Companies and contacts — who you bid, who pays

Every project in STrOp hangs off real parties: the GC you bid to, the owner behind them, the people who answer the phone. Set them up once in the directory and they're a dropdown everywhere else — on pursuits, proposals, and billing — instead of a name retyped five ways.

Add a company

1. Companies (/companies) → + New Company.
2. Name and Type are what matter. Type isn't a label for its own sake — it decides where the company lands when it's linked to work: a General Contractor becomes a project's GC, an Owner its owner. Specifier, Vendor, and Other round out the list.
3. Everything else is optional and grows over time: tier, segment, phone and address, prequalification status (approved limit, expiry) once you've been through a GC's prequal, and your own custom fields.
4. Create Company. If the name looks like one you already have, STrOp shows the similar companies first — pick the existing one rather than minting a duplicate; a split company splits its history.

Add the people

1. Contacts (/contacts) → + New Contact — or, from a company's page, + Add Contact, which pre-links the new person to that company.
2. First name is the only required field. Link the Company, and add title, email, phone, lead source, and buying roles (who holds the budget, who signs) as you learn them — the buying-role picture is what makes your next bid to that GC smarter.

Where it pays off

• Radar conversions link themselves — when an opportunity converts to a pursuit, the company you named rides along into the right slot, typed by what it is.
• Proposals address themselves — the GC and contact pickers on a proposal read from this directory.
• History accumulates in one place — every job bid to the same GC builds the record you'll check before bidding them the next one.

Common mistakes

• Everything typed "Other." An untyped company can't land in the right slot on a conversion, and your GC list stops meaning anything.
• Duplicates from the estimating rush. "ABC Builders" and "ABC Builders Inc" are two companies to the database and half a history each. Use the similar-companies check.
• Companies without people. A company with no contacts is a logo. The person who returns your calls is the asset — log them.

See also

• Log an opportunity and work the pipeline
• Send your first proposal