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.

Finding an email you saved to a client. Select the client in Clients, then pick Emails in the Interactions Types filter. Emails filed on the client are listed there (the Description column reads Filed), and double-clicking one shows the full message in Email Details, with Reply, Reply All and Forward arrows at the top. A reply or forward you send from there is saved on the client by itself, on every entry the original is filed on (its contact, sale or ticket too), with no question; see Chapter 12, Replying and forwarding. Emails still waiting to be sent are listed too, marked Queued. Filed emails are not listed under Documents. To keep a copy outside TechieCRM, right-click a filed email ▸ Save as .eml…: one file, attachments included, that any mail program opens. An email filed from the Email window (a click on the current client's name, Save to Client…, Save to Sale… or Save to Ticket…, Chapter 12) is kept as that whole message already, so Save as .eml gives back exactly what arrived, its attachments included. See Chapter 17, Emails on a record and Saving a filed email as an .eml file.

Emails filed on the client's sales and tickets are listed on the client's timeline too, with the record named at the end of the subject (Site visit · Sale: Website, Boiler fault · Ticket #12), the same way a ticket's notes are. One email, listed once. When the same email was filed on the company and on one of its contacts (or on its sale), the client's timeline shows it once, and the Description says where it lives: Filed on Acme Ltd; Smith, Bob; Sale: Website. In a single contact's view every copy stands on its own.

Deleting a filed email here removes that one record (the row you right-clicked, with its paired note), nothing more: the copies on other entries, sales and tickets stay, and so does the email in your mailbox. Deleting in the Email window (Chapter 12) works the other way round: it removes the message from your mailbox and never touches what you filed.

Grouping interactions (24 Oct 2026)

Several of a client's interactions often belong together: the notes, the estimate, the emails and the site visit about one roof leak. In the client's Interactions you can tie them into a group, and link the group to any of the client's sales and tickets, or to none.

Ticking several rows. Tick rows with the icon column as before, or hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) and click a row to tick or untick it, or hold Shift and click to tick every row from the last one you clicked down to this one. A plain click still only opens the row in the viewer; it never ticks. (Only the Interactions list works this way; Clients, Sales and the other lists are unchanged.)

Making a group. Right-click ▸ Link as a Group… groups the ticked rows (or, with nothing ticked, the row you right-clicked). The window that opens shows:

• Name: optional, up to 80 characters. A group without a name is shown as "3 items".
• Items: what goes into the group. Sale and ticket rows are not put in a group (a group is linked to them instead), and neither are warning rows; a line under the list counts any rows left out.
• Sales and Tickets: this client's own records, open ones first, closed ones marked (closed). Tick as many as you like, or none; type in the box above a list to narrow it. A list is greyed, with a line saying why, when your access does not allow changing sales or tickets.

Choose Create Group. An item can be in several groups. Add to Group ▸ on the right-click menu adds the ticked rows (or the row) to one of the client's groups, or starts a New Group….

How a grouped row looks. It wears a small link badge on its icon (with a number when it is in more than one group, "2"), its Description ends with the first group's name (· Group: Roof leak (+1)), and pointing at the icon lists every group it is in with the sales and tickets each is linked to. The badge takes your theme's Primary colour.

Groups ▸ on a grouped row has one entry per group, each with:

Entry	What it does
Select Members	Ticks that group's rows in the list.
Unlink from This Group	Takes the ticked rows (or this row) out of that group only. Its other groups stay.
Change Link…	Tick or untick the sales and tickets the group is linked to.
Rename…	Gives the group a new name (leave it empty for no name).
Dissolve…	Asks first, then removes the group. Its items stay where they are.

Remove from All Groups takes the ticked rows (or this row) out of every group they are in. A group left with no items goes by itself.

Undo. After every group change a notice at the bottom of the list says what was done, with an Undo button. The notice goes after a few seconds, but right-click ▸ Undo Last Group Change stays available until you close TechieCRM. If someone else changed the same group in the meantime, Undo says so and changes nothing.

Showing only grouped rows. The Types filter has Grouped Only (rows in any group) and Show One Group ▸ (one group's rows). The filter button says when one is on.

Good to know. - Deleting an item from the list also takes it out of its groups. - An email still waiting to be sent can be grouped. Once it is sent, TechieCRM moves the group to the filed copy of the email the next time the list loads. If no filed copy can be found, the group's menu says Sent: filed copy not found. - You need the right to change clients to make or change groups; without it the entries are grey. Each sale or ticket you link or unlink also needs the right to change sales or tickets. - Groups are kept in TechieCRM's own tables in the office database; the source CRM application does not show them. - A group linked to a sale or ticket shows its items in that sale's or ticket's own Interactions, in the Sales and Service modules, marked · Linked (Group: Roof leak). See chapter 4, Items grouped with a sale or ticket.

