Contacts on Elements

Jan 22, 2024

Contacts are individual people with whom your business interacts. Information that is tracked on the Contact object is going to be specific to the individual, with such details as contact information, communication preferences, compliance and service details, personal information, address information, and employment details. At this time, all information on a Contact is loaded, or manually entered, by your firm. This information does not come from Data Broker or your Portfolio Management Systems.

Creating New Contacts

There are three main ways to create new Contacts:

Quick Link to create a Contact: Menu > carrot next to Contacts > +New Contact
Create a Contact: Menu > Contacts > New
Create a Direct Contact to a Relationship: Menu > Relationships > choose a Relationship > Related Contacts > New Contact

What's in a Contact?

Contact Information

Salutation
First Name
Middle Name
Last Name *
Suffix
Nickname
Contact Type
Contact Subtype
Relationship Name
Contact Owner
Contact Notes

Communication

Do Not Call (Check Box)
Home Phone
Mobile Phone
Business Phone
Fax
Email Opt Out (Check Box)
Primary Email
Alternate Email
Assistant
Asst. Phone

Compliance and Service

Last Contacted On
Last Contacted By
Last Contact Activity

Personal Information

Gender
Marital Status
Spouse/Partner
Anniversary
Citizenship
SSN/SIN
Birthdate
Date of Death

Address Information

Inherit Relationship Billing Address (Check Box)
Billing Address
- Search Address
- Billing Country
- Billing Street
- Billing City
- Billing State/Province
- Billing Zip/Postal Code
Inherit Relationship Mailing Address (Check Box)
Mailing Address
- Search Address
- Mailing Country
- Mailing Street
- Mailing City
- Mailing State/Province
- Mailing Zip/Postal Code

Employment Details

Current Employer
Occupation
Title
Annual Income

Contacts linked to Relationships

Direct Contact: Contacts that are directly related to this Relationship, generally a family member.
Indirect Contacts: Related Contacts that aren't direct and are generally centers of influence (Accountant, Attorney, Consultant, POA). These indirect contacts must be created prior to assigning them to a Relationships and must already be assigned to a different Relationship. Contacts can't be "orphaned", or a Private Contact and must be the Direct Contact of at least one Relationship.
To link an indirect contact to a Relationship, it must already exist & it must already be a direct contact to an existing Relationship
You can create a new Contact through Relationships. This will prompt you with a new window, the New Contact: Client setup requests. This will include the needed data points to create a new client, indicate the required fields, and already include the Relationship Name that is pre-filled when you use this workflow. Any Contact created this way will become a Direct Contact to the Relationship.
So that you can have the needed COIs on a Relationship as a Contact, most firms will create a business Relationship so that the Contact is a direct contact to the business Relationship, and can be added as an indirect contact to a family type relationship. Example:

Fun Facts about Contacts

Contact Name is a field that is generated from a combination of the Contact First Name and Last Name. The contact name field shows when relating the contact to other objects, such as the 'regarding to' field on Activities and the Primary Contact on the Financial Account.
Age Calculation: By entering a date in the Birthdate field in Personal Information, Elements can calculate, on daily basis, the actual age of the Contact. This helps track retirement ages and, based on retirement requirements, can help to calculate RMD distributions. Contacts provides calculations of current age, age at the end of the year, next birthday date, and days until next birthday. These data points can all be extracted and exported through Lists and Reports.

Video

Learn more about viewing and creating Contacts in this short video.

Learn more about navigating Contacts here.