Clients
Cloud CRM (Aug 2026): the web portal's Clients page now uses the same Classic layout as the desktop: the Clients list on top (Companies, Individuals, Contacts and the workspace's Users — same type icons and colours; filter pills, quick search, sortable columns), with Related (the selected entry's contacts) and Interactions (its notes, documents, tasks, meetings (formerly called Appointments in the source CRM), emails, sales and cases, with the type drop-down) below. Click a row to drive the lower panels; double-click opens the record; drag the bars between panels to resize (remembered). Very large databases show the first 500 entries with a notice — use Quick Search or the filter pills to narrow the list. The ribbon acts on the selected entry: Client Entry ▾ Company/Individual/Contact, Open, Delete, and Note/Email/To-do/Meeting/etc. open pre-filled for it.
Source-CRM equivalent: Address Book. TechieCRM renamed it Clients; companies, individuals and their contacts are the same records.
The Interactions panel is the entry's full history in date order: its own notes, documents, e-mails, meetings and to-dos, its sales, tickets, projects, invoices and the rest — and the notes, meetings and to-dos that belong to those sales and tickets, so nothing that happened for this client is hidden one level down. Rows that came from a sale or a ticket are labelled with it (“· Ticket #12”); see Chapter 4.
In this chapter - The Clients list and Related entries - The client dialog: tabs and toolbar - Key fields, phone/email labels, addresses - Favorite lists - Set Up User-Defined Fields - Activities for an entry - Right-click actions (create, add, message, plan)
The list
Companies and individuals in the top panel; the selected entry's contacts in Related. Users appear under your own organization row (open one for User Properties; View ▸ Filter ▸ Users shows only them with the *Users column setup — Appendix 3). Column setups, sorting and the search-by-field dialog work as in the source CRM. If Related can't load a client's contacts (a connection hiccup), it shows an empty list and a "Failed to load the related contacts" message rather than leaving the previously-selected client's contacts on screen.
The panel toolbars (September 2026). Clients, Related and Interactions each carry the standard button cluster on the right of their title strip — Refresh, ⚙ Settings, Close. The ⚙ used to do nothing at all: no window, no message, no error. It now tells you plainly that these three panels have no Settings page of their own yet, and names the three pages that do govern them (Theme Layout, Font Style, Database) — see Appendix A5.
Refresh and Close now work (September 2026). Every button on those three title strips does something; until this release ten of them were on screen, looked enabled and did nothing at all when clicked.
| Button | Panel | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Refresh | Clients | Re-reads the client list from the database using the Column Setup you are looking at and your saved sort. Same as ribbon View ▸ Refresh or F5, but for this one list. |
| Refresh | Related | Re-reads the contacts of the currently selected client. |
| Refresh | Interactions | Re-reads the notes, documents, tasks, appointments and emails for the current client or contact. |
| Close | any of the three | Hides that panel. Nothing is deleted and no record is closed. To bring it back, click Clients in the icon bar — the button's tooltip says so. |
If a Refresh cannot reach the database it leaves the rows already on screen alone and logs the problem rather than emptying the list.
The ↑ / ↓ arrow buttons are gone (September 2026). Related and Interactions each carried a pair of small up/down arrow buttons on their title strip. They have been removed: nobody used them, and your keyboard already does the job better. See Moving through a list with the keyboard, next.
Moving through a list with the keyboard
Click any row in Clients, Related or Interactions, then:
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| ↓ | Moves to the next record in that list. |
| ↑ | Moves to the previous record. |
| Enter | Opens the highlighted record — exactly the same as double-clicking it. |
| Shift + ↑ / ↓ | In Clients, extends the selection a row at a time (unchanged). |
| F5 | Refreshes everything on screen — the same as ribbon View ▸ Refresh. |
Moving with ↑ / ↓ behaves exactly as if you had clicked the row you land on, so the panels below follow along: stepping through Clients re-loads Related and Interactions for each client, and stepping through Related re-loads Interactions for each contact. The keys stop at the first and last row rather than wrapping round, and they skip rows a filter is hiding.
Typing an ordinary letter in the Clients list still jumps to the first entry starting with that letter (type-ahead), as before; Enter is no longer swallowed by it.