In this chapter - The Clients list and Related entries - Grouping interactions - 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	Clients	Closes the current client. No client is selected any more, and Related and Interactions empty out. The panel stays on screen; click any client to open one again. TechieCRM also forgets it as your current client, so Refresh or the next start does not reopen it.
Close	Related	Closes the current contact. The client stays open, and Interactions go back to showing that client.
Close	Interactions	Closes the current interaction: the highlight goes away. Nothing else changes.

Close closes the record, not the panel (October 2026). Until this release Close hid the whole panel and you clicked Clients in the icon bar to bring it back. It now closes the record you have open in that panel, and the panel stays where it is. Nothing is ever deleted by Close.

If the list cannot be read from the database (a Refresh, a re-sort, a Column Setup change or a search), the list is emptied and the reason is shown, both in a message box and in a note over the empty list that stays until the next load succeeds. It never leaves the previous rows on screen as though the reload had worked, and it never shows an empty list without saying why. (Corrected 14 Oct 2026: this paragraph used to say the old rows were left alone, which had not been true since the September fix.)

The list loads in the background (14 Oct 2026)

Loading the Clients list used to freeze the whole window until the database answered: on a large list or a slow connection, clicking a column header to re-sort, switching Column Setup, running a search or pressing Refresh left the window unresponsive for seconds. The list is now read in the background and the window stays responsive while it loads.

• While it loads a note reading Loading clients... sits over the list. It is a message, not a row: you cannot select, open or delete it, and it is not counted in "N Client Entries Displayed".
• Re-sorting or refreshing the same list (the same Column Setup and the same search) keeps the rows you were looking at on screen, with the note as a small band at the top, until the new order arrives. You can keep working with those rows; they are still the right records.
• Anything that changes which entries are listed (a different Column Setup, a new search, Clear List, the first load after signing in) empties the list first, then shows the note in the middle.
• Clicking again before it finishes (several header clicks in a row, say) is fine: only the last request is drawn, and the earlier ones are stopped.
• When the rows arrive the client you last had open is selected again, as before. Related and Interactions reload for it only if they were showing someone else, so they never load twice.
• If the load fails, see the paragraph above: the list empties and tells you why.
• Closing the window while the list loads stops the load; nothing is drawn afterwards.

The ↑ / ↓ arrow buttons are gone. Related and Interactions each carried a pair of small up/down arrow buttons on their title strip. They have been removed (September 2026, and the last copies in October 2026): 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.

Type to jump (11 Oct 2026)

Click any row in Clients, Related or Interactions and start typing a name. The list jumps to the first entry that starts with what you have typed so far, and each letter narrows it: in a Clients list sorted by Name, typing t, e, c lands on T, then Te, then the first Tec… entry. Capitals don't matter.

• The word starts again after a one-second pause. Stop typing for a second and the next letter begins a new search.
• Backspace removes the last letter and jumps back to the first match for what is left. Esc forgets the word.
• Which column? The column the list is sorted by. When the list is sorted by a column that has no text (the icon column), the Name column is used; in Interactions, the Title column.
• Typing the same letter again (t, t, t) steps through the entries starting with that letter, when no entry starts with "tt".
• If nothing matches, the list stays where it is (Backspace to correct the word). Rows a filter is hiding are skipped.
• Jumping to a row is the same as clicking it, so Related and Interactions follow along.

Earlier, typing in Clients jumped one letter at a time (T, then E, then C) because loading the selected client's Related and Interactions took longer than the one-second pause, which wiped the word. The pause is now measured from when you pressed the keys, so a slow load no longer splits the word.

Rows update after you save (11 Oct 2026)

When you change a record in its window and press OK (or Apply), its row updates straight away in every list that shows it:

• A client or contact (for example a new Email Address): its row in Clients and in Related, including the Client Status colour.
• A note, document, To-Do or meeting: its row in Interactions.

Only that row is re-read. The list is not reloaded, so the row you were on, any rows you had ticked and the scroll position all stay as they were. A note or To-Do whose date you changed moves to its new place in the newest-first order (the row you were on stays current).

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.

Record icons (changed 12 Oct 2026). The icon at the left of each row in Clients and on the Related tab tells you what kind of entry it is, in full colour:

Icon	Entry
A tan office building with blue windows	Company (the same icon as View ▸ Filter ▸ Companies on the ribbon)
A single purple person	Individual (it was a green house; the house now belongs to households, below)
A teal person in a shirt and tie with a small tan office building at the bottom right	Contact: a person who belongs to a company (changed 13 Oct 2026; it was two blue people). The same icon is on Search ▸ Retrieve ▸ Contacts and View ▸ Filter ▸ Contact Prospects and Contacts.
A green and blue handshake	Partner: a client flagged as a partner in the Partners workspace (Chapter 9)
A gold star in the icon's top-right corner	Prospect: the entry's Client Status is Prospect. Contacts show their company's star, because a contact shares its company's status.

