Company Only Contacts

[hadzo]

Hi, I see Firstname/Lastname fields are requered, what about those company contacts that do not have one? How do I add them? In my country company name should be in bold and before first name/last name of the contact person - in fact the name of the contact person is not even required on invoices. Sometimes all info I have is Company name/address and company email like info@company.com - how do I enter such a company as a contact in blesta?

[Michael]

I've not come across this before, maybe you could open a feature request to assign where the first name / last name is required., otherwise I think it would be editing a few templates.

[hadzo]

I will open a feature request

[thynan]

Hi,

 

we would also definitely need this. There should be a difference between company contacts, and private contacts. We have some customers where we don't have a specific contact firstname/lastname. Only the Company name. This should be reflected in E-Mail Templates, and also on Invoices. And of course Firstname/Lastname can't be a required field in this case.

 

Can you post a link to the feature request? I don't seem to find it.

[thynan]

Ok, I solved it by hacking core a bit. Here's what I did:

 

1. in app/models/contact.php I commented out the first_name and last_name validation. So now I can create clients and contacts with empty first- and lastname.

2. On the invoice, I automatically get the desired customer-address. The firstname lastname is empty, so I only get the companyname on the first line, and then the address.

3. In my email-templates, I edited the first line to this:

{% if contact.first_name %} Sehr geehrte/r {contact.first_name} {contact.last_name}, {% endif %}

{% if not contact.first_name %} Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, {% endif %}

So if I have a contact first_name, I greet the customer with his name, else (if it's a company) I just write a generic greeting.

 

Can anybody think of other areas where I could run into trouble because of the missing firstname/lastname?

[Tyson]

An if/else might work more succinctly:

{% if contact.first_name %} Sehr geehrte/r {contact.first_name} {contact.last_name}, {% else %} Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, {% endif %}

[thynan]

 

An if/else might work more succinctly:

{% if contact.first_name %} Sehr geehrte/r {contact.first_name} {contact.last_name}, {% else %} Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, {% endif %}

Ah, you're obviously right - was in a bit of a hurry..

 

Can you see any other implications by removing the firstname / lastname as required, except on invoices and emails? I can't think of anything right now, but i don't want the system to crash on any important operation because of a missing name...

[Tyson]

A contact needs to have a name, even if it's blank, so I don't see any issue with having a blank name. You just won't see it where it is used and might end up with areas where it may say something like "Hello ,". The system will prevent the entry of a blank name, though, so you would need to work around that.