These three lists follow the theme (September 2026). Choosing Dark in Settings ▸ Theme Layout used to leave the Clients, Related and Interactions lists bright white inside an otherwise dark window. They now render as dark record cards on the dark background, and they change while you watch — you no longer have to restart TechieCRM for the switch to reach them. Row heights, spacing and text size are identical in both themes; only the colours move. Hovering and selecting a row keep the same orange and peach highlights in both themes, so a selected row looks the same wherever you work.
The client dialog
Open (double-click) or Add Client. Tabs: | Tab | Contents | |---|---| | Basic | Name/Address (company name above department/division), phones (up to four, each with a label you can change by double-clicking), emails/website, key fields (your saved key-field setup, remembered per user; single-select = dropdown, multi-select = the native table-field picker), Full/Read access. | | User-Defined Fields | Every UDF folder for the entry; edit in place. | | Activities | Tasks and meetings for the entry — add, modify (double-click), delete, print. | | Notes / Documents | Via Interactions. |
Right-click a client for Record meeting notes… — records the meeting, transcribes it and summarizes it onto the client's Interactions. See Chapter 26. Toolbar: OK / Apply / Cancel, Favorite List ▾, Actions ▾, Print (Detailed Report). Fields use placeholder text instead of labels; combos open when you click anywhere on them; city / province / country autofill as you type.
Address… (on the Basic tab, beside the address lines) opens the client's mailing addresses — its main address plus any alternate addresses. Add, change or delete an alternate address there, and choose which one is the currently selected mailing address; the address lines on the Basic tab then show your choice. Alternate addresses live here and nowhere else — they are not rows in the Clients list (see "Alternate addresses are no longer in the list" later in this chapter). The button asks you to save first on a brand-new record, because an address has to belong to something.
Saving a new company or individual is all-or-nothing. The new record and the sequence number it consumes from the source CRM's counter are written together; if the save fails, the message says so and nothing is written — simply try again. Two users saving at the same moment are queued, not collided.
Cloud CRM (Aug 2026): the web portal's client create/edit form now has a Category field (free text, in the Basic Information card near Website). It reads and writes the same Category the source CRM stores on the client — most visibly, it's how a client becomes a Partner: set Category to "Partner" and the client appears in the Partners workspace.
Cloud CRM (31 Aug 2026) — what the web form saves. Three things it collected but did not store now do: - a phone extension is kept with its number and comes back in its own Ext box when you re-open the client; - Email 2 and Email 3 are kept (as user-defined fields, exactly as the desktop keeps them), so they come back when you edit the client; - Position (the job title) is stored on its own and can no longer be wiped by another box.
Two boxes have been removed from the web form because there is nowhere in the cloud record to put them, so whatever you typed was thrown away when you pressed Save: the Title (Mr./Ms./Dr.) box and the Division box. Both remain on the desktop client dialog, which stores them; use the desktop for those two fields until the cloud record can carry them. Position and Department are unaffected.
Update (6 Sep 2026): the cloud record can now carry Division. The shared client record gained a Division field, so the box can come back to the web form. Until it does, keep entering Division on the desktop — nothing you have already typed there was lost, and it now travels to the web and mobile apps. Title (Mr./Ms./Dr.) is unchanged and still desktop-only.
What travels with a client to the web and mobile apps (6 Sep 2026)
Four things the desktop has always held on a client record, and no other app could see, now travel with it:
| On the client | What it is | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Website | The client's web address | Kept as a user-defined field ("Web Site"), the same way Email 2 and Email 3 are. 5,529 clients in a typical database already have one — it was stored all along, it simply never reached the web or mobile apps. Nothing to re-enter. |
| Division | The sub-unit under the company — e.g. "Transportation Division", "Dunnery Best Team" | Shown under company name and department on the Basic tab. |
| Lead status | Whether the source CRM flags the entry as a lead | Carried as the source CRM's own code. TechieCRM does not rename it, because the source publishes no names for it — the only meaning it defines is lead / not a lead. |
| Territory status | The source CRM's territory code | A different field from the Territory name, and also carried as the source code, for the same reason. |
And one that is deliberately for information only — the access level. Each client record carries the source CRM's read privilege level code. TechieCRM shows it as it was recorded and does nothing with it: it does not hide records, does not grey out buttons, and does not stop anybody opening anything. Treat it as a label describing how the record is set up in the source CRM, not as a lock.