The star is added on top of whichever icon the entry has, so a prospect company shows the building and the star, and a prospect partner the handshake and the star. It appears and disappears as the status changes: change a client's status in its window and its star follows when you press OK. A contact never shows the partner handshake; its company does. These icons keep their own colours in every theme, light or dark. Coming with the Household category: a household (an Individual that is a family) will show a house with three small people.

Record-type colours are the same everywhere (October 2026). Each kind of entry has its own colour. For login users and your own organisation it colours the row's text and the icon at the left: User orange (administrators too: the small key on the icon is what marks an administrator, not the colour) and your organisation gold. Companies, individuals and contacts are blue, green and purple wherever TechieCRM tints by entry type rather than showing the colour icons above. The Clients list, the Related list, the users organisation chart and the user icon in Messages all take these colours from one shared table, so the same kind of entry always looks the same. They are identical in every theme except High Contrast Dark, where each one is lightened just enough to stay readable at that theme's 7 to 1 contrast on black (a brighter blue, green, violet, orange and gold of the same colour). The lists switch colours while you watch when you change the theme; the Messages list picks up the new user colour the next time it refreshes.

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, Client Status and Category (companies and individuals; see below), 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. The User dropdown offers Show My Activities, All users (the default), then every other user by display name (the shared user list; see Who appears in the user lists in A3), and last \<Show Disabled User(s)>, which adds the switched-off logins, marked (disabled), and turns into \<Hide Disabled User(s)>; your current choice is kept either way. | | Notes / Documents | Via Interactions. |

Right-click a client for Record meeting notes…. It 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). In Actions ▾, Write a Fax… is greyed, as Home ▸ Write ▸ Fax is on the ribbon: rest the pointer on it to see why (fax needs an add-on service that is not available yet). 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, so 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.

Update (13 Oct 2026): a Category set on the web or a phone is no longer wiped by the desktop. The source CRM has no Category of its own, so TechieCRM keeps it in its own table in your database (the same place the coming Household category lives). Until this update, the desktop sent every client to the cloud with a blank Category the next time it refreshed that client, so a Category typed on the web (including "Partner") could disappear. Now: - a client that has no Category recorded on the desktop keeps whatever Category it already has in the cloud copy, whatever the value; - a Category chosen on the desktop travels to the web and the phones, with who changed it, when (in UTC) and from where (desktop, web or phone); - a company flagged with Add Partner on the desktop and with no other Category is sent as Category "Partner" the next time that client is synced (any edit of the client on the desktop brings it up at the next sync), so the web's Partners workspace finds it too.

One limit remains until a later update: if the same client's Category is changed on the web and the desktop pushes that client before it has received the web change, the desktop's copy can still replace it. Changes made on the web do not yet reach the desktop's own table.

Category (13 Oct 2026)

Companies and Individuals have a Category box under Client Status in the "Other information" column of the client window. Contacts have none (a contact belongs to its company or individual), so the box is not shown on a contact.

• Click the arrow to choose from the list: a blank line (no category), Household (on Individuals only, with the household icon), then every category already used in your database, in alphabetical order.
• Or type a new category straight into the box. It is saved when you press OK or Apply, and from then on it is offered in everyone's list.
• Partner is not a category here. A partner is flagged with Add Partner and removed with Remove Partner Flag (see Chapter 9); typing "Partner" is refused with "Use Add Partner to make a company a partner."
• Household is only for Individuals: typing it on a company is refused with "Household is only for individuals."
• A category can be at most 200 characters, on one line.
• Changing the category writes one History note on the client ("Category changed from (none) to VIP.") and one entry in the activity log. If the History note cannot be written you are told, but the category is still changed.
• The box is hidden when TechieCRM cannot keep categories on this database (for example a MongoDB-only workspace, or a database where the Client Category tables could not be set up yet: sign in once with the MASTER ID and they are created).

Households (choosing it: 13 Oct 2026; converting a person: built, not switched on yet)

An Individual can become a Household: a family rather than one person, with one name, the Family Name. Choose Household in the Individual's Category box.

