Adding clients and contacts (entity types explained)
A step-by-step guide to adding clients in Finye, choosing the right entity type, and attaching the contacts who act for each one.
Your client list is the foundation everything else in Finye sits on. Work items, compliance obligations, invoices, engagement letters and the client portal all hang off a client record, so it pays to set each one up properly from the start. This guide walks you through adding a client, choosing the right entity type, and attaching the contacts who actually deal with you.
Clients versus contacts
Finye keeps a clear distinction between the two. A client is the entity you are engaged to act for: a company, a trust, a partnership, a sole trader or a self managed super fund. A contact is a person you communicate with about that client: the director who signs off the BAS, the bookkeeper who sends you bank statements, the spouse who is also a trustee. One client can have many contacts, and the same person can appear as a contact on more than one client where that reflects reality, such as a director who controls several entities in a group.
Adding a new client
- Open Clients from the main navigation and select Add client.
- Choose whether the client is an organisation or an individual. This choice drives which entity types and fields you see next.
- Select the entity type (covered in detail below). Getting this right matters because it shapes the compliance obligations Finye expects to track for the client.
- Enter the legal name exactly as it appears on ASIC or ATO records, then add the trading or preferred name if it differs.
- Record the identifiers you hold, such as ABN, ACN and TFN. These feed compliance tracking and appear on invoices and engagement letters.
- Set the client's status and assign a responsible staff member or partner so the work has an owner from day one.
- Save the record. You can return and complete the remaining details at any time.
Entity types explained
Finye uses Australian entity types so the rest of the platform can behave sensibly. Choose the one that matches the client's legal structure.
Company
An incorporated entity registered with ASIC, identified by an ACN and usually an ABN. Companies carry obligations such as income tax returns, BAS or IAS where registered for GST, and ASIC annual reviews. Attach the directors and the public officer as contacts.
Trust
A trust holds assets for beneficiaries and lodges its own income tax return. Record the trustee, which may itself be a company, and note that a corporate trustee will often exist as its own company record in your client list. Attach the trustee and appointor as contacts.
Partnership
Two or more parties carrying on business together. The partnership lodges a partnership return, and each partner reports their share in their own return. Add every partner as a contact so you know who can authorise work and approve documents.
Sole trader
An individual operating a business under their own ABN. There is no separate legal entity, so the business and the person are one. The individual is both the client and, typically, the primary contact.
SMSF
A self managed super fund has its own tax and regulatory obligations, including an annual return and an independent audit. Record the trustees, whether individual or corporate, and treat the fund as distinct from the members' personal affairs.
Adding contacts to a client
- Open the client record and go to the Contacts tab.
- Select Add contact and enter the person's name, email and phone number.
- Note their role, such as director, trustee, partner or bookkeeper, so anyone in your team can see at a glance who does what.
- Mark the primary contact. This is the person Finye treats as the default recipient for communications and the natural point of contact for portal access.
- Repeat for every person you deal with on that client. Accurate contacts make email to ticket, engagement letters and document requests route to the right people automatically.
Why accurate records pay off
The entity type and contacts you set here flow through the whole platform. The compliance engine uses the entity type to anticipate the right lodgment obligations and due dates. Engagement letters and invoices pull the legal name and identifiers straight from the client record. Email to ticket matches inbound messages to the correct client when the sender is a known contact. The client portal invites the contacts you nominate. Spending a few extra minutes on a clean record removes guesswork later.
A practical tip for client groups
Where a family or business group spans several entities, set up each entity as its own client and reuse the same people as contacts across them. That gives you accurate returns and obligations per entity while keeping the human relationships visible. A corporate trustee, for example, exists as a company client in its own right and also appears as the trustee contact on the trust it serves.
Once your clients and contacts are in place, the next step is putting work against them. See our guides on managing work items and on tracking compliance obligations over at the Finye guides library, and when you are ready to bring clients into the loop, the client portal guide shows how to invite the contacts you just added.