Configuration
Contacts & Categories
Keep clients and agents linked to their houses, and organize items with a category taxonomy.
Overview
Contacts and categories are the two configuration surfaces that sit alongside houses and inventory. People are the clients and agents linked to each project; categories are the labels that group items together.
Both are reached from the sidebar — Contacts for people, Categories for the item taxonomy. They use the same list, search, and filter controls as the rest of the app, so anything you know from the inventory or houses pages applies here too.
People
A person is anyone tied to a staging project who isn't a teammate. Most are clients or agents; the same record can be both, on different houses.
Each person has a name (the only required field), plus optional email, phone, company, and notes. Custom fields configured for the person type appear here too. The detail page also shows two read-only lists — As A Client and As An Agent — that link to every house the person is attached to in that role.
Clients vs. agents
The two roles are stored on the house, not on the person. A house has one Client field (typically the property owner or seller) and one Agent field (typically the real estate agent representing the listing). The same contact can be client on one house and agent on another; their profile collects both.
Because the role lives on the house, you don't categorize a person up front — you set the role each time you connect them to a project, and the person's record updates automatically.
Adding a person
There are two ways to create a person. Use whichever fits where you are in the workflow.
From the Contacts page
Open Contacts from the sidebar, click New, fill in the name, and save. Email, phone, company, and notes can be filled in now or added later from the detail page.While creating or editing a house
On the new-house form, start typing a name in the Client or Agent field. If no one matches, a Create option appears in the dropdown. Pressing Enter on it opens a small dialog where you can fill in email, phone, company, and notes before saving. The new contact is linked to the house automatically when you save the dialog.
Project history
Each contact's detail page shows every house they've been linked to, split by role. Selling the same house years later, or running a second project for a returning client, both surface here without extra setup. Editing the contact's name, email, or phone updates the read-only client or agent fields shown on every linked house; you don't have to fix the same detail in multiple places.
Searching and filtering
The Contacts list pairs a name search with structured filters from the filter bar. To find someone by email or phone, use the suggested filter chips — Name, Email, and Phone; any custom fields configured for people join the list automatically. The bar works the same here as everywhere else — saved views included, just like inventory and houses; see Search, Filters & Sorting.
To find every project tied to one contact, open the contact's detail page — the role lists are usually faster than filtering houses by client or agent.
Categories
Categories are the tags that group items into types — Furniture, Decor, Kitchen, Lamps. Each item can carry as many categories as you want, and every category page rolls up the items tagged with it.
Categories are flat — there's one level, not a tree. If you find yourself wanting to nest Lamps under Lighting, tag items with both labels instead and use filters to combine them when you need to.
How categories relate to items
Each item has a Categories multi-select. Items without any category still appear in the inventory list, but they're skipped from category-specific views. The category detail page shows two automatic counts — # of Items (how many distinct items carry the tag) and Total Quantity (the sum of those items' quantities) — plus a list of the items themselves with a link through to the full filtered inventory view.
Adding a category
Like people, categories can be created standalone or in context.
From the Categories page
Open Categories from the sidebar, click New, type the name, and save.While editing an item
In the Categories field on any item form, type a name that doesn't exist yet. A Create option appears in the dropdown — selecting it adds the new category and applies it to the item in one step, without leaving the form.
Filtering and grouping by category
Categories show up as a filter on the inventory list — pick one or several, and the items list narrows to anything that carries any of the selected tags. On a house's items, clicking View By Category opens a view that groups the items under category headings, with anything uncategorized listed at the bottom.
The Categories list itself supports a Name text filter and a Has Items count filter, so you can quickly find unused tags worth pruning.
What's next
Contacts and categories tie into the rest of the app in a few specific places:
- Connect a person to a project on the houses page, where the client and agent fields live.
- Apply categories to items as you build out your inventory, then filter and group by them anywhere items appear.
- Add extra fields — anniversary date, brokerage license number, preferred contact method — with custom fields.