The difference between Companies and Contacts in the CRM

The CRM section groups two lists: Companies (sometimes called "Clients") and Contacts — the specific people within those companies. Both have a List view and a Kanban view (a status board with draggable cards).

A Company's detail page

When you open a company, Received messages is shown first, and messages you already completed in the Inbox appear with a green gradient. Content, with a red icon, is the last tab in the row.

Related projects and services — the ones linked to this company; you can link one that already exists (the search only offers projects not yet linked to the company) or create a new one already linked.
Contacts — link an existing one or create a new one.
Documents — the linked documents (through their projects), each with a gradient in the colour of its type.
Attachments — this company's own files, plus (read-only) the attachments inherited from its projects and contacts.
Billing — if your account has it configured, the link with your billing system.
Received messages and Sent messages — gather the email of all this company's contacts (according to your Team permissions).
Content — free-form notes, where you can mention other records by typing @ (the last tab, in red).

You can also edit the country, the website, the client code, and send a message after choosing which of its contacts to send it to.

Company details: if your account has it set up, the profile includes a Company details section with the legal name (the company name is its trade name), the address, the contact email (each person's emails go in Contacts), the main and secondary activity, and the estimated annual revenue with its currency (independent from the currency of the business opportunity). Only the Owner and people with Technical administration permissions can edit them; the annual revenue and its currency are visible only to them. The legal name and the email also work for searching companies, just like the code. The properties are created from Databases (Install and complete → "Company details" group).

Base companies: if your account has it set up, you can mark as Base company the internal companies, the ones that identify your account (for example, yours). In the Companies lists (Kanban, List and Board) they show with a reddish background. Each company can also say which base company it belongs to (Matching base company, chosen among the companies marked as base): those that already have one assigned show in green and display the name of their base company. Both options are edited on the company record (only the Owner and people with Technical administration permissions) and set up under Settings › Companies.

Board view (distributing «Funnel» companies): next to Kanban and List, the Owner and anyone with Technical administration permissions get a Board view, as long as the account uses Team mode and has the «Person in charge» relation mapped. It shows only the companies whose status is marked «Funnel» (Kanban gear) and spreads them across columns: one per person whose profile is allowed to be in charge (Settings › Companies: person in charge and currency), plus No person in charge and, if needed, Other people in charge (companies whose person in charge no longer has an allowed profile; you cannot drop onto it). Drag a company onto a person's column to assign it, or onto «No person in charge» to clear it; clicking a card opens the company. You can search by name and filter by «Funnel» status. If no status is marked «Funnel», the view reminds you. The server checks permission and profile again on every change and, if anything fails, the card goes back to where it was.

Who can do what on a company: everyone sees the Kanban, the List and the record, reads every tab and adds attachments. Only the Owner and whoever has Technical administration permissions create and delete companies, edit their data and status (by dragging in the Kanban or from the record), link contacts and projects, create a new project from the company and rename or delete attachments. The Content can also be edited by Supervisors, who can additionally create new contacts from the company and, if they are responsible for a project of that company, create documents and link their own documents.

Person in charge: if your account uses Team mode and has it configured, each company can have a team member in charge. It is chosen in the record header (next to status and country) and shown on the Kanban and the List; on the card it appears in green when it is you. Only the Owner and anyone with Technical administration permissions can change it. They also choose, under Settings › Company person in charge, which profiles (Owner, Supervisor, Member, with the names your account uses) can be in charge; by default, Owner and Supervisor.

Economic opportunity and currency: if your account has it configured, the record shows the company's economic opportunity. It is the sum of the net value of the documents linked to it and is calculated automatically whenever you change a document's value, link it to another company, archive it or delete it; it is not edited by hand. The company has a currency (you pick it on the record): only documents in that currency, and those with none, are added up. If the company has no currency yet, the currency of the first document with a value is used, as long as it is one of the available options. Archived and private documents do not count. The amount is seen by the Owner, anyone with Technical administration permissions and the person in charge assigned to that company (whatever their profile). Only that person in charge can type it by hand on the record (not even managers); a hand-typed value is overwritten the next time a document with a value of the company, or its currency, changes. The currency can be changed by managers and the person in charge.

Default currency and conversion: under Settings › Companies: person in charge and currency, the Owner (or anyone with Technical administration permissions) can choose a default currency: new companies get it and, when you save it, so do existing companies that had none. Each company's opportunity is calculated in the company's currency; documents in other currencies are converted with the week's exchange rates (updated once a week from Exchange Rate API). If a currency has no exchange rate, or its name is not recognised (for example a bare "$", which can belong to several countries: use the code, such as "USD"), those documents are not added up and the record warns you. When there is a conversion, the record shows which currencies and the date of the rates used. On Kanban cards and in the List the opportunity amount is only shown for companies whose status is "Funnel" (or for all of them, if no status is marked "Funnel").

Creating a company: with the «+ New company» button you choose the name and the status and, optionally, its responsible person, its associated base company, its role (Client and/or Supplier) and one or several projects or services (each selector has a search box). Only the details your account has set up are offered, and everything can be completed or changed later from the record. If an optional detail cannot be saved, the company is still created and you are told which one is missing.

With Kairos or the MCP connector: you can ask it to create a company with its role and to link or unlink one or several projects of a company; it only adds or removes the ones you name (it never replaces the ones the company already has) and asks for your confirmation before writing. It can also change the role of an existing company.