• An Individual with no first name simply becomes a household; nothing moves. As soon as you choose Household, the First Name and Middle Name boxes are hidden, the last-name box reads *Family Name (it is required, like Last Name), the window title reads "Smith (Household)", and a blank Salutation is filled in with "Dear > Family" (which prints as "Dear Smith Family"; change it if you like). Press OK to save. Choosing the blank line (or another category) again before OK puts the name boxes back.
• A new contact added under a household starts with the family name in its Last Name box.
• If someone types a first name back onto a household in your previous CRM database, TechieCRM shows it greyed with "Not used for a household". It is never saved from here and never deleted.
• An Individual with a first name (for example "John Smith") is converted with Make This a Household, which opens as soon as you choose Household. Before anything changes, TechieCRM shows this warning first: "Setting this entry as a Household is a significant change. TechieCRM will create a contact from the current name and move this entry's activities to it. Your previous CRM database will not fully understand households: there it will show as an individual with no first name. You can undo this from TechieCRM on the desktop." It then lists how many records of each kind will move (every kind, including the ones with none), the total, what stays with the household and why, and anything it could not check. Above 5,000 records it also says "This is a large change. Make a backup first (Tools > Backup)." and Make Household stays greyed until you tick "I have made a backup and want to go ahead with this large change." (your second confirmation). Then press Make Household, or Cancel (or Esc) to change nothing. Enter never converts: Cancel is the default button. Cancel, or any refusal, puts the Category box back as it was.
• It works in the background (14 Oct 2026). Counting what would move, making the household, Try Again and Undo household all run behind the scenes, so TechieCRM never freezes while the database is busy (it waits up to 10 seconds for records someone else is changing). While the counts are read, a small "Reading what would move." window shows a progress bar; Cancel there closes it and changes nothing. After Make Household, a progress bar fills one step per kind of record, and the line above it says what is happening:
• Step 1 of 2, creating the contact: Cancel still works, and the line says so: "Cancel now stops before anything is saved." Pressed now, nothing is saved (the new contact is not kept), the window says "Cancelled. Nothing was changed." and offers Make Household again.
• Step 2 of 2, moving the activities: Cancel is greyed: "This step cannot be cancelled: every record moves, or none does." If you pressed Cancel a moment too late, the result starts with "It was too late to cancel: the activities were already moving, so the change was finished."
• Esc and the window's close button do nothing until it is done; then the window says what moved. If TechieCRM closes the window anyway (for example you close the client window behind it), the change still finishes, or changes nothing, exactly as it would have. The next time you open that entry, the line under its Category box says "A household change on this entry finished after its window was closed:" and what happened. While such a change is still running, Try Again and Undo household are greyed and choosing Household again says the change is still running.
• The conversion is saved straight away; it does not wait for OK. Your other unsaved edits in the client window are kept and still need OK.

What the conversion does. The entry becomes the household "Smith" (its first name and middle initial are set aside, not deleted), and a new contact "John Smith" is created under it with the same phone numbers and email addresses. These move from the household to the new contact: notes, documents and filed emails, to-dos, the entry's own meetings (other people's copies of a shared meeting are not touched), emails waiting to be sent, sales, service tickets, projects, and meeting notes kept by TechieCRM.

What stays with the household: History notes (the permanent log; the conversion adds its own History note on the household and on the contact), messages between users, user-defined fields (the new contact inherits them), Favorite List membership, Client Status, everything that belongs to the whole entry (monitoring, territory, work orders, invoices, bills, maintenance plans), campaign membership and send logs, alternate addresses and existing contacts, notes that belong to a sale, ticket or meeting, and the activity log.

If something goes wrong part way. The contact is created first, then all the records move in one step: either every record moves or none does. If the move cannot finish (for example someone else is changing those records and the database stays busy for more than 10 seconds), you see "The contact John Smith was created, but the activities were not moved", with Try Again and Undo (Undo removes the new, empty contact). If you close the window instead, the Individual's client window shows the same two buttons, Try Again and Undo household, under its Category box with a line saying the conversion did not finish. Until you use one of them, TechieCRM will not start another conversion of that entry. If the database was only busy, the window offers Make Household again.

Undo. Open the household's client window: under the Category box it says which contact the household was made from, and Undo household asks you to confirm and then undoes it (a small window with a progress bar shows while it works; an undo cannot be stopped part way, it finishes or changes nothing). You can also right-click the household in the Clients list and choose Undo household (just above Properties): it asks the same question, undoes it the same way and then reloads the list. That item appears only on a household made from a person with this conversion (not on households that never had a first name, not on contacts, and not on a conversion that did not finish: use Try Again or Undo household in its client window for that one). Choosing another category (or the blank line) on a household made this way asks first: Keep the contact (the default: the contact keeps its activities and the entry stays an individual named "Smith" with no first name) or Undo the household (as below), or Cancel. Every record the conversion moved that is still on the new contact moves back, the first name and middle initial come back (unless someone has typed a new first name since, which is kept), and the Category is cleared. Records added to the contact after the conversion stay on the contact; the contact itself is removed only if nothing but its History notes is left on it. Undoing twice changes nothing the second time.

