This does happen fairly commonly in accountancy practices – for example when an individual is a contact on a client company, say, a director, and yet is also a private client for their own personal tax return.


Imagine Joe Bloggs is a director of a company called Acme Ltd. You are doing corporate work for Acme Ltd, but are also engaged by Joe Bloggs to do his personal tax return. 


However, Joe Bloggs may not wish other directors to see his tax return or learn about his private financial affairs. 

In this case, it's necessary to set Joe Bloggs up twice – once as a client in his own right, once as a contact on Acme Ltd. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Creating a linked individual from the contact of a company


The Copy To feature works by providing an easy way to create a new Client from an existing Client Contact. The feature can be configured by going to General Settings > Clients:



and selecting what kind of client type you would like to Copy To - we'll choose Individual from the lookup:



(NB: Any custom client types you add to Senta will also appear in this lookup).


Clients and contacts can now be linked in Senta easily. The client and contact continue to exist as separate entities, but they are linked and their contact details can be synced across records. So, if you changed their contact name, for example, on the Ltd Company, it would update on the Individual record too.


For example, we have a Limited Company client called Bloggs Ltd:


The client has a Contact called Jane Bloggs. We need to do Jane's Personal tax return; so we need a new Individual client for this work. On each Contact, there is a button to the right that says "Copy to [client type]":



This will allow you to copy a Contact directly to a new client record:



In this example, an Individual. 



This will also add a Contact to the new client record, including a link to the original Contact record:




How can clients that are linked to multiple records use the Client portal?


You can set up your clients with the option to switch between their linked profiles (e.g. corporate or individual) on their Client portal. To do this, you will have to ensure that the email address for the client matches across all of their profiles. The email address will also have to be activated on each profile. 


Please note that Senta will only send the welcome email and password set up email to your client the first time they are activated. If you then activate the same email address on other client records, they will simply appear as "activated".


When clients log into the client portal, they will see a dropdown menu asking them which portal they want to log in to.



Once they are logged in, at the top right of the screen there will also be a dropdown menu telling them which profile they are currently logged in as, where they can choose to switch to a different profile.




Linking an existing individual to a company


Linking individuals to companies is straightforward, all you need to do is find the relevant contact under the contacts tab for a client/individual. Click on 'Link to another contact'











You will then be given the option to select which contact to link to.




















Once you have selected the contact to link, you can select whether to merge information between the contacts.






























Any linked contacts will be displayed on the contact card in the company, and for the individual.








When you activate a client for their second (or subsequent) company, they are not sent an activation email, as long as you enter the same email address. Instead, this new company is associated with their existing login. You will see a message saying "This existing user can now switch to this company". 

Unlinking clients and contacts


To unlink a contact and client, go to the company's client page, and click on the 'Contacts' tab. Find the contact you want to unlink, and click on the link symbol.



Click to confirm that you want to remove the link.



If a contact is linked to multiple companies and one of their companies closes down, you can prevent portal access to this company's records by deactivating this contact on the client record. The contact will still be able to access records for all of their other companies via the portal.