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Understanding Contacts & How They Power Your Workflow

Your contacts are the shared record of every company and person you do business with.

Written by Jen Gadus

How Riffle Uses Contacts

Riffle uses them three ways:

  • As a single source of truth so your whole team works off the same list.

  • As the data that powers smart features like advanced priority scoring and prospect matching.

  • As the historical record of your working relationships, keeping track of your full working history with each contact person and company.

How your contact list gets started

You don't start with an empty list. When you create your Riffle account, we scan your recent bid invites and automatically build out the companies and people we find. That means on day one you already have a populated Contacts section that reflects the GCs, architects, and other partners you've been working with.

From there, Riffle keeps the list up to date. Any new GC or contact on a bid invite you accept is added automatically. You can also add companies and people manually at any time, or have us import an existing contact list to get you fully set up.


Two views of the same list: People and Companies

The Contacts section is split into two tabs because companies are the parent record and people belong to them.

💡Tip: certain contact data (win rate, relationship status, company type, and account manager) are set & managed at the company-level and then inherited by everyone ("person") who works there.

Companies

Find this list at: Contacts → Companies

This is where you manage the organizations you work with. Each company record carries its relationship status (Preferred, Good, Unmarked, or Problematic), company type (GC, architect, developer, and so on), location, account manager, project history, and win rate. You can sort and filter the list, bulk update partner statuses, merge duplicates, export to CSV, or add a new company manually.



People

Find this list at: Contacts → People

This is where you manage the individuals (like project managers, estimators, superintendents, and anyone else you coordinate with on a project) who work at the companies in your contact list. Each person record carries their name, role, email, and phone, along with the status, type, and account manager they inherit from their employer.



Where contacts appear in RiffleCM

RiffleCM makes it easy to get all of the information for a known company contact anywhere you see them mentioned (a "known" company contact is someone who is already in your contacts list).

  • Project Inbox: the "company(ies)" column will link known contacts directly to their contact records in a Company Details panel, so you can see at a glance who's inviting you to the project & what your relationship with them looks like.

  • Opportunities: just like on the Project Inbox, the "company(ies)" column also links known contacts directly to contact records.

  • Project Details: your contacts feed the Bidders/GCs section on each project, which makes it easy to build your estimate distribution list. Bidders have their own article that covers what they represent and why they're tracked separately.



Why your contact list matters

A well-maintained contact list is what lets Riffle score your projects accurately, match incoming invites to the right GC, keep your team aligned on who owns each relationship, and give you a clear picture of your pipeline by partner. The more your contacts reflect reality, the better Riffle works for you. To get the most out of it, tag your key partners with a Relationship Status.


Quick Summary

  • Contacts are automatically created with just a few clicks, as RiffleCM receives project invites, no manual setup required

    • However, you can add contacts manually, if you choose.

  • Companies define relationship data that applies to all people

  • People are linked to companies and created from real activity.

  • Contacts power advanced priority scoring, filtering, working history, and win rate across RiffleCM.

  • Your whole team works from one shared, up-to-date list.

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