Clients

Clients is the CRM and the organizing spine of Bitment. Every client record holds the organization's details, its contacts, a collaborative notes document, an AI context document, and tags, and opening a client re-scopes your whole workspace to that client's own apps and data. Operators use Clients to keep track of who they serve, who to reach at each one, and what every other app in Bitment should show when they're working that account.

The data model is deliberately elastic: name, address, email, phone, website, tags, notes, plus a freeform field bag for anything else. There is no fixed "client type" to choose between individuals and businesses; a client is just a client, and anything shape-specific belongs in its custom fields.

Where to find it

Clients in the dock (root-level navigation). Opening any client switches the sidebar to that client's own sub-navigation, so the same apps (Chat, Files, Projects, Emails, and the rest) render scoped to just that client.

Key concepts

Add a client

1. Open Clients and use the create action on the client list.
2. Fill in what you know. Only a display name is required; everything else can come later.
3. If you operate in more than one firm, choose which firm the client belongs to, or leave it as Personal. A client is either Personal or owned by one or more firms, never both.
4. Optionally add a primary contact at the same time. This also provisions that person's client-portal sign-in, which you can invite later.

The client record

Opening a client shows its own sub-navigation with the client name as a label at the top, followed by four top-level pages:

• Profile: the record itself: name, address, email, phone, website, Signal, Telegram, tags, custom fields, and firm ownership. Every field autosaves as you edit.
• Contacts: the people at this client: name, email, phone, title, notes, and whether they're the primary contact.
• Portal: a per-contact access list, plus a live preview of what that contact's client portal looks like (see below).
• Notes: a collaborative working document. Several people can edit it at once.

Below those, the client's own AI, Apps, Coordination, and Data groups mirror the root navigation, scoped to just this client: its own Chat and Agents, its own Files, Projects, Emails, Calendar, Signatures, Forms, and so on. The client's Context page (the AI's standing knowledge about this account) lives in the AI group; see Client context and AI.

Getting back out works at two speeds: the back arrow at the top of any client page steps back one level (to the Profile page, then to the client list), while All clients at the top of the sidebar returns you to the firm-wide list in one click from anywhere inside the client.

Contacts and channel matching

Each client's Contacts page lists the individuals you deal with there. Keep contact email addresses accurate, because several features route on them: split-inbox matching, email participant recognition, portal invitations, signature and form sends, and meeting matching from your connected Fireflies workspace.

Contacts (and the client record itself, on the Profile page) also carry a Signal number and a Telegram username alongside the phone number. Recording one automatically pulls every matching Signal, Telegram, or Quo conversation onto that client's or contact's page, with no manual linking needed. Record a Telegram username once and the whole conversation history, past and future, shows up on the client's page.

When no identifier is available at all (Signal rarely shares a phone number, and many Telegram contacts have no public username), file the conversation itself instead: open its profile panel and use Link to a client, choosing the specific contact if one applies. The client's Profile page shows a Channels section listing every email thread, Signal, Telegram, and Quo conversation, and Fireflies meeting the client currently resolves to, whether matched automatically or linked explicitly; each linked entry carries an inline unlink control.

Give the AI standing facts about a client

Each client has a Context page, a document you write that gets injected into AI prompts whenever this client is mentioned in a conversation. See Client context and AI for the full picture.

Manage portal access

1. Open a client and go to Portal.
2. Toggle portal access for each contact. Access is on by default for a new contact.
3. Use the Previewing as picker to see the client portal exactly as a specific contact would, through a live, read-only preview of their Files, Signatures, and Forms.

Previewing a contact whose access is disabled shows the same access-denied screen that contact would see.

Tags

Tags are a per-firm vocabulary: a tag created inside one firm's clients is visible to members of that firm, and every firm you operate in contributes to the suggestions you see everywhere. Manage the tag catalog from the Clients app's settings, and filter the client table by tag.

Firms and multi-firm clients

If you operate in more than one firm, every client shows which firm (or firms) it belongs to. A client can be:

• Personal: belongs to you directly, with no firm association.
• Owned by one or more firms: a customer of those firms, and implicitly accessible to every active operator at each one.

Set firm ownership from the create form or from the Profile page's firm field (which requires an explicit save, unlike the rest of the autosaving profile). The client table's Firm column and the client-list firm filter both appear once you operate in more than one firm.

A client that belongs to more than one firm keeps a separate working note and separate AI context per firm it belongs to, plus one Personal version. A tab strip above the Notes and Context pages lets you switch between them; it only appears when there's a real choice to make.

Import clients in bulk

The Import button on the client list launches an AI-assisted bulk import for bringing in a spreadsheet, an export from another system, or a zip of client folders.

1. Open Clients and click Import.
2. Upload your file (a CSV, spreadsheet, pasted text, or a zip of folders). You can also attach a folder already in your Files.
3. Tell the assistant which firm the imported clients belong to (or Personal) when it asks, in plain language.
4. The assistant extracts and stages every row for review, deduplicating against your existing CRM as it goes. This runs in the background, so you can leave the page and come back once a large import is still working.
5. Review the staged results, organized into four tabs:

• To create: brand-new clients.
• Updates: matched an existing client and found new information. Each card lists the exact changes; additive changes are ticked by default, and any change that would overwrite existing data needs an explicit tick.
• Duplicates: matched an existing client with nothing new to add.
• Excluded: rows left out of the import.

1. Fix anything wrong before committing: click a row to open its full editor, use the inline pencil on a cell, or just tell the assistant in chat ("fix the phone numbers", "remove the test rows").
2. Click Import (or Import & Update) to commit. Creation and any file copying run in the background; a progress view shows what's been created, updated, still running, or failed, with already-in-your-CRM duplicates collapsed into a single summary line.

A zip of client folders can carry each client's own documents alongside their CRM data; the assistant maps a client to its documents folder and copies the files into that client's own Files drive on commit. Past imports live in a history rail on the left, and each import's chat can be reopened later through its Results button. Clicking Import again once nothing is left to import (every staged row already a duplicate) is refused with a message pointing you at Results.

Bulk email a set of clients

You can email a large set of clients at once from two places:

1. From the client list: select rows (or use "select all N matching" across every page), then use the Bulk email button in the selection bar. This opens the shared compose view in place of the list.
2. From the Emails composer: use the composer's Clients button to pick recipients from the same client list, in picker mode: click rows to select, then Confirm.

Each selected client resolves to one recipient: its primary contact if they have an email, otherwise any contact with an email, otherwise the client's own email address. A client with no address anywhere is skipped and called out in a notice rather than silently dropped.

Delete a client

A client of any status can be permanently deleted from the client page header, behind a confirmation dialog that requires typing the client's name. Deleting a client removes its profile, its contacts (and their portal access), and its activity history; data in other apps (files, projects, emails) survives and simply loses its association with that client. Bulk delete (from the archived view) is limited to already-archived clients, since bulk actions have no per-client name confirmation.

Tips

• Bulk actions (status change, delete, tag) run over your whole selection in one action, including "select all N matching" across pages, not just the rows currently on screen.
• If a client belongs to more than one firm you operate in, use the doc-scope tab strip on Notes and Context to make sure you're writing the right firm's working note.
• Sensitive custom fields (Social Security numbers, EINs, tax IDs) render masked with a reveal toggle, rather than in plain text.

Related

• Client context and AI
• AI Chat
• Emails
• Client portal
• Firms, scopes, and clients