Contacts: The People Behind the Pallets
Managing contact persons in ReVend OS — because companies don’t send you emails, people do.
A company is a legal entity. It has a VAT number and an address. But it has never picked up a phone and asked you about a settlement. People do that. Contacts are the people.
Why contacts matter
When a shipment arrives and half the serial numbers don’t match the manifest, you don’t call “Econocom.” You call Pieter, because Pieter is the one who actually assembled the manifest and might know why laptop number 47 is a ThinkPad instead of a Latitude.
When the settlement needs approval, you don’t email “ING Bank.” You email Sandra from the asset management team, because Sandra is the person who can actually click the approve button. Or forward it to someone who can. Contacts are the humans who make the business relationship work.
Contact structure
Every contact belongs to exactly one company. They have a name, a job title, a department, a preferred language and a preferred way of being reached, plus the actual ways to reach them: phone numbers typed as mobile, office, direct or fax; email addresses typed as work, personal, invoicing or other; and social links for LinkedIn, X, Xing, WhatsApp, Facebook and YouTube. One phone and one email can be marked as the primary one for that person.
Yes, WhatsApp. Because in the ITAD world, half of your negotiations happen on WhatsApp and the other half happen in a language that your ERP doesn’t speak. At least now you can click the WhatsApp link directly from the contact card instead of searching for the number on your phone.
Primary contacts
One contact per company can be flagged as primary. When your team opens the contact picker on a new inbound order, that flag is visible, so the right person is the obvious pick rather than a memory test. It’s usually the person who responds to emails within the same business day. In our experience, this is never the CEO and always someone whose title contains the word “operations” or “logistics.”
Contact roles and tags
Each contact carries one role. The roles are not a fixed list baked into the software: the tenant keeps its own catalog under Settings, with the system roles the platform ships and whatever your organization adds on top. Roles are a filter in the contact list, so “who handles logistics at this leasing company” is a two-click question. Tags come from the same universal tagging system as companies and documents, and can be assigned when the contact is created or later on the detail page. Need to argue about grading? Filter for technical. (Just kidding. Everyone argues about grading.)