Understanding Clients

Overview

A Client represents the organisation you have an ongoing business relationship with.

In many industries, this is the organisation that manages the work rather than the organisation that ultimately pays the invoice.

Clients sit at the centre of the JGID CRM, allowing you to group together all related Contacts, Locations and business documents under a single organisation.

What Is a Client?

It can be the Company paying the invoice, like for example:

Government department
Private business
Principal Contractor

Or..

Very often the "Client" is typically an organisation such as:

Strata Management company
Facility Management company
Property Management company

Each Client can have multiple Contacts and multiple Locations linked to it.

This structure allows you to manage your relationship with an organisation, regardless of how many people or worksites are involved.

Client History

One of the biggest advantages of the Client record is that it provides a complete history of your relationship with that organisation.

From the Client record, you can view all related:

Enquiries
Opportunities
Quotes
Jobs
Invoices

This includes documents created across all Locations linked to that Client.

Instead of searching through multiple areas of JGID, everything can be viewed from one place.

Clients and Locations

A single Client may manage one Location or hundreds of Locations.

For example, a Facility Management company may manage hundreds of buildings across different suburbs or even different states.

Each building is recorded as its own Location, while the managing organisation remains the Client.

This allows you to view both:

The complete history for an individual Location.
The complete relationship with the managing organisation across every Location they manage.

Clients and Billing

One of JGID's unique strengths is that the Client is not necessarily the organisation that receives the invoice.

For example, a Facility Management company may manage a building on behalf of the building owner.

From a CRM perspective, it makes sense to group all of that work under the Facility Management company, allowing you to easily view every Quote, Job and Invoice across all of the buildings they manage.

However, the invoice may need to be addressed to the individual building owner or another billing entity.

Using the Bill To feature, JGID allows invoices to be issued to the correct organisation while keeping the project linked to the managing Client.

This provides the best of both worlds:

Your CRM remains organised around the organisations that manage your work.
Your accounting records correctly reflect the organisation responsible for payment.

When synchronising with Xero, the Bill To organisation becomes the Xero customer, while the managing Client relationship is retained within JGID.

For more information, see Bill To Client vs Contact vs Location.

Clients and Contacts

Each Client can have multiple Contacts.

For example, different people may be responsible for:

Operations
Accounts
Site Management
Purchasing

Linking Contacts to the Client ensures everyone involved with that organisation can be managed from a single record.

Tasks and Notes

Clients can have their own Tasks and permanent Notes.

These remain attached to the Client record and are available whenever someone opens that Client.

Examples include:

Preferred communication methods.
Customer-specific requirements.
Contract information.
Account management notes.
Follow-up reminders.

Keeping this information with the Client ensures valuable knowledge stays with your business rather than individual staff members.

Why Managers Love Client Records

The Client record becomes the complete history of your relationship with an organisation.

Managers can instantly see every Enquiry, Opportunity, Quote, Job and Invoice across all Locations managed by that Client, making it easy to understand the full scope of the relationship.

Combined with the flexible Bill To functionality, JGID allows your CRM to be organised around the organisations that manage your work while ensuring invoices are issued to the correct billing entity.

This makes JGID particularly well suited to industries such as rope access, height safety, facilities management, maintenance and construction, where the organisation managing the work is often different from the organisation paying for it.

Best Practice

Create one Client record for each organisation you have a business relationship with.
Link all relevant Contacts and Locations to the Client.
Use the Bill To feature when invoices need to be sent to a different organisation.
Record important Tasks and permanent Notes against the Client.
Keep Client information up to date so it remains the central hub of your customer relationship.

Understanding the CRM
Understanding Contacts
Understanding Locations
Bill To Client vs Contact vs Location
Understanding Xero Synchronisation