Not switched on yet. The conversion is built and tested, but it stays switched off until it has been checked, read-only, against a real copy of a database. Until then an Individual with a first name cannot be made a household: Make This a Household still opens and shows the warning and the counts, but Make Household is greyed and the window says "Converting is switched on after a check on your database." Try Again and Undo household (in the client window and on the Clients list's right-click menu) are greyed with the same message. Choosing Household on an Individual with no first name works now.

Client Status (29 Sep 2026)

Every Company and Individual has one standard Client Status, shown under Other information on the Basic tab. It records where you stand with the client the same way in every workspace, so "this is no longer a client" is a status, not a deleted record.

Status	Colour	Typical meaning
Prospect	blue	Not a client yet. New companies and individuals start here.
Active	green	A current client.
Former client	grey	No longer a client. Their history is kept.
Do not contact	red	Leave this client alone.

Your administrator can rename, recolour, reorder and add statuses, retire ones you no longer use, and choose which status a new entry starts with, so your list may differ from the one above.

• Company or Individual: pick a status from the Client Status list, then press OK or Apply. Only a real change is saved. Each change writes a locked History note on the client ("Client status changed from Active to Former client."), so the record shows when and by whom. The line under the list shows the last change, for example Changed September 29, 2026 by MASTER. Set automatically … (a Sales Lead in the source CRM) means TechieCRM gave the status when it first set up Client Status: entries marked as a Sales Lead started as Prospect.
• Not set means no one has chosen a status for this client yet. It is not a status of its own: once you choose one in this window you can change it, but not set it back to Not set here. To clear a status, use the status badge in the Related panel (Clear Status, below).
• A new Company or Individual opens with your workspace's starting status already chosen (normally Prospect). Change it before pressing OK if you like. It's saved as soon as the new entry is created. If your administrator chose no starting status, the list shows Not set and nothing is saved unless you pick one.
• Contacts have no status of their own. A contact's window shows its company's status as a coloured label that you can't edit here. Open the company to change it.
• A retired status stays on the clients that already have it and shows as "… (retired)". It is kept unless you choose another status, and it can't be chosen for anyone else.
• On the web and phones: a status you set here reaches the TechieCRM web and phone apps with the client on the next sync. Text typed into a phone's old free-text Status box is kept until someone chooses a status for that client.
• Changing a status needs the same right as editing the client. If TechieCRM is read-only (no licence) or your user ID can't edit clients, OK and Apply explain why and nothing is saved.
• If the status can't be saved (for example, the database refuses it), a message says so. Your other changes are saved and the window stays open so you can try again. If the status is saved but its History note is not, a message says that too. The status change stands.
• No Client Status row? The status needs two small TechieCRM tables in your database, which TechieCRM creates automatically the first time someone signs in with the MASTER ID (or an ID with SQL administrator rights). Until then the row isn't shown.

Finding clients by Client Status

Search by field. In Search by Field, Search All Fields, or Search ▸ Other Fields, choose Client status. Pick one or more values from the list, for example "is Former client" or "is any of Prospect, Active". Not set finds clients nobody has given a status yet. Retired values are listed too, marked "(retired)", because some clients may still carry them. A contact matches on its company's status. You can save the search in the Search Catalog, and use Client status in a Coloring Rule to colour rows in the Clients list.

View ▸ Filter ▸ Client Status. On the Clients ribbon, open View ▸ Filter ▸ Client Status ▾ and pick a status, or Not set. The list then shows the Companies and Individuals with that status (contacts are left out), and the title reads, for example, "client status: Former client". Clear List shows everyone again. The menu always shows your current list of statuses, so renamed or new values appear straight away.

View ▸ Filter ▸ My / All / Company / Contact Prospects (changed 12 Oct 2026). These four buttons (they said Leads before) list the clients whose Client Status is Prospect:

Button	Shows
My Prospects	Companies and Individuals that are Prospects and that you own (you are their Owner).
All Prospects	Every Company and Individual that is a Prospect.
Company Prospects	Companies that are Prospects.
Contact Prospects	The contacts of the Companies and Individuals that are Prospects (a contact shares its company's status).

They follow the status, not the source CRM's old Lead status flag, which is still there as the Lead status column and search field. If an administrator renames the Prospect value, the buttons still find it. If Client Status is not set up on your database yet, the buttons say so and leave the list as it was.

The status in the Related panel (changed 11 Oct 2026). When you select a client, a coloured badge beside the Refresh button in the Related panel shows its Client Status, for example Status: Active, or No Status when none has been chosen. For a contact, it shows the company's status.

