# Clients and contacts

> Add clients and their contacts, choose who receives documents, track status and history, and merge duplicates.

- URL: https://tillage.ai/docs/clients/clients-and-contacts
- Section: [Clients](https://tillage.ai/docs/clients)

Every quote, contract and invoice in Tillage belongs to a client. A client is a company; its contacts are the people you send documents to. Keeping both up to date means documents go to the right inbox and smart variables fill in correctly.

## Add a client

1. Go to **Clients** and click **Add Client**.
2. On the **Information** tab, enter the **Company Name**. It's the only required field.
3. Add anything else that helps: **Company Logo** (PNG, JPG or SVG up to 5MB), **Website**, **Industry**, **Company Size**, **Business Type** and **Address**.
4. On the **Contacts** tab, click **Add Contact** and enter at least a **First Name**. Add an **Email** if you'll send them documents.
5. Click **Create Client**.

You can also create a client while building a quote; see [Create a quote](https://tillage.ai/docs/quotes/create-a-quote#create-a-client-from-the-quote). To bring in clients from another tool, see [Import your data](https://tillage.ai/docs/getting-started/import-your-data).

Industry, company size and business type are also used by [AI quote drafts](https://tillage.ai/docs/quotes/ai-quote-drafts) to tailor suggestions.

## Contacts

Each contact has a **First Name**, **Last Name**, **Title/Role**, **Email**, **Office Phone** and **Mobile Phone**.

### The primary contact

One contact per client is the primary contact, marked **Primary**. The primary contact:

- Is ticked by default when you send a quote, contract or invoice
- Receives scheduled and recurring invoices when no other recipients are chosen
- Receives the signed copy of a contract
- Fills in contact variables such as `{clientContact}` and `{clientEmail}`

The first contact you add becomes primary. To change it, open another contact and tick **Set as primary contact**. If you delete the primary contact, the oldest remaining contact takes over.

There's no separate billing contact. To send invoices to someone in finance, tick them as a recipient when you send, or make them the primary contact.

### Remove a contact

Click the trash icon on the contact and choose **Remove contact**, then **Save Changes**. A client must keep at least one contact.

## Find and open clients

The **Clients** page lists clients by status on the **Active**, **Prospects**, **Closed lost** and **Archived** tabs. Search by company name, contact name or contact email.

Click a client to open their details. The table shows each client's primary contact, status, industry, last activity and value. Prospects with no activity for 60 days are flagged as stale.

### The client panel

| Tab | What's on it |
|---|---|
| **Information** | Company details and logo |
| **Contacts** | Everyone at the client, and who's primary |
| **History** | The client's most recent quotes and invoices, newest first |
| **Notes** | Private notes for your team. Clients never see them. |
| **Payment** | Autopay consent and saved payment methods |

Across the top, the panel shows **Open Invoices**, **YTD** (paid this year), **Lifetime** and **Avg Pay** (average days from issue to payment). **Lifetime** counts every invoice, including drafts and unpaid ones.

The **Client actions** menu has **Create Quote**, **Create Invoice**, **Copy Billing Link** and, when the client has a saved payment method, **Payment Methods**. See [Client portal](https://tillage.ai/docs/clients/client-portal) for the billing link.

Click **Save Changes** to save edits. If you close the panel with unsaved changes, Tillage asks before discarding them.

## Client status

| Status | Use it for |
|---|---|
| **Active** | Current clients. New clients start here. |
| **Prospect** | Potential clients you're quoting but haven't won |
| **Closed lost** | Prospects that never converted |
| **Archived** | Past clients you want out of the way |

Change status from the select at the top of the client panel, or with **Change Status** in the row menu. When a client approves a quote, Tillage sets them to **Active** automatically.

Archived and closed-lost clients don't appear when you choose a client for a new quote. Their history stays intact.

There's no way to delete a client. Archive clients you no longer work with, and use merging to remove duplicates.

## Payment settings

On the **Payment** tab:

- **Auto-Payment Consent** records whether the client allows automatic charges: **Never**, **Recurring Only** (the default) or **All Invoices**.
- **Max Auto-Payment (Optional)** caps the amount Tillage will charge automatically. Leave it empty for no limit.
- **Saved payment methods** lists cards and bank accounts the client has saved through Stripe. Click **Send link** to email the client a secure link to add or update a payment method. Links expire after 30 days.

Saved payment methods appear after a client's first online payment. See [Autopay and saved cards](https://tillage.ai/docs/invoices/autopay-and-saved-cards).

## Merge duplicate clients

If the same client was added twice, for example from an import, merge the records.

1. On the **Clients** page, open **More** and choose **Merge Duplicates**.
2. Tillage lists **Potential Duplicates Found**: clients whose names match once you ignore case, punctuation and endings like Inc or LLC. Use **Search Duplicates** to look for a specific name.
3. Select the groups to merge and click **Configure Merge**.
4. For each group, choose the primary client to keep. The oldest is selected for you.
5. Click **Preview Merge** to check the totals, then **Execute Merge** and **Yes, Merge Clients**.

All contacts, quotes, contracts, invoices, payment plans and Stripe customer links move to the client you keep, and the others are deleted.

> **Important:** Merging can't be undone. Details on the merged-away records, such as website, notes and address, aren't copied over, so add anything you need to the kept client first. Afterwards, check its primary contact and remove any duplicate contacts.

Clients with different names aren't detected as duplicates.

## Related

- [Client portal](https://tillage.ai/docs/clients/client-portal)
- [Import your data](https://tillage.ai/docs/getting-started/import-your-data)
- [Smart variables](https://tillage.ai/docs/reference/smart-variables)

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