Understanding the Difference Between Individuals, Clients & Contacts
Contents
2. Contacts
3. Individuals
Clients & Contacts
A client is an individual, company, or trust, that your firm manages via a Connectworks subscription.
A contact is any person, company, or trust associated with a client which is not itself a client
There are a number of differences between contacts and clients:
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Clients incur subscription charges; contacts do not
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Clients have dedicated Connectworks Workspaces; contacts do not
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Clients are created in Connectworks in a firm's Clients tab; contacts are created by being added as associated parties to subscribed clients
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Clients have dedicated AML Workflows; contacts do not (though contacts do appear as CDD Candidates in the AML Workflows of the clients they are associated with)
There are also similarities:
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Clients and contacts can both be added as associated parties to subscribed entities
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Individual clients and individual contacts can both be invited to access Connectworks
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Individual clients and individual contacts can both have identity information and documents loaded against their profiles and have their identities verified
Contacts
The people who appear in your contacts list are not necessarily your firm's clients. A contact is any party associated with any entity you manage in Connectworks (eg. a director, shareholder, trustee or beneficiary). There is no subscription cost for contacts as this is covered by their associated entity subscription/s.
Contact profiles cannot be added to Connectworks via the contacts list, but rather appear there automatically when you add an associated party to a subscribed entity (eg. adding a trustee to a trust that your firm manages).
Contacts are available as CDD candidates in the AML workflow of their associated entity. If a person is part of a company or trust managed by your firm you should load the entity and then add them as an associated party, rather than set them up as an individual.
Contacts can have identity information and documents loaded against them. This can be done within the Clients>Contacts list using the edit profile in the Cogs menu
Contact = Identity Verified
- The person is a contact only, so no AML is required, Connectworks shows if the Identity has been verified and the date completed.
Identity Information can be uploaded within the AML compliance workflow of the contacts associated entity, however, this is not recommended as the contact could already be in Connectworks attached to other entities and have Identity Verified, this can create duplicate and unnecessary work.
Importing a company from the Companies Office creates a contact profile for all the recorded directors and shareholders of the company. However, this often creates duplicate profiles which require merging. Keeping your contacts list merged reduces ongoing administration, and prevents errors and double handling of information. Connectworks recommends scheduling a monthly merge check to ensure your contacts list is well maintained.
Individuals
An individual is a person who is a client of your firm in an individual capacity (eg. A sole trader). Individual subscriptions are $5 per person, per annum.
People set up as individuals can be invited into Connectworks. They have access to a personal workspace where they can store their own documents, and your firm can store their documents and distribute documents to the individual for signing.
Individuals can have the AML workflow completed against them as a person, rather than as an associated party of another entity.
Client = AML Status
- The identity-verified status is swapped out for AML Status. Because the client requires AML to be completed in their personal profile.
Commonly Asked Questions
Q. Why are there companies in my contacts list?
A. When importing a client company from the Companies Office, sometimes another company is recorded as a shareholder. An empty "shell profile" is created for this company to record against the share allocation. If you're using our AML workflow, Connectworks recommends that these shareholder companies are re-connected to a real version of the company so you can identify Ultimate Beneficial Ownership and perform CDD on the natural-born persons, as required by the DIA.
Q. I set up an individual profile for someone who was already in my contacts list, what do I do?
A. You need to downgrade the profile to the contact profile and merge the duplicates together.
Q. Do I need to upgrade a contact to an individual to invite them into Connectworks?
A. Not necessarily. If you want to invite a contact this can be done via their associated entity workspace and specific access rights are applied within each entity. See more in our article How to Invite Clients into Connectworks.
However, if you want to invite the person into Connectworks without allowing them to access any of their entity profiles this can be done easily, you just need to upgrade the contact profile to an individual subscription. Be aware that this will incur a $5 per annum subscription fee.