginning with how to use Contact Card for quoting prospective Customers, keeping your Customer records for Customers who have placed an order.