Why it is only a label. Anything a device is given is something the device could be made to ignore. A copy of your CRM on a laptop or a phone is a file on that machine; a "you may not read this" marker sitting in the same file as the record it marks protects nothing. Where records genuinely must be kept from someone, TechieCRM does not send them to that person's device at all — the restriction is applied by the server before anything leaves it. If you need a record kept from a user, set that up in Users & Security; do not rely on the access level shown on the client.
Cloud CRM (31 Aug 2026) — the web now opens a client dialog too
The web portal no longer has a separate client page. Clients open in the same kind of tabbed dialog the desktop uses, over the list, so you keep your place.
To open one, double-click the entry in the Clients list — or double-click any row in the Related panel, which opens that row (the company on the top row, or the individual contact you clicked). Pressing Enter on the selected row does the same. Any link to a client from elsewhere in the portal (a note, a sale, a ticket, a to-do, a meeting, a document) now lands on the Clients workspace with that client's dialog already open.
The tabs
Tab What it does today Basic Information Everything you can edit: Name and Address, Other information (Category, Website, Assigned to, Private), Phone numbers (four, each with an extension and a label) and Email addresses. A contact shows the smaller contact set, plus the company it belongs to as a read-only box. User-Defined Fields The entry's user-defined values. Editable — see below. Activities The entry's to-dos and meetings, with the same six columns as the desktop. Read-only for now: click a row to open that to-do or meeting. The buttons - OK saves everything you changed and closes. Apply saves and stays open. Cancel closes; if you have unsaved changes it asks first, and offers Save, Discard or going back to the dialog — it never throws your typing away without asking. - If a save cannot be made, the dialog stays open and says why. A required box that is empty is marked in place; a record that someone else deleted while you had it open gets a plain message saying nothing was saved. The dialog never closes on an error and never reports a save that did not happen. - The toolbar carries Send Email…, Send Text… (the composers that used to be on the old client page, unchanged, including the recent-communications list) and Delete…, which asks for confirmation first.
Renaming a client and pressing OK updates the row in the list straight away — no page reload.
Add Client (the ✚ button above the list) and the Edit links open the same tabs as a full page rather than a modal, which is also what you get if you turn JavaScript off.
Cloud CRM (31 Aug 2026) — editing User-Defined Fields on the web
The User-Defined Fields tab of the client dialog is now editable, with the same rules the desktop applies.
What you see. One row per field,
Field | Value(s), in name order. The box matches the field's type: a plain box for text, a number box, a date box, and a dropdown for a table field or a Yes/No field. Fields are per workspace and per entry type, so two customers never see the same list — and a field belonging to Sales or Service is never offered on a client.Show blank fields (above the table) switches between every field and only the ones that have a value. It starts on, matching the desktop. With it off, the line beside it tells you how many fields are hidden, so an empty-looking tab is never a mystery.
To change a value, type or choose, then press OK or Apply — the same buttons that save the Basic tab. Clearing a box removes the value from the entry (it does not store a blank); that is how you delete a value from the web.
If something is wrong, nothing is saved. A number field given words, or a date given anything other than
YYYY-MM-DD, is refused with the message beside that field, and none of the other fields in the tab are written either. That is deliberate — a half-saved tab would leave you unable to tell which half landed.Why a field can say “Not synced — available on the desktop.” Some user-defined fields are marked so their values never leave the source database — password and credential fields are, by name. Those fields are still listed here, so you can see the field exists, but they have no box: the cloud never received the value, and typing one here would create a value the desktop would then disagree with. Open the entry on the desktop to see or change it.
A value written on the web is stamped with the time you wrote it, which is what stops the next desktop synchronization from replacing it with an older copy.
A dropdown may offer a value that is not in the field's list. If the desktop stored a value the cloud's copy of the allowed list does not contain, that value is added to the dropdown as an extra option and stays selected. Without that, opening the tab and pressing OK would quietly replace it.
