The company directory

Each entry is a company, with what it is to you: Customer, General contractor, Subcontractor, Supplier, Vendor (services and rentals), Agency, Engineer or Other. An entry can be more than one. The list can be searched under Find by company, contact, email or phone number, and filtered by kind, tag and Favorites.

1. Start it.

   Select Add a company.

2. The basics.

   Enter the Name, choose What they are to you, and enter the Phone and Email.

3. The rest, if you have it.

   Select Address, terms, tags, rating and more for the Address as it should print, Website, Payment terms, Account number, Certifications such as DBE or WBE, Tags, a Rating and a Note.

4. Save it.

   Select Add company. Each name is used once; if the company is already there, you are told, including when it has been archived.

The rating is your company's own opinion and is never shown outside it.

Open the entry and, under Contacts, select Add a contact. Enter their Name, Title, Office phone, Mobile, Email and a Note. Check The one to call first for the main contact. Remove takes a contact off the company; records that name them keep the name.

1. Prepare the file.

   Save the sheet as a CSV file from Excel or Google Sheets, up to 2 MB. It needs a column for the company name, and may have type, phone, email, website, address, payment terms, note, and a contact's name, title, phone and email.

2. Preview it.

   Select Import a CSV, choose the file or paste it, and preview. Each line is marked as new, adding to an entry already there, or already there.

3. Import.

   Select Import (it says how many companies will change). Companies already in the directory keep what they have; only empty fields are filled, and people already there by name are not added twice.

Names typed in Bid and Job before they were in the directory are suggested at the top of the list. Selecting Add on one adds it and links every record written with exactly that name. Names that are nearly the same are kept apart; merge them afterwards if they are one company.

When you name a company elsewhere, you can pick it from the directory as you type: a job's contacts, a purchase order or subcontract, a certificate holder, a subcontractor on a daily report, and the customer on an invoice. A name typed without picking it is not linked.

Each entry's page shows Where it's used: its links to Bid's vendors and the projects bid to it, the jobs, contact lists and commitments it appears on in Job, and its certificates and insurance under Expiring documents.

1. Merge a duplicate.

   On one of the two entries, select Merge… and find the other under The same company, entered again as. Choose Which stays. The other's people and every record pointing at it move across, and it is removed. The one that stays keeps its own details and fills any empty ones from the other.

2. Archive one no longer used.

   Select Archive. Everything that pointed at it still does. Check Archived on the list to see archived entries, and Restore to bring one back. Entries are archived, not deleted.