Click the badge to change it. A menu lists your workspace's current statuses (the same list as the client's edit window; retired statuses are not offered), with the current one ticked, and Clear Status at the bottom. Picking a status sets it at once; Clear Status takes the client back to No Status (it is greyed out when there is nothing to clear). For a contact, this changes its company's status. Each change writes the same History note as the edit window ("Client status changed from Active to Former client.", or "... to Not set." when cleared), the badge and the client's row in Clients update straight away, and the note appears in Interactions.

Changing the status here needs the same right as editing the client: if TechieCRM is read-only (no licence) or your user ID can't edit clients, a message says so and nothing changes. The badge is hidden when the Related panel lists users or campaign members, and when Client Status hasn't been set up on this database.

If Client Status hasn't been set up on this database yet, the field and filter aren't offered. A saved search or Coloring Rule that uses it says so instead of running. An administrator signing in sets it up automatically.

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, with 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: clickable text, bold when on. Both are on by default on a client's Activities tab. On your own Activities tab (My Profile, or a user's record) completed to-dos and meetings stay hidden until you click Show completed activities. 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.

Monitoring a client (5 Oct 2026)

Monitor (right-click a client, or the ribbon's Edit ▸ Monitor ▸ Monitor Client) records who wants to be told when this client changes. The source CRM could monitor only sales and tickets; in TechieCRM a client can be monitored too. A contact is monitored through its company or individual: choosing Monitor on a contact opens the window for the entry it belongs to.

The window has the same parts as the Sales and Service one (Chapter 4, Monitoring a sale or a ticket):

• Who is told. If you are the client's owner, its assigned user or an administrator, you choose Owner only, Assigned user only, Owner and assigned user or Selected users (tick people in the list below it). A choice that needs a person the client does not have (for example no assigned user) is greyed out and says why. Anyone else sees Monitor this client myself and the list of who else monitors it. These options set the client's own list only: a person who started a monitor for themselves keeps it (and their own What counts) whatever the owner chooses, and the owner's window names them ("1 person also monitors this client themselves").
• What counts. All changes, Status and assignment changes only, or Only changes to these fields (Client Status, Name, Company, Email, Phone numbers, Address, Category, Assigned to, Owner), plus Include notes, documents, emails, tasks and meetings added to it. A client monitor with All changes also covers the client's sales and tickets.

Someone who cannot see the client cannot monitor it: a client marked private can be monitored only by its owner or an administrator, and a person without read access to Clients is refused, with the reason shown. My Monitors (the ribbon button with no client selected) lists everything you monitor.

What you are told (5 Oct 2026). Each change that matches what you chose raises an alert in Notifications (Chapter 12) and, on a computer with a notification area, a banner. The rules are the same as for sales and tickets (Chapter 4, What you are told): never your own changes, only changes made after the monitor was set up, nothing about a client you can no longer see, and one summary alert when more than 25 arrive at once. Alerts are not sent by e-mail yet. Monitors are kept on this computer's local store (Settings ▸ Database) until cloud sync carries them; without the local store the window says so. The web portal does not have the Monitor item yet.

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 · Monitor | 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 Sheet · Print ▸ (Print List, Print Details, Envelopes…, Labels…) | Properties. - Every item has an icon (25 Oct 2026), and it is the same icon the function shows on the ribbon, so a function looks the same wherever you meet it (for example Phone Log, Note, Export to Sheet and Create a Sale… use their ribbon pictures). The user-row and Users-heading menus have their icons too. A function whose new picture is still being drawn shows its old one meanwhile. - Print ▸ Column Report… was removed on 25 Oct 2026: it printed the same list as Print List, which stays. - Right-click now opens the button pad (26 Oct 2026). On the Clients list (client and user rows, your own organization's row and empty space), the Related tab (contact and user rows and empty space) and the Interactions panel, a right-click opens a small pad of icon buttons with the same choices as the list above, in the same order, greyed or left out exactly as the list would be. Rest the pointer on a button, or look at the strip along the bottom of the pad, to read its name. A button with a small triangle (Create, Add, Phone, Schedule, Print) opens a row of more buttons under the pad. Hold Shift while you right-click to get the classic list for that one click, or press ☰ in the pad's corner. To use the classic list all the time, choose Classic menu in Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Theme Layout ▸ Right-Click Menu (Appendix A5, Right-Click Menu); the other screens' right-click menus switch to the pad in the next builds. - Add ▸ File opens the Document Editor for the entry you right-clicked, and the saved document is filed on that entry (Chapter 17, Documents). - A faster way (24 Oct 2026): press on a client's row in Clients or the Related tab, hold the mouse button and drag the client onto an icon-bar button: Calendar opens a new meeting with them, Service a new ticket, Sales a new sale, and so on. Nothing is saved until you press OK. The full list of what each button does, and why some buttons refuse, is in Chapter 2, Drag a client onto the icon bar. Grab the row anywhere except its small record icon, which marks the row as before. Drop the client on a day of the Calendar Control Bar's mini calendar instead and the new meeting opens on that day (25 Oct 2026). The same drag works on the web portal's and the local portal's Clients page, onto the modules in the menu on the left; on a touch screen hold the row still for half a second, then move (Chapter 2, On the web portal, the local portal and touch screens) (25 Oct 2026). - Create a Ticket… on the web portal now opens New Ticket with the client filled in (for a contact, its company) (25 Oct 2026). Before, the page opened blank. A contact dragged onto Service fills in the contact as well. - Undo household (14 Oct 2026, Clients list only) appears just above Properties, and only on a household made from a person by Make This a Household. It asks you to confirm, undoes the household in the background and reloads the list (see Households above). It is greyed, with the reason when you hover over it, while household conversions are switched off or while a household change for that entry is still running. - 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 Sheet, Print and Make List Current read the same set. - Send Email… (12 Oct 2026) first asks Send this email to: - This entry: the one-person Send Email window for the entry you right-clicked. It uses your own email account and files a copy on the client (Chapter 12). - Selected entries (3): the entries you have marked, through Email to Many (Chapter 12, "Email to many people, one at a time"). The number is how many are marked. It is greyed until you mark two or more entries (one marked entry is the same as This entry). - Whole current list (128): every entry in the Clients list as it is filtered now, through Email to Many. Greyed when the list is empty. - A Favorite List…: choose a Favorite List; its members, through Email to Many.

