Companies - Part 3 - Create Company Records

Creating Company Records

Company records are easy to create:

1. Navigate to Laboratory Management > Companies > New Company (the plus [+] sign next to the Companies menu item is a shortcut to this tab)
   The New Company tab and the [+] shortcut are only available to users with the Companies:Create Companies permission. The Companies menu item itself needs the Desktop:Show Companies Menu Item permission, and its label can be renamed per OU, so it may appear under a different name in your account.
2. On enterprise accounts, if you are allowed to create companies in more than one Location, select the company's Location in the required Select Facility field at the top of the form, above Name. Your home Location is selected by default if you can create companies there; otherwise one of the other Locations you are allowed to use is selected. Changing the Location reloads the form, and the Main Contact search and the Category list are then limited to the chosen Location.
   If you can only create companies in one Location, or your account is not an enterprise account, this field is not shown and the Location is set automatically.
3. Enter the company Name in the required field. Each company name must be unique within the account, and this includes names already used by inactive companies. If the name is already in use, the message Name has already been taken is shown and the company is not created.
   
   
   
4. All the other details are optional and can be added later. These are Main Contact, Address, Telephone Number, City/Town, State/Prov/County, ZIP/Postal Code, Country, Fax Number, Email Address, Customer Account Number, Website, Address Notes, OU(s) and Category.
   The Email Address should be a work email address; private, personal email addresses should not be used.
   There are three fields of interest which are not free text:
   
   
   • Main Contact - this is a search-as-you-type field; it populates with names from the Contacts module
     
     

     Note

     The Main Contact has to be added in the Contacts module before it can be selected in this field. Only contacts whose Visibility is set to Public on their contact record are listed; contacts set to Private cannot be selected. On enterprise accounts, the search only lists contacts in the company's Location, plus contacts with no Location (for example, external contacts). The contact does not need to be linked to the company first. When the company is saved, the Main Contact is automatically linked to this company. A contact can only belong to one company, so if the contact was previously linked to a different company, they are moved to this one. External contacts can be associated with the company they work for in their contact record or from within the company record, under the ‘Contacts’ tab. Once the company has been created, click Manage Contacts on that tab to add contacts in a pop-up window; this link is only shown to users with permission to edit contacts. To simplify work, contacts can be added to the system first, then the company record can be created and the contacts can be linked to it.

     
     

   • OUs - companies can be associated with selected OUs; if not set, the company will be available in all OUs
     
     

     Note

     This search-as-you-type field allows choosing more than one item; each selected item has an “X” next to it so it can be removed.

     
     
   • Category - a dropdown menu of existing categories is available in this field; categories can be created to classify companies (please see below). On enterprise accounts, the list only shows categories available to the company's Location.
     
     
5. Click Create Company to complete the process.
   If the company is created successfully, the message Created new company: <name> is shown and the new company record opens, with tabs such as General, Contacts, Notes, Tasks, Attachments, Links and Changelog (some tab names may differ if they have been renamed in your account). If there is a problem, for example a missing or duplicate Name, the errors are shown on the form and the company is not created.

Managing Company Categories

Company categories are a user configurable field. Categories can be accessed by clicking the wrench/spanner icon which appears by the Category field in the New Company tab. The wrench icon is only shown to users with the Companies:Edit Companies permission, so users who can create but not edit companies will not see it. It can also be revealed by clicking the pencil icon under the Category field in the General tab of active company records.

Instructions on how to manage this configurable look-up field can be found in the article Managing Configurable Look-up Lists.

Next Step:

The next article covers Search and Edit Company Records

Previous Step:

The previous article covers Permissions and Settings for Companies