Understanding the contacts tab

Overview

The Contacts tab is your central hub for managing all the people and professionals connected to your care services. Whether it's a service user's family member, a neighbour who checks in regularly, or a social worker coordinating care, the Contacts tab keeps all their details organised and accessible in one place.

What can you do in the Contacts tab?

The Contacts tab allows you to:

• Store contact details for individuals and professionals

• Link contacts to service users, enquiries, and bookings

• Track relationships (e.g., who is a parent, spouse, or friend)

• Manage communication preferences and consent

• Search and filter your contacts

• Access contact history and associated activities

Understanding contact types

Found supports two types of contacts, each designed for different purposes:

1. Personal contacts

Personal contacts are the individuals in a service user's personal network. These might include:

• Family members (parents, children, siblings)

• Friends

• Neighbours

• Partners or spouses

• Power of attorney holders

• Next of kin

When to use: Create a personal contact whenever you need to record details for someone in a service user's personal life who is involved in their care or needs to be kept informed.

2. Professional contacts

Note: This feature is available on Pro plans only

Professional contacts are the work professionals and organisations involved in care services. These might include:

• Referrers (people who refer service users to your organisation)

• Social workers

• GPs and healthcare professionals

• Occupational therapists

• Local authority representatives

• Suppliers and contractors

When to use: Create a professional contact for anyone acting in a professional capacity, particularly if they have a job role or represent an organisation.

Want to learn more? For detailed information about professional contacts, including how to link them to organisations and locations, see our Professional Contacts Knowledge Base article.

How to add a new contact

Adding a new contact is straightforward. Follow these steps:

Step 1: Navigate to the Contacts tab

1. Click on Contacts in the main navigation menu

2. You'll see tabs for Personal, Professional, and Organisations — the Professional and Organisations tabs are always visible, but appear locked (with an upsell prompt) if your workspace isn't on Found Pro

3. Click on the appropriate tab for the type of contact you want to add

Step 2: Click the 'Add contact' button

Look for the Add contact button and click it. A form will appear.

Step 3: Select the contact type

At the top of the form, you'll see a dropdown to select the Contact type:

• Choose Personal for family, friends, and personal connections

• Choose Professional for work professionals and service providers

Note: If you select Professional, additional fields will appear for job role and organisation details.

Step 4: Complete the required information

Fill in the contact's details. The form is organised into clear sections:

Personal details (required)

• Title: Mr, Ms, Mrs, Miss, or Other (optional)

• First name: The contact's given name (required)

• Last name: The contact's surname (required)

Professional details (only for professional contacts)

• Job role: The contact's professional role or position (required for professional contacts)

• Organisations: Link this contact to one or more organisations they work for (optional)

Contact methods (at least one required)

You must provide at least one way to reach this contact:

• Email address: Add one or more email addresses

• Phone number: Add one or more phone numbers

Tip: You can add multiple email addresses and phone numbers. This is useful if someone has both a work and personal number.

Address (optional)

If you want to store the contact's address:

• Enter the street address (line 1 and, optionally, line 2)

• Optionally add the city, county, and postcode

Note: Found only supports UK addresses — there's no country field. None of the address fields are required, even if you start filling one in.

Consents and preferences (optional)

Record the contact's preferences for:

• Privacy consent: Whether they've consented to data processing

• Marketing consent: Whether they've agreed to receive marketing communications

Step 5: Save the contact

Once you've completed the required fields:

1. Review the information for accuracy

2. Click the Save button

3. The system will create the contact and add them to your contacts list

Duplicate detection

Found automatically checks for potential duplicate contacts when you're adding a new one, matching on email address or phone number (not name). If the system finds an existing contact with the same email or phone number, it will show you the matching contact and let you either:

• View the existing contact to check its details, or

• Cancel and adjust the details you entered

Note: Found does not give you the option to continue creating a new contact anyway if any of their contact details match another contact — if you get this alert from the main Contacts tab, you'll need to either use a different email/phone number or use the existing contact instead. The option to directly "use" the matched existing contact in place of creating a new one is only available when you're adding a contact from within another flow, such as picking a referrer while creating an enquiry.

This helps keep your contact database clean and prevents confusion.

Working with contacts after adding them

Once you've added a contact, you can:

Link contacts to service users

• A contact's relationship to a service user (parent, friend, neighbour, etc.) is set when the contact is added to an enquiry — not from the contact's own page.

• From the contact's detail page, the Associated service users tab shows which service users the contact is linked to and their relationship, but this is view-only — you can't add, remove, or edit the relationship from here.

• To change an existing relationship, go to the service user's own profile (its Contacts tab — typically reached via the enquiry) and use the "Edit relationship" action there.

Add contacts to enquiries

When creating or editing an enquiry, you can add existing contacts and specify their role in the enquiry process (e.g. Care seeker, Primary contact). Professional contacts can also be marked as the referrer for an enquiry.

Assign contacts to bookings

Contacts can be assigned to bookings with specific roles:

• Care seeker

• Primary contact

• Next of kin

• Power of attorney (finance)

• Power of attorney (health)

View contact history

Each contact has a detail page showing:

• All service users they're associated with (view-only — see note above on editing relationships)

• Enquiries they're involved in

• Their bookings and (where enabled) funding details

• Their communication preferences and consent status

Permissions

• Personal contacts – available to Admin, Manager, and Staff users by default. A workspace Admin can restrict this per role in Settings if needed.

• Professional contacts & Organisations – Found Pro only. Once your workspace has this enabled, it's automatically available to all roles (Admin, Manager, Staff) — it isn't something that can be locked to specific roles.

• Assigning contacts to bookings – requires the Occupancy module to be enabled for your workspace.

• Funding details on a contact (funders, subscriptions, invoices) – requires Billing-related modules (Funders/Invoicing), and for funders specifically, Occupancy as well.

• Adding contacts to enquiries – requires the CRM module to be enabled.

Tips for managing contacts effectively

1. Keep it current: Regularly update contact details when they change

2. Use meaningful relationships: When linking contacts to service users, select the most accurate relationship type

3. Record preferences: Always log communication and privacy preferences to ensure compliance

4. Avoid duplicates: Use the search function before adding a new contact to check if they already exist

5. Add context: Use all available fields to provide complete information—it helps your team communicate effectively

Searching and filtering contacts

The Contacts tab includes search and filtering tools to help you find contacts by name, email, phone number, organisation, location, or contact type.