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Help › Contacts

Keep a directory of the people your business works with

Open this in Talisk HQ

Your inbox knows everyone you have ever written to. The directory knows which of them matter to the business and why: this is the accountant, that is the lawyer, these two people at Acme are who you deal with about bills.

Where it is

Go to Contacts and open the Directory card. It shows the directory of the business you are working in, the same way the Customers card does, so switch business first if you want another one's.

How it fills itself

The first time you open it, and again when it has not been refreshed for an hour, TALISK_HQ fills it in from records you already keep:

  • Every active supplier that has sent you a bill, or has a quote filed under it, in Ledger › Vendors becomes a confirmed supplier entry. A shop you only have receipts from (a coffee shop, a gas station) is left out so it does not bury the suppliers you deal with; you can still add one yourself.
  • The addresses a supplier's bills came from become people at that supplier, marked as the people to send bills and statements questions to. TALISK_HQ reads your most recent bills for this. An address that billed you for two different suppliers is left out, because it belongs to a billing service rather than a person at either one. So are no-reply addresses and your own.
  • Whoever sent you a quote by email becomes a person at that supplier, marked as the person to send quotes questions to. This applies to a scanned bill you refile with This is a quote; a quote you upload yourself has no sender, and quotes filed before this arrived are not read back.
  • Anyone with named access to these books (a bookkeeper you invited to log in) becomes a confirmed bookkeeper entry.
  • A bookkeeper who manages your books on the Partner plan becomes a confirmed bookkeeper entry in every business you have. If they stop managing them, nothing new is added, and the entry stays until you delete it.
  • Your bank. A bank account in Ledger › Banking at a bank TALISK_HQ recognises (the big Canadian banks, the larger credit unions and the main US banks) becomes a suggested bank entry. The people TALISK_HQ adds to it are only addresses at that bank you have written to from this business's mailbox, so statement alerts and no-reply senders stay out. Delete the bank entry and it is not suggested again until you restore it from the hidden list.

While it is filling in, the page says so and updates itself when it is done. If that takes more than a minute, the page stops waiting and shows what it has; opening the directory again picks up the rest. Filling in never changes anything you edited: it only adds what is missing.

Suggested advisors from your mail

After filling in from your records, TALISK_HQ looks for your advisors in your mail: an accountant, bookkeeper, lawyer, bank, insurer, landlord or government office. It only looks at people you have replied to on the mailboxes assigned to this business (if it is your only business, mailboxes not assigned to any business count too), so newsletters, notifications and people who only ever wrote to you are left out, as are no-reply addresses and your own. People at one web domain are looked at together as one business. Someone on a Gmail, Outlook or similar address is looked at on their own, with no domain.

TALISK_HQ reads the subjects of your recent messages with each person and the end of their recent messages, where a signature usually is (or the contact profile you already have for them, instead of the mail), and asks the AI which kind of advisor they are, if any. Each business is checked once, and again only when something new turns up, such as a new person at that domain. Suppliers are never suggested this way: a supplier is your supplier record.

A suggested advisor shows why it was suggested, in words you can check, such as "41 emails with Sarah Chen since Mar 2023, including the subject 'Your 2024 T2 return'". Titles and phone numbers read from a signature stay suggested until you confirm the person.

Suggested and confirmed

People TALISK_HQ found on your bills, quotes or bank mail arrive as suggested, because an address read off a document or your mail is evidence rather than you saying so. Open the business and press Confirm beside each person who is right. A business TALISK_HQ suggests appears in the to review list at the top of the directory, where you can:

  • Confirm it;
  • Change role, if TALISK_HQ picked the wrong kind of advisor;
  • mark it Not a business contact. For a business with its own web domain, that blocks the domain, so nobody there is suggested again. For someone on a Gmail or Outlook address, it removes that one address. Either way it goes to the hidden list, where you can restore it.

Everything you add by hand is confirmed from the start.

Adding and editing

  • Add a business with its role (accountant, bookkeeper, lawyer, bank, insurance, landlord, supplier, subcontractor, government or other), its name, and optionally its website, phone, address and notes. A supplier or subcontractor can be linked to its supplier record so its spend and bills show.
  • Add a person to a business with their email address and, if you like, their name, title and phone.
  • Recent bills on a supplier lists its latest bills with their status; select one to open it in Ledger › Expenses. Ledger › Vendors in the note at the top opens the supplier record itself.
  • Change a business's role at any time. Topics the new role does not use are removed from its people.