A company's «Hours» tab

Only for the Owner, technical-administration permissions and Supervisors, and only if the account has time tracking. It shows the hours worked month by month over the last 12 months (the current month and the previous 11) on the tasks of the company's projects: the 12-month total, the monthly average and the month with most hours, a stacked bar chart by task type and a table. Click «12-month total» or any month to expand the breakdown by type. Types are those of the task type catalog if configured (and, if a task has none, its standard Type); without a catalog, the standard Type. A Supervisor only sees the time logged by themselves and their team; private projects you cannot see do not count, and a project shared with other companies counts in full for each. The reload button asks Notion again (data is kept for 10 minutes).

A Contact's detail page

Similar structure, with the Content, Emails received, Emails sent, Related projects and services, Documents and Attachments tabs (some only appear if your account has them set up), and quick actions to call, open WhatsApp or send an email.

Several companies: a contact can belong to several companies; in the record you add or remove companies just like in a project. If an email has an attachment and the contact has several companies, the attachment menu offers "Move attachment to the company: …" for each one. The contact's Status stays in sync with its company's only when it has a single company. In Notion, the relation property must not be limited to 1 page. A contact's company is carried to a linked project only if that project has no company (when linking the contact, only if it has a single company); the company of a project that already has one is never changed.

Who can do what on a contact: everyone can view the record, read the documents and add attachments. Only the Owner and whoever has Technical administration permissions edit the data (name, email, phones, status, source, company), delete the contact, link or create documents and rename or delete existing attachments. The Content and the link to projects and services can also be edited by Supervisors; a Member cannot link projects or services.

Creating a contact: in «New contact» you can optionally choose one or several companies and one or several projects or services to link it to from the start (search selectors; companies can be chosen by the Owner, people with Technical administration permissions and Supervisors, and projects by whoever can link them: their own as the responsible person, or all of them if they are the Owner or have Technical permissions). In its record, when you link a project, the ones already linked to the contact appear marked «Already linked».

The "Archive" status and "Funnel" statuses on the Kanban board

If your account has it configured, the Companies Kanban has a special corner zone to move a company to Archive — you drag it there, it's never a regular column on the board.

The Owner or someone with Technical administration permissions can set it up from the CRM › Companies section itself, with the gear button next to Reload. In the Statuses tab, tick which statuses show as columns, drag them to reorder, and pick which one means "Archive". The Funnel checkbox marks the statuses (more than one is allowed) that belong to the sales funnel, those with a commercial person in charge: their companies are distributed in the Board view, form the levels of the Funnel view, and only their cards show the economic opportunity amount (if no status is marked, the amount is shown on all of them). On each «Funnel» status you can also tick 👍 Achieved (positive end) or 👎 Not achieved (negative end); a status cannot be both. In the Pair with Contacts tab you decide which contact status matches each company status.

Funnel view

When at least one status is marked Funnel, the Funnel view appears next to Board for the Owner and anyone with Technical administration permissions (the people who see the opportunities of all companies). It draws a funnel: the first level shows all companies (how many there are and the sum of their economic opportunities) and below it, one level for each «Funnel» status, in Kanban order, with the percentage (in large type) and the number of companies that have reached that level —those in that status and in all the following ones— and the sum of the opportunities of that status (the amount is not cumulative). The «Achieved» and «Not achieved» statuses are not part of that chain: they appear below, in parallel (👍 on the left, 👎 on the right), each with its own companies, percentage of the total and opportunity, not added to the levels or to each other. They also carry a conversion tag: the percentage of the companies that have reached an end (any of the «Achieved» or «Not achieved» statuses) that are in that status; when you click them, the table shows only the companies in that status. The funnel sits on the left; clicking a level (except «All companies») shows a small table to its right with the companies that are in that status, each with its opportunity, and clicking a row opens its detail page (the level's number is cumulative, but the table lists only the companies in the status itself). Click the same level again to hide the table.

If your account uses Team mode and the «Responsible for the company» relation is mapped, a selector appears at the very top with the people who can be responsible (the profiles you allowed in Settings › Companies). When you choose one, the funnel is calculated only with the companies they are responsible for and the title becomes «Funnel of {name}»; with «All owners» you see all of them. The funnel (totals and tables) does not include the companies marked as Base company, which are internal. Amounts are expressed in your account's default currency (or, if there is none, the most used one); opportunities in another currency are converted with exchange rates, and a note below warns if a rate is missing.

Filters and the «filtered by» title

On the Companies Kanban and List, next to the search box, you can filter by project and by responsible person (the latter if your account uses Team mode and has that relation mapped). While a filter is applied, the section title shows «filtered by …» with your choice. Each filter selector has an ✕ to clear it and go back to «All». The same applies to Projects, Agenda › Meetings, Documents and the List view of Publications.

Contact statuses

In CRM › Contacts, the Owner or someone with Technical administration permissions sets up the statuses with the gear button next to Reload. Tick which statuses show as Kanban columns and drag them to reorder. Use the selector next to each status to say what it means for the Inbox:

Spam: email from those contacts is ignored. Only one status can be Spam.
No AI: email reaches the inbox but doesn't go through the AI, and is completed automatically. Only one status can be No AI.
Client, Internal and Supplier: classify email from those contacts, and those contacts can't be marked as spam.

Automatic linking

If you link a contact to a project that already has a company assigned, the contact is automatically linked to that same company — no need to do it twice. And if your account has status pairing enabled, changing a contact's status can propagate the change to its company (or the other way around).