Things to consider when creating individual vs company Professional Advisers in Xplan

Hi michelle.butler.0​ ,

What a great question. Like courtney.youngblutt​, I'm in two minds as well, so I'll point out the pros and cons for you rather than just telling you what I think you should do.

Adding your professional contact as an individual

• Communication is done with an individual, you don't talk to a company as an entity, so it's easier and faster to identify your professional contact by name.
• Coding emails (such as thank you and confirmation emails) automatically sent to an "individual" rather than a "company" entity is neater and easier, using the individuals first name rather than the company details. An extension of this is getting the correct contact details. Adding an individual entity ensures you include their direct contact information, whereas a Company with multiple listed Professional Contacts might lead to mistakenly sent emails to the wrong contacts' address within that company.
• More straight forward when wanting direct details and contact information for reporting purposes. The set up for Xmerge or Xport reporting may be easier than if this information was held under a Company entity... depending on what info you want included in the report.

Adding your professional contact as a company

• People come and go from a company, and when they do, do you want to be having to add their replacement into the system and then changing all your client relationship details to the new professional contact? By setting them up as a Company, you can avoid this administrative task.
• You can list multiple individuals that you deal with under the Company entity without having to create them as individuals in Xplan. You can do this by using any of the standard group fields that meet this requirement, or you can create your own. Reporting may need to be well thought out in this instance, as you might want/need to also add a custom field to identify who the person is that is directly related to your client (if you have multiple listed under the Company entity). This field can then be pulled into your Xmerge or Xport reports.

The above points are just a couple to think about, as it is ultimately a personal preference and sometimes would also be dependent on the situation (ie. you could add a professional contact that is a small, one-man company as an individual, however you might want to add them as a company for larger businesses who you might have multiple people that you deal with).

Finally, you need to think about how these contacts will be used, especially for automation purposes (like the email example above, you wouldn't want the wrong person at a company receiving an email), and also for reporting; what is important to understand about your contacts in your reports and is it easily extractable? 

I hope this has given you some food for thought.

If anyone else has some insight or examples of how they set up professional advisers / contacts, please feel free to share and why it works well for you, we would love to hear about it!

Thanks for sharing michelle.butler.0​! Looking forward to hearing what the community has to suggest.

Such a good question michelle.butler​ - I'm in two minds. And I am off to Vietnam for 3 weeks from tomorrow. 🌴 So I'm going to tag in a bunch of people who may have some thoughts on the best approach here or who at least may be able to provide some of the pros and cons to think about. - laura.capozzi​, zita.white​ , jaclyn.bazin4​ , tracey.atkins2​, jessica.lamb​ - any thoughts on this? 

Thanks courtney.youngblutt​ I will await the Teams thoughts before I proceed. 

Thank you so much for all your insights on this topic laura.capozzi​, much to consider! Such a gem you are 💎