Custom fields on contacts
How to add custom fields to contacts in TatvaCRM. Choosing the right field type, examples by business, and the discipline to avoid field bloat.
Built-in fields cover the universal stuff — name, email, phone, address. Everything else specific to your business is a custom field. This page covers the contact-specific guidance; see Custom fields for the full module-agnostic reference.
How to add a custom field to contacts
- Go to Settings → Custom fields → Contacts
- Click + New field
- Pick a type (Text, Number, Date, Picklist, etc. — see Custom fields)
- Name the field
- Configure: required or optional, default value, help text, visibility per role
- Save
The new field immediately appears on every contact record, ready to be filled in.
Example contact custom fields by business
B2B SaaS (Aditya at StoreWorks)
- Decision-maker role (picklist: Founder / CEO / CFO / Ops Head / Other)
- Primary product interest (single-select: Inventory / Billing / Bundle)
- Trial start date (date)
- WhatsApp preferred (checkbox)
Debt advisory (Rajiv at Pragati)
- Role at borrower company (picklist: Promoter / CFO / Finance Manager / Banker / CA referral)
- Years known (number)
- Last meeting (date)
- Sectors of interest (multi-select)
Discipline — what NOT to do
- Don’t add a field for every WhatsApp note you take. Use the activity timeline instead.
- Don’t make every field required. Hard rule: maximum 3-4 required fields total. More and your team will skip adding contacts entirely.
- Don’t add 30 fields on day one. Start with 3-5 and let demand drive new ones.
- Don’t duplicate a built-in field. If TatvaCRM already has “Company”, don’t add “Company Name” as a custom field.
Importing contacts with custom field values
Create the custom fields first (Settings → Custom fields → Contacts), then include matching column headers in your CSV. TatvaCRM auto-maps them. See Bulk import (CSV).
Hiding sensitive fields from certain roles
Set per-role visibility on the field configuration. Useful for: hiding credit score from sales reps, hiding salary band from junior reps, hiding internal scoring from external collaborators.