Creating or deleting user-defined fields (as opposed to their values) is not done here — that is a change to the workspace's setup and lives in Setup ▸ User-Defined Fields, which the tab links to if you are a workspace administrator.
Cloud CRM (31 Aug 2026) — Key Fields on the web
The Key Fields block at the foot of the Basic tab now shows your key-field summary, in the same two columns — left block and right block — that you arranged on the desktop. Titled separators appear as a heading and a rule, exactly as they do there. Each box shows the field's name until it has a value, and the value once it has one; hover a filled box to see which field it is.
Choosing a list. The Key Fields for … control above the block lists every key-field setup published for this kind of entry. Choose one and the block redraws. Your choice follows you — it is stored against your login, not your browser, so the same list is selected when you next open a client on the web, on the desktop, or on your phone. It is remembered separately for companies, individuals and contacts, because a company list on a contact would be the wrong list.
The block is read-only on the web in this release. User-defined values are edited on the User-Defined Fields tab. Some system fields shown here also have their own editable box on the Basic tab above — but not all of them do; a handful of system fields this block can display have no editable box anywhere on the web yet, and can currently only be changed on the desktop.
Two things a row may say instead of holding a value: - “Not carried in the cloud copy” — the desktop's key-field list names a field the cloud record has no place for (Division is the common one). The row is still shown, so your list is not silently shorter than you built it. - “Not synced — available on the desktop” — a user-defined field whose values deliberately never leave the source database (see above).
If your workspace has never published a key-field list from the desktop, the block says so in words. Key-field lists are built on the desktop and sync to the cloud automatically; there is nothing to set up on the web.
Cloud CRM (31 Aug 2026) — the Activities tab on the web
The Activities tab lists the entry's to-dos and meetings together, newest first, under the desktop's own six columns: type, Tasks and Meetings, Date, Time, Assigned to and Pr. (priority). Click a row to open that to-do or meeting.
The filters, above the list: - Filter — All dates, Today, Tomorrow, Yesterday, This Week, Next Week, This Month, Next Month. Weeks start on Monday. An item with no date shows under All dates only. - User — All users (the default on the web) or Show my activities. - Show completed activities and Show meetings — on by default. Turning Show meetings off leaves the to-dos.
The list shows at most the newest 200 to-dos and the newest 200 meetings; if there are more it says so, and the rest are in the To-Do List and the Calendar.
A meeting's Time is shown in the workspace's time zone. A to-do's Date is the day it is due, shown exactly as it was entered.
More ▸ Add Meeting opens the meeting form with this entry already attached, so the meeting appears on this tab (and on Interactions) as soon as it is saved. It is offered only on a saved record — while you are adding a new entry there is nothing yet to attach a meeting to.
Not built here yet: the More ▸ menu's Add To-Do, Modify, Delete and Print say plainly that they are not connected on the web. Add and edit to-dos in the To-Do List; both are on the desktop's Activities tab today.
Adding a contact
A contact is a person at a company (or attached to an individual). Because a contact always belongs to a parent entry, TechieCRM asks which entry before it opens the form. There are three ways in, and all three end at the same Add Contact form:
| Route | What happens |
|---|---|
| Home ▸ Client Entry ▾ ▸ Contact with a row selected | Opens Add Contact for that entry straight away. |
| Home ▸ Client Entry ▾ ▸ Contact with nothing selected | Opens Add Contact, which asks which entry the contact is for: type two letters to search your companies and individuals, or pick from the Recently updated list. Choosing one opens the form. Nothing is created until you save the form. |
| Right-click a client ▸ Create ▸ Contact, or Add Contact on the Related panel | Opens Add Contact for that entry. |
If the workspace has no companies or individuals yet, the page says so and offers Add a Company / Add an Individual instead — a contact cannot be created before there is something for it to belong to.
The form holds Last name (required), First name, Middle name, Position, Department, two phone numbers with extensions, two e-mail addresses, and an address. Everything you type is saved and shown again when you re-open the contact; re-opening a contact and pressing Save Contact without typing changes nothing.
The saved contact appears immediately in the parent's Related panel and in the Clients list under the Contacts filter pill.
