Every company you work for has people — the site manager, the office contact, the finance person who pays the invoices. In Xota these are contacts, and they live inside each company record.
🎥 Watch the walkthrough:
Contact vs team member
Worth getting the distinction straight:
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A team member is one of your own people — someone you schedule work for.
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A contact is one of your client's people — someone at the company you're doing the work for.
Both can have user logins if you want them to, but they show up in completely different places in the app.
Where contacts live
From the sidebar, click Companies, then click into the client you want to add contacts to. Contacts is the first tab on the company page and is empty to start with.
Hit Add Contact in the top-right.
Adding a contact
Only Contact Name is required — everything else is optional:
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Contact Name
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Email — needed if you plan to give them a client portal login.
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Phone
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Job Title — what they do at the client (e.g. Site Manager, Office Manager, Finance Director). Shows alongside their name wherever contacts appear.
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App Access — a toggle. Off by default. See below.
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Notes — anywhere-else-to-put-it information.
Hit Create Contact and they're saved.
You can add as many contacts to a company as you need. Most organisations end up with three or four per client.
The App Access toggle
Flip App Access on and the contact gets their own login to Xota — a client portal where they can see their own projects and bookings, track progress, and download documents. When you toggle it on you'll be prompted to set a password for them.
When to use it:
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Your client wants visibility on their own jobs without having to email you for updates.
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You're doing recurring work and the client team wants to see what's booked in for the week.
When to leave it off:
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You'd rather keep communication over email or phone.
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The contact is a technical person who doesn't need a portal.
You can turn it on any time — just edit the contact and flip the switch.
The client portal experience has its own dedicated guide once you've got projects and bookings to show them.
Editing and deleting
Click any contact in the list to open the same form in edit mode. You can update details, reset their password if they have app access, or delete them entirely.
Unlike companies, contacts can be hard-deleted — a Delete Contact button sits inside the edit dialog. Useful if:
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You added the wrong person.
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The contact has left the company.
Deleting a contact also removes their user account if they had one. If the person is still at the client but has changed role, edit their details rather than deleting them.
Next up
Head to Creating your first project to create the first piece of work you're doing for this client.