Records

Everything your business knows is a record: a company, a deal, a task, an invoice. Your team, your connected accounts, and Continual all read and change the same records, in the same way, under the same rules.

What records cover

Area	Examples
Customers	Companies, people, deals, email conversations
Work	Projects, tasks, to-dos, comments, approvals
Money	Quotes, orders, invoices, payments, journal entries

A company is one record, whatever part it plays. A customer who is also a vendor is one company, with a customer account and a vendor account in Finance. Each app adds records around the same company, so a deal, its quotes, the order, and the invoice all name one customer.

Objects and Documents

Every record is one of two kinds:

Kind	What it promises	Examples
Object	Changes whenever the facts change; history keeps old values	Company, person, deal, project, task
Document	Becomes final; after that, it never changes	Quote, order, invoice, payment, journal entry

Most records are Objects. You move a deal along or change a task's due date whenever the facts change, and the record's history keeps every earlier value.

A Document starts as a draft. Its own Action, such as Issue invoice, finalizes it: it gets a number and never changes again, and a final Document that moves money posts to a ledger. See Documents and ledgers and money.

Status: where a record is in its life

Many records move through a set of statuses, in order. A deal moves through these:

1. Lead
2. Qualified
3. Proposal
4. Won
5. Lost

Each record type names its statuses, and most screens label the field Status. Deals show it as Stage. Developers see it as the field state.

Some statuses you set yourself, such as a deal's. Others move only through named Actions. An invoice moves through these:

1. Draft
2. Issued
3. Void

Only Issue invoice moves a draft to Issued, and only Void invoice voids an issued one. So an invoice cannot be voided before it is issued.

Every status falls in one of five categories, so lists, filters, and metrics treat records alike in every app:

Category	Meaning	Examples
Pending	Not started, or a draft	Lead, Draft, Planned
Active	In progress	Qualified, Sent, Issued
Succeeded	Finished well	Won, Accepted, Done
Failed	Finished badly	Lost, Declined
Canceled	Stopped or reversed	Canceled, Void

Succeeded, failed, and canceled records are closed. Every record type with a status also keeps a ledger of its moves, so you can count deals by status on any past date, with no setup. See metrics.

Conditions

Some records carry conditions: facts Continual concludes about them. Sales marks an open deal Ready once it has an amount, a close date, and a contact, and Overdue once its close date passes. You never set a condition; it updates when the record changes.

Every change is an Action

Every change goes through an Action, such as Send quote or Issue invoice. Creating, editing, and deleting are Actions too. This holds whether you click a button, Continual works on a request, or another system connects.

So the same checks apply to every change, in order:

1. Access. The actor's roles must allow it where the record lives. See people and access.
2. Rules. A change that breaks a rule does not save, such as issuing an invoice with a line that has no revenue account.
3. Approvals. Some changes wait for a yes. See approvals.

Each Action says what kind of change it is, and approvals use that to decide what to hold:

Kind of change	Means	Examples
Edits	Creates or changes a record	Draft a quote, move a deal's close date
Deletes	Removes a record	Delete a task
Commits	Binds the business; it can't simply be undone	Send a quote, issue an invoice, grant a role
Says	Writes for others to read	A comment, a reaction

Reading changes nothing, so reading never waits for a yes.

Where records live

Every record has one parent, and so records form a tree. A task lives in its project, a comment under the record it is about, and your threads under you. Records that belong to no other record, such as companies, deals, and invoices, live in your organization.

The tree decides two things:

• Who reaches a record. A role given on the organization or on a project reaches the records under it. See people and access.
• What goes with it. Deleting a record deletes what lives under it.

References

Records point at each other with references. An invoice names its customer. Every reference works both ways, so the customer's page lists its invoices, and a deal lists its quotes.

How a record reads

Every record shows the same four things, wherever it appears: in a list, in search, or in a message from Continual.

Part	What it is	Example
Type	The kind of record	To-do, Company, Invoice
Number	A short name, when its type has one	TODO-8, DEAL-7
Title	What the record is about	Call Northstar back
Status	Where it is in its life	Open, Won, Issued

The title never repeats the number. An invoice's title is its customer, so a list reads INV-US-12 and Northwind Health side by side. A draft Document has no number yet, so it shows its type in place of one, and its status says Draft.

Numbers and handles

A number names a record in a few characters, and works anywhere the record does, such as when you ask Continual about DEAL-7.

Record	Example	Numbered when
Deal, project, task, to-do	DEAL-7	It is created
Customer or vendor account	CUST-4	It is created
Quote	Q-12	It is sent
Order	SO-4	It is confirmed
Invoice, payment	INV-US-1	It is issued or received
Journal entry	JE-40	It is posted

Records you name rather than number have a handle instead: a company's web domain, a person's email address, or an item's code.

Values kept for you

Some values are computed, and update in the same moment as the change they depend on. An invoice's total is the sum of its lines, and its amount due is the total less what has been paid.

Other values come from outside. When Gmail or GitHub syncs, records show what was found there, such as a new message or a merged pull request.

Archive a record

Records that others keep naming, such as a ledger account or a customer account, are archived instead of deleted. Lists leave archived records out, and the records that name them still work.

Your records are yours alone

Each organization's records are separate. Nothing from another organization is visible in yours.