The contact's number, its record and the parent entry's contact count are written together, so a failed save leaves the parent exactly as it was; two people adding a contact to the same entry at the same moment get consecutive numbers.
Favorite lists
Favorite List ▾ ▸ View Favorite Lists / Add to Favorite List / Remove from Favorite List on the client dialog toolbar — the same lists the source CRM uses (they show up there too). See Chapter 20. The Clients right-click Add to / Remove from Favorite List items and the ribbon View ▸ Favorite Lists group open the same dialog for the selected entry. Add to Favorite List replaces any existing membership of that list in one step — if the add cannot complete, the entry's existing membership is kept and the message says the list is unchanged.
Set Up User-Defined Fields
From the client dialog's User-Defined Fields tab (Set Up UDF): folders and fields per module (Clients, Sales, Service, Marketing, Users, Projects, Inventory types). Add Folder / Add Field / Properties / Items (table fields) / Copy (duplicate a field with its items) / Move Up-Down / Reset Order / Delete (system fields are protected). Delete removes the field — or a table-field item — together with every record's value for it, as one transaction: if it cannot complete, the field and its values are left intact and the message says nothing was deleted. Set Up Inventory Types… at the bottom opens the inventory type/custom-field editor (Chapter 6).
Right-click on a client
Open · Select · Delete | Create ▸ (Company / Individual / Contact / User) · Add ▸ (Note, File,
Letter, Bill, Invoice, Inventory, Create a Sale…, Retrieve Sales, Create a Ticket…, Retrieve Tickets,
Create a Project…, Retrieve Projects, Create an Agreement…) | Add to / Remove from Favorite List |
Activities for this Entry · Phone Log · Phone ▸ (Make / Receive a Call) · Schedule ▸ (Call, Meeting,
To-Do, Project Plan) | Send Email… · Send Text… · Time a To-Do · Export to Excel · Print ▸ (Print List,
Print Details, Envelopes…, Labels…, Column Report…) | Properties.
- Create a Sale… / Create a Ticket… / Create a Project… open the Sales / Service / Projects dialog in
new-record mode with this client (and contact) already filled in — the same dialogs the modules use.
- Retrieve Sales / Tickets / Projects open that module showing only this client's records. To
retrieve for several clients at once, select them first the way every record list works
(Chapter 2, "Selection"): click the first, icon column's cell on each client you want — the row
fills peach — or right-click a row ▸ Select; the header's master box selects or clears them
all. Then choose Retrieve, and it covers every selected client. With nothing selected it uses
the current row (the one you last clicked). Ctrl-clicking rows does not build a set here —
the ordinary click stays reserved for "the record I am looking at", so the peach selection is
how you pick more than one. Export to Excel, Print and Make List Current read the same set.
- Send Email… uses your own email account and files a copy on the client (Chapter 12).
Send Text… sends through the TechieCRM cloud (needs the SMS add-on).
- Create an Agreement… opens an agreement (Agreement) preset to this client (Chapter 10).
- Phone Log opens the entry's activities; Make / Receive a Call logs a Phone Call note;
Schedule ▸ Call creates a To-Do; Time a To-Do opens the stopwatch (save as a note);
Export to Excel writes the list to CSV; Print List / Column Report print-preview the list;
Print Details prints the entry's detailed report.
- The same items appear on the Contacts panel right-click (for the contact's account).
Cloud CRM (31 Aug 2026) — right-click in the web portal
The web portal now has the same right-click menu, with the same items in the same order and the same words. It opens on the Clients list, on the Related panel, on the Interactions panel, and on the Related and Interactions panels of every other module's workspace. On a tablet or phone, press and hold for about a second instead of right-clicking.
It also opens on empty space. Right-click below the last row of the Related panel — the place the panel itself tells you to right-click when a client has no contacts yet — and the menu opens against the client selected above it, with Create ▸ Contact ready to use.
