A contact is a customer. Everything else in ShineCRM (estimates, jobs, invoices, conversations) hangs off a contact. Contacts are managed by owners and admins.
Open Contacts in the sidebar. You get a searchable table (by name, phone, or email) with a pipeline-stage filter, recent or alphabetical sort, and summary cards across the top: total contacts, new leads, in flight, and completed.
Select one or more rows to reveal a bulk action bar. From there you can set the pipeline stage, set the customer type, set the lead source, export to CSV, or delete.
Bulk delete is owner/admin only and is permanent. It cascades: deleting a contact also deletes their jobs, estimates, and invoices. ShineCRM refuses to bulk-delete any contact that has a paid invoice, to protect your financial records.
The contact page
A contact’s page saves as you edit (no Save button). The header has a New menu to start an estimate, job, or invoice already linked to this customer, a call button when in-app calling is available, and an AI summary that reads the full history and tells you where things stand.
The cards below cover:
- Contact info with field history you can restore (handy when a number changes)
- Addresses (a contact can have several)
- Recurring services for this customer
- AI activity with suggestions from Suds AI
- Notes for your team (internal, never shown to the customer)
- Pipeline stage
- Card on file (see below)
- Segmentation: customer type and lead source
- Messaging: the SMS opt-out, plus mute automated messages
- Reviews left on Google, Facebook, and Yelp
- Related records: every estimate, job, and invoice
Card on file
Request a card from the customer with a secure link sent by text or email. Once saved, you can charge their invoices without sending a payment link each time. Cards are stored by Stripe, not by ShineCRM; deleting a card here removes it from Stripe too.
Mute automated messages
Turning this on stops job reminders, review requests, and auto-replies for this contact on every channel. Manual messages you send yourself still go through. Use it for a customer who has asked you to stop the automated nudges without opting out of texts entirely.
Frequently asked
Where do addresses live?
On the contact, under Addresses. A contact can have multiple service addresses, and the first one is the primary.
Can a technician see contacts?
No. Contacts are owner/admin only.
What happens to a contact’s jobs and invoices if I delete it?
They’re deleted too. That’s why ShineCRM blocks deleting any contact tied to a paid invoice. 