The choice you used last is already selected the next time (remembered for your login, on this computer). If it cannot be used this time (fewer than two entries marked, for example), This entry is selected instead. Press Enter for OK or Esc to cancel; the arrow keys move between the choices. A greyed choice says why when you hover over it. The three Email to Many choices are greyed when Email to Many is not available to you (Email is view only for you, or your plan or rights do not allow sending). This replaces the separate Email Selected Entries… and Email Whole List… items. - 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 Sheet writes the list to CSV; Print List print-previews the list; Print Details prints the entry's detailed report. - Monitor opens the Monitor Client window for the entry (see Monitoring a client below). - The same items appear on the Related panel right-click (for the contact's account). There, Send Email… opens the one-person Send Email window straight away: the Related tab's rows are not the Clients list, so there is no list to choose from.

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, using 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 Sheet	Saves the list as a CSV file (opens in any spreadsheet program). 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.

Double-clicking a user row (or selecting it and pressing Enter) opens that person. A workspace administrator goes straight to Workspace Admin ▸ Users for that user, where their name, role, team and login can be changed. Anyone else sees a small read-only profile card over the list (name, e-mail, role and team, with "Team Lead" beside a team they lead) and closes it with Close; nothing on the card can be changed. The same applies to the user row shown in the Related panel when a user is selected. Only people in your own workspace are ever listed or opened: a link to someone in another workspace answers "not found". A user who has been disabled is not listed here; administrators find them, marked Disabled, in Workspace Admin ▸ Users (users are never deleted; see A3, Disabling a user on the web portal).

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.

Deleting a client is discouraged: change their status instead

When a company or an individual stops being a client, the usual thing to do is not to delete them but to change their status, so it shows they are no longer a client while their history with your company stays together on their record. (Shannon's rule P-40, 29 September 2026: deleting client records is "frowned upon", not forbidden.)

So when you press Delete on a Company or an Individual, a warning comes first: "Deleting a client is discouraged." It tells you the client's current Client Status (see Client Status above) and offers four buttons:

Button	What it does
Mark as Former client (the default; pressing Enter picks it)	Nothing is deleted. The client's Client Status is set to Former client, a History note records the change ("Client status changed from Active to Former client."), and a message confirms it: "“Acme Ltd” is now marked Former client. Nothing was deleted."
Choose another status…	Nothing is deleted. The client's entry window opens so you can pick a different status (or change anything else).
Cancel (or Esc)	Nothing is deleted and nothing changes.
Delete Anyway…	Carries on to the normal delete described below.

If your administrator has renamed "Former client" (Setup ▸ Client Status Values), the button and the message use the new name.

Already marked Former client? Then the warning says so ("“Acme Ltd” is already marked Former client") and there is no Mark button: the record already shows they are no longer a client. Cancel becomes the default, so pressing Enter changes nothing. Choose another status… and Delete Anyway… are still there.

If the status change is refused (for example you have read-only access, or your user ID may not edit clients), a message says the client was not marked Former client and that nothing was deleted. If only the History note fails, the status change still stands (the client is marked Former client); a warning says so and gives the reason the note could not be written.