These items do the job on the web today:
Item What it does on the web Open Opens the client dialog over the list. Select / Unselect Marks the row. The item says which way it will go. Delete Asks first, then deletes — the same page the ribbon's Delete uses. Create ▸ Company / Individual Opens the new-client form of that type. Create ▸ Contact Opens the Add Contact form for the selected client. Create ▸ User Opens Users with the Create User box open (workspace administrators only). Add ▸ Note / File Opens a new note or document already linked to the client. Add ▸ Create a Sale… / Create a Ticket… Opens a new sale or service ticket linked to the client. Schedule ▸ Meeting / To-Do Opens a new meeting or to-do linked to the client. Send Email… / Send Text… The same two composers the client dialog's toolbar opens. Export to Excel Saves the list as a CSV file. If you have marked rows with Select, only those are exported; otherwise the whole visible list is. Everything else on the menu says "not connected yet" when you choose it — Letter, Bill, Invoice, Inventory, Retrieve Sales / Tickets / Projects, Create a Project…, Create an Agreement…, the two Favorite List items, Activities for this Entry, Phone Log, Phone ▸, Schedule ▸ Call and Project Plan, Record meeting notes…, Time a To-Do, Print ▸ and Properties. They are on the menu so the web and the desktop read the same, and they say so plainly rather than appearing to work. All of them work on the desktop; use it for those.
An item that cannot be used right now — Create ▸ Contact with nothing selected, for example — is greyed out and says why when you hover over it. It is never hidden, so the menu keeps the same shape every time you open it.
On a user row the menu is the shorter user menu: Open (User Properties), Message… and Add User…. Opening a user's properties and adding a user are for workspace administrators; for anyone else those two are greyed out with the reason. The desktop's Org Chart, Enable / Disable Login, Change Password… and Preferences… are not on the web menu at all — they act on the source CRM's own user table, which the cloud portal does not have.
On the Interactions panel the menu is smaller: Open, the same Add ▸ list, then Delete and Properties, which are not connected on the web yet.
Press Esc, click anywhere else, or scroll to close the menu.
Deleting a client, contact or user
Delete (right-click ▸ Delete, or the ribbon Edit ▸ Delete Record) removes the selected record — but never on its own. A client entry is the top of a small tree: its contacts, alternate addresses, notes, documents and filed e-mail, to-dos, meetings, sales, service tickets and projects all hang off it. Deleting the entry and leaving those behind would strand them on a record that no longer exists, so TechieCRM counts them first.
If nothing is attached, you get a plain "Delete “
If anything is attached, the Delete dialog opens and lists every kind of connected record with its count — for example Contacts 3 · Notes 17 · Meetings 4 · Sales 1. Then it asks what should happen to them:
| Choice | What it does |
|---|---|
| Delete them together with this entry | Everything in the list goes with the record. Deleting a company also deletes each of its contacts and that contact's own notes, documents, to-dos and meetings. |
| Move them to the parent entry — name | Only offered for a contact: its connected records are re-attached to the company (or individual) it belongs to, then the contact is deleted. |
| Move them to another Company / Individual / Contact | Search for and pick any other record of the same type; the connected records are re-attached to it, then this record is deleted. Moving a company's contacts re-parents them (with their own records) under the chosen account. |
Alternate addresses and a user's group memberships are part of the record itself — they cannot be moved and are always removed with it. The dialog says so under the choices.
Notes follow the level they land on: a note moved from a contact up to its company (or the other way) is restamped so it still appears on the right timeline. A meeting that several entries share keeps the copies belonging to the other entries — only this record's link is removed.
A user cannot be deleted. A user is a login, not an address-book entry, so there is no Delete on the user right-click menu — it carries Disable Login instead (and Enable Login once the account is off). Disabling stops the person signing in; every record they own stays exactly where it is, and the login can be switched back on at any time. Removing the account itself — and the SQL login behind it — is done in the source CRM's Administrator (Appendix A3). MASTER can never be disabled. If you reach Delete on a user another way (the ribbon's Delete Record), TechieCRM says so and points you at Disable Login.
Delete respects your access rights: with read-only access, or a plan that does not permit deleting in this module, the menu item is blocked before anything is read. TechieCRM explains why instead of doing nothing.
Saving respects the same rights, on every button that saves. In the client dialog that means OK and Apply, and on the User-Defined Fields tab it means New… (creating a field definition) as well as Delete (removing one). With read-only access, or a plan that does not permit changes in Clients, any of those four explains why and changes nothing — there is no side door that writes while another is blocked. Reading, searching, printing and exporting are never affected.