Who gets what: "send these to"

Each person carries the topics they should hear about. An accountant's people can take year-end, tax, general and their own invoices; a supplier's can take quotes, bills and statements, and general. Each topic has one main contact at each business:

  • the first person you add to a business is the main contact for everything they take;
  • making someone the main contact for a topic takes it off whoever had it.

Deleting, blocking and restoring

  • Delete a person and they are gone from the directory and will not be added back the next time it fills itself in.
  • Delete a business and its people go with it. If it was a supplier, the supplier record and its bills are untouched; the directory simply stops showing that supplier. A deleted supplier or bank is one entry in the hidden list, not one per person.
  • Block domain deletes the business and stops anyone at that web domain from being added to this business's directory again. A business with no domain of its own (one that uses a Gmail or Outlook address) cannot be blocked this way; delete the person instead.
  • Hidden lists everything you deleted or blocked. Restore one and the directory fills itself in again straight away, so a restored supplier comes back with the people from its bills.

On your phone

On your phone, tap More, then Directory. It shows the directory of the business you are working in: your advisors first, then everyone else by role, with the person you would reach at each one, and a search box that looks through the same things as on a computer. Tap a business to see its people. Email beside a person opens a new email to them with only their address filled in, for you to write and send; Call rings them when they have a phone number. Only a confirmed person at a confirmed business has those two buttons, so anyone marked Suggested shows neither until you confirm them. The phone only shows the directory: adding, changing, confirming, hiding and deleting are done in Contacts › Directory on a computer.

Coming back to it

The directory, and the business you have open in it, are part of the page's address, so reloading the page or pressing Back returns you to the same place.

Search

The search box looks through business names, websites and notes, and the names, email addresses, titles and topics of the people at each one.

Writing to people in it

Once a person and their business are both confirmed, the rest of TALISK_HQ knows who they are. A suggested person, or anyone at a suggested business, is never offered as someone to write to until you confirm them.

  • When you type an address in an email, a confirmed person shows their role and business under their name, such as "Accountant · Smith & Co", and typing part of their name finds them even if you have never emailed them from this mailbox.
  • Ask the assistant who your accountant is, or who to send a tax question to. It answers from the people you have confirmed, tells you how many more match but still need confirming, and puts a Write to button under its answer for each person it names. The button opens a new email addressed to them and fills in nothing else; the assistant never writes the email.
  • Choose from your directory fills in the address when you add someone to your scheduled reporting pack or invite a bookkeeper to your books. Each of those still asks the person to confirm or accept in the usual way.
  • The Year-End Handover Pack page offers to email your accountant. It opens an email to your accountant (the main contact for year-end, if you chose one), with a short note saying the pack is attached, and offers your bookkeeper as a copy you can tick. You attach the .zip you downloaded yourself.
Good to know: The directory belongs to one business: a second business you run has its own, and nothing in one is visible from the other. Talisk fills it in from records you already have in that business (your suppliers, the email addresses their bills and emailed quotes came from, anyone you have given named access to your books, a Partner-plan bookkeeper who manages them, and the bank behind a bank account you keep there). A bank entry is only offered for banks Talisk recognises by name, and its people are only addresses at that bank you have written to from this business's mailbox. It also suggests advisors (an accountant, a lawyer, an insurer) only from mail on the mailboxes assigned to that business (plus unassigned mailboxes when you run only one business), only for people you have replied to. Suggesting advisors counts toward your monthly AI usage, and stops when that budget is spent. A supplier entry is your supplier record seen from Contacts, so its spend and bills come from that record and deleting the entry never deletes the supplier, its bills or anything posted. Spend shown here is the supplier's bills dated this fiscal year in your home currency, a running total rather than a figure that ties to a report. Nothing here is synced to your Gmail or Outlook contacts, and nothing here ever sends an email: wherever Talisk offers to write to someone from the directory, it opens an email for you to read and send. Only people you have confirmed, at a business you have confirmed, are ever offered as someone to write to. An address can sit at only one business in the directory. Deleting or blocking keeps an entry from coming back until you restore it from the hidden list.

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