Deleting anyway removes the Client Status too. A deleted client's Client Status is removed with it, in the same step as the entry itself: if either part fails, neither happens and the entry stays. Their History notes (including the notes that recorded their status changes) are kept, as described below.

When Client Status is not available (the database does not have the two small Client Status tables yet, and your login cannot create them (see Client Status above), the warning is the older three-button one instead: Change Status Instead (the default; opens the entry window), Cancel and Delete Anyway…. In that case the source CRM has no built-in status field on an entry, so mark a former client with a user-defined field of your company's own, usually one named Status or Category, under Key Fields or on the User-Defined Fields tab. Once someone signs in with the MASTER ID (or an ID with SQL administrator rights on the database), TechieCRM sets up the tables and the warning offers Mark as Former client.

Contacts do not get this warning: a contact is a person at a client, and people leaving a company is everyday upkeep rather than the end of the relationship. Their History notes are kept either way (below).

If nothing is attached, you get a plain "Delete “”?" confirmation.

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, except History notes, which are kept (below). 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.

History notes are kept. History notes are the permanent activity log (Chapter 17), and deleting a record never deletes them: not the entry's own, and not those of a company's contacts. The Delete dialog lists them on their own line, marked kept: the permanent activity log is never deleted, the delete choice reads Delete them together with this entry (History notes are kept), and a line under the list says: "History notes are the permanent activity log, so they are never deleted. Whatever you choose below, they stay in the database as the record of what happened." If you choose to move the connected records, History notes move with the other notes. When the delete is done, the message tells you how many History notes were kept.

A History note records the delete (October 2026). Deleting a contact writes a History note on its company or individual: who deleted it, its name, and each of its fields that had a value. Deleting a company or individual writes a History note on your own user record instead (the entry itself is gone): its name, who deleted it, what happened to its connected records, and every basic field and user-defined field that had a value, one "Label: value" line each. That note is kept in TechieCRM and the cloud only, never in the office CRM. The result message says where the note was saved; if it could not be saved, the delete still stands and the message says why. See Chapter 17, History notes TechieCRM writes about changes and deletes.

The client row itself is removed by the source CRM's own delete procedure. If that procedure ever removed History notes by itself, TechieCRM cannot stop it, but it does not hide it: the result message then ends with a Warning saying how many History notes the source CRM removed, so you can report it.

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 move is all or nothing (13 Oct 2026). When you choose to move the connected records, every kind of record moves together, or none does: if the database refuses any part of the move, nothing is moved, the record is not deleted, and the message begins "The connected records were not moved and nothing was deleted", followed by the reason. Before this update a failure part way could leave some kinds moved and others not.

Moved records now reach the web and the phones. After a move, TechieCRM copies the moved notes, documents, to-dos and meetings to its own database straight away, re-points the saved copies of filed emails, and marks moved sales and tickets as changed, so the next sync carries the move to the cloud. If that copy cannot be made at that moment (for example, no connection to TechieCRM's database), it is retried at the next sync while TechieCRM stays open; the move itself is already saved either way.

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.

Change Password… on a user row (October 2026). Right-click a user row in the Clients list or the Related panel ▸ Change Password… opens the Change Password window for that login: the same one as your own name menu (top right) and the Administrator's Manage Users. You can always use it on your own row. On someone else's row you need user-management rights (MASTER, or a login allowed to modify users), the same rule as Disable Login; without them TechieCRM explains why and nothing opens. The window asks for that login's current password, then the new one twice. It used to say the feature "will be available in User Administration". Preferences… on the same menu is not built yet and says so; each user changes their own preferences in Settings while signed in.

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, Project Plan, Insert a Hyperlink, Print an Envelope, Print a Label, and Assign to Marketing. (Fax is greyed on the desktop ribbon; see Chapter 2.) 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 Related panel now titles the dialog (Alternate Address) instead of (Contact), and lets you edit the Company field instead of locking it. The Related 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.

A rarer kind of contact is now treated as a contact (2 Oct 2026)

The source CRM marks most contacts with one of two internal type codes. A few databases also hold contacts under a third, less common code. Those contacts are real people under a real company, with names and phone numbers like any other, but until October 2026 TechieCRM did not recognise the code. In the Clients list they showed no icon and no tooltip, narrowing the type filter to Contacts hid them, and the copy TechieCRM keeps for the cloud left them out, so TechieCRM Live and the phone apps could not be relied on to show them.

On the desktop they are now contacts in every place: the contact icon and tooltip, the Contacts type filter, the contact name on a sale or a service ticket, and the copy kept for the cloud. TechieCRM Live and the phone apps follow in their own updates. On a typical database this is only a handful of people. Nothing is written back to the source CRM; TechieCRM only reads the code differently.

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.