Not yet available on this menu
Letter opens the document editor (no letter template yet); Bill / Invoice / Inventory jump to the Financials and Inventory dialogs (not pre-linked to the client); Envelopes… / Labels… explain that label printing is planned.
On the Home ribbon, these buttons say "has not been connected yet" on the web and work on the desktop: Agreement and Work Order (those two modules are still in review on the web), Letter, Fax, Project Plan, Insert a Hyperlink, Print an Envelope, Print a Label, and Assign to Marketing. They stay on the ribbon so the web and the desktop read the same, and they say so plainly rather than appearing to work.
The record-type filter
Between Search All Fields (🕵️) and Quick Search sits the type filter — Companies, Individuals, Contacts, Users as toggle on/off choices you can combine (all on = All Types; the last type can't be turned off). It hides and shows rows instantly without reloading. If a function returns or creates a record whose type is currently toggled off, TechieCRM toggles that type back on so the record is never silently invisible. The Interactions panel's Types filter works the same way (toggle any combination of interaction types).
Your choice sticks across a reload. Whenever the list is re-read — you sort by a column, switch Column Setup, run a search, or press Refresh (F5) — the filter is re-applied to the newly loaded rows, so what is hidden always matches the types you turned off, never a row position left over from the previous list.
Alternate addresses are no longer in the list (7 Sep 2026)
Your Clients list is shorter than it was, on purpose. On a typical database about 177 rows have gone — every one of them an alternate address, not a client. If you had learned to find an address by scrolling the Clients list, that is the change you are seeing, and the next paragraph says where to find it now.
The source CRM keeps alternate addresses in the same store as your client records — an extra address attached to a company or a person, and named after it ("Wendy Funk's Address", "Money Minding's main address"). They are not clients and they are not contacts, and the source CRM itself never lists one as a client entry; it hides them behind a separate permission of its own.
Where to find one now: open the client the address belongs to, and on the Basic tab press Address…. That dialog lists the client's main address and every alternate address it has, and lets you add, change, delete one or select which one is the current mailing address. Nothing was lost and nothing was moved — that dialog has always been the place these are edited, and it is unchanged.
Nothing else about a client changes: an alternate address holds an address and nothing more. Across a whole database not one of them carries a note, a document, a to-do, a meeting, an e-mail, a sale, a ticket or a project, so removing them from the Clients list takes no history with them.
What led here. Until 6 September 2026 TechieCRM showed these rows in the Clients list with the contact icon and the tooltip Contact, which was simply wrong. Correcting the caption then left something worse than the original mistake: the rows appeared under All Types and vanished the moment you narrowed the type filter at all, which reads like a broken filter rather than a fact about the data. Both halves are now settled the same way — they are not clients, so they are not in the Clients list.
Three smaller consequences, all in the same direction:
- The "N entries match" preview shown while you build a search now counts the same rows the list will show. It used to include alternate addresses, so it could promise up to 177 more results than arrived.
- Coloring rules paint the same rows they count, for the same reason (Chapter 2, "Coloring rules").
- Opening one from the Contacts panel now titles the dialog — Alternate Address instead of — Contact, and lets you edit the Company field instead of locking it. The Contacts panel still lists a client's alternate-address rows; removing them from there as well is a pending change.
They had also been travelling to the cloud as if they were clients. TechieCRM no longer sends them.
The same store holds one hidden Default Entry template row per user. Those have never been listed and are unaffected.
If the list cannot be re-read (the database connection drops, or the query fails), TechieCRM empties the list and tells you rather than leaving the previous set of clients on screen. An empty list with a warning means "this did not load" — it never means "you have no clients".
An empty list always says WHICH kind of empty it is. If the workspace has no client records at all, it says "No entries. Use the ribbon (Home → Client Entry) to add your first client." If you have clients but the type filter or Quick Search matched none of them, it says "No results match your search or filter — clear the search box or reset the filters above." instead — so filtering to Individuals when you have only entered companies never reads as "your records are gone". It is the same pair of sentences every other module's list uses.