Overview
Contacts are the people at an account - the homeowner, the office manager, the site supervisor. Each account needs at least one, and can have as many as you need.
Contacts are who MotionOps emails and texts when you send a proposal or invoice, and who your techs call from the field. Getting them right is what makes the rest of the platform reach the right person.
Available in the Web App and the Mobile App.
When to Use This Feature
A married couple both need to receive the proposal, and either might approve it.
A commercial account has an office manager who handles invoices and a facilities lead who handles scheduling.
Your main contact changed jobs and someone new took over the account.
A customer has a cell and a landline, and your tech needs both.
You're setting up a property management account where each building has a different point of contact.
How It Works
Every account has one primary contact. That's the default person for the account, and on residential accounts their name can also serve as the account's display name.
Additional contacts sit alongside the primary one. When you send a proposal, change order, or invoice, you choose which contacts receive it.
Contacts can also be assigned per service location, so the right person is reached for work at a specific address. See Service Locations.
How to Add a Contact
Open the account.
Add a new contact from the contacts area of the account overview.
Enter their name and email address.
Enter a phone number. The country code selector defaults to your business country.
Add a mobile phone as a second number if they have one. This is optional.
Decide whether this person should be the primary contact. See the section below for how this toggle behaves.
Save the contact.
How the Primary Contact Works
The Set as primary contact toggle behaves differently depending on what's already on the account:
If the account has no primary contact yet, the toggle is on by default. The first contact you add becomes the primary automatically.
If a primary contact already exists, the toggle is off by default. You have to turn it on deliberately.
Turning it on when a primary already exists swaps them. The new contact becomes primary, and the previous primary becomes a regular contact. Nobody is deleted.
That's how you handle a change of contact at a commercial account - add the new person, mark them primary, and the old contact stays on file for reference.
Contacts and the Account Display Name
When you create an account, MotionOps offers to build the account's display name from your contact information.
On residential accounts, Use Primary Contact as a Display Name names the account after the primary contact.
On commercial accounts, Use Company Name as a Display Name uses the business name instead.
Both toggles are on by default. Switch one off and type your own display name if you'd rather control it - for example naming a residential account "Smith - Maple St Rental" to tell it apart from the same customer's home.
If you turn the toggle off and then switch between residential and commercial during the same account creation, it stays off. It resets to on for the next new account.
Two Phone Numbers per Contact
Each contact holds a phone number and an optional mobile number. Both use the country code selector, pre-set to your business country.
Where MotionOps displays a contact's phone number and no primary number exists, it falls back to the mobile number - so a contact with only a cell still shows a reachable number everywhere.
On the Mobile App, tapping a contact with two numbers asks which one to call. Contacts with a single number dial straight through.
Editing and Deleting Contacts
Edit a contact from the account overview to update their details, change their numbers, or make them the primary contact.
Deleting a contact asks you to confirm first. Once removed, the contact is no longer available to send documents to.
Both actions depend on your permissions:
Adding contacts requires create permission.
Editing requires edit permission.
Deleting requires delete permission.
See Standard User Roles for how these are assigned.
Choosing Who Receives a Document
When you send a proposal, change order, or invoice, the send window lists the account's contacts so you can pick recipients.
Contacts also determine who receives replies to the emails MotionOps sends on your behalf.
If you need to send to someone who isn't a contact on the account, the mobile send screens let you type an email address directly.
Contacts and Text Messaging
If you've set up SMS, contacts are who your texts go to, and each contact's consent status is tracked individually.
A contact who opts out stops receiving texts. Keeping accurate mobile numbers on your contacts is what makes SMS work at all.
See SMS Compliance & Best Practices for consent and opt-out handling.
Contacts on the Mobile App
Your field team can manage contacts from the account screen, subject to their permissions:
Add a new contact.
Edit an existing contact.
Delete a contact, with a confirmation step.
Open a contact's preview to see their full details.
Tap a contact to call them, choosing between numbers when there are two.
Contacts also appear on work order and appointment details, so a tech can reach the right person without navigating back to the account. Where more than three contacts exist on a work order overview, the list expands to show the rest.
Tips & Best Practices
Add both homeowners as contacts. Either spouse can then approve the proposal, which removes a common source of delay.
Fill in the mobile number, not just the phone. It's what makes click-to-call useful in the field and what your texts rely on.
Swap the primary rather than editing over the old one. When a commercial contact leaves, add their replacement and mark them primary. You keep the history instead of overwriting it.
Split responsibilities on commercial accounts. Send invoices to the office manager and schedule with the facilities lead by assigning contacts per service location.
Keep emails current. A stale email address is the most common reason a customer says they never got the proposal.
Things to Know
Every account has a primary contact. The first contact you add takes that role automatically.
Only one contact can be primary at a time. Promoting a new one demotes the previous primary rather than deleting them.
The mobile phone number is optional. The primary phone number is the main field.
Phone displays fall back to the mobile number when no primary number exists.
Adding, editing, and deleting contacts are each governed by separate permissions.
Deleting a contact requires confirmation.
Adding a contact to an account does not add them to existing service locations. Assign them to the location separately.
Account display name toggles reset to on for each new account you create.
Troubleshooting
The Set as primary contact toggle is off and I can't tell why.
The account already has a primary contact. The toggle is off by default in that case so you don't reassign it by accident. Turn it on to swap them.
A contact I added isn't showing on the service location.
Contacts aren't pushed to existing locations automatically. Edit the service location and select them there.
The account name changed after I edited a contact.
The account is using the primary contact's name as its display name. Turn that option off and set a display name manually if you want them independent.
I can't add or delete a contact.
These are separate permissions on your role. Ask an admin to check whether you have contact create and delete rights.
I need to send a proposal to someone who isn't a contact.
On the Mobile App you can type an email address directly in the send screen. Otherwise, add them as a contact on the account first.
My customer isn't receiving texts.
Check that the contact has a valid mobile number and hasn't opted out of messages. See SMS Compliance & Best Practices.
Have questions? Reach out via the support chat or email support@motionops.com.