Understanding the Accounts & Buildings Contact Hierarchy

When setting up contacts in Inspect Point, it’s important to understand the relationship between Accounts and Buildings, and how contacts and their roles behave at each level. This hierarchy directly impacts who receives reports, proposals, and other communications — and how data flows into things like invoices and proposals.

To fully understand how this contact hierarchy works, we’ll first walk through:

• What is a Contact
• Account vs Building Contacts
• What are Contact Roles
• How Contact Roles Behave

What Is a Contact in Inspect Point?

A Contact represents an individual person associated with a customer — such as a site supervisor, office admin, or billing contact. Contacts can be associated with:

• An Account (the customer or company)
• A Building (a physical location tied to that account)

Each contact can hold specific roles that determine what they receive and where their information appears (like on a proposal or invoice).

👉 Related Article: How to Add Contacts in the Backend

Account Contacts vs Building Contacts

In Inspect Point, a contact can be associated with either an Account, a Building, or both — but there are important differences in how those relationships behave.

An Account Contact is tied to the overall customer — the company or organization as a whole. When you assign a contact to an account, they become visible across all buildings linked to that account, and any roles you assign at the account level will automatically apply to those buildings.

On the other hand, a Building Contact is linked to specific buildings. These contacts are usually more localized — for example, a maintenance supervisor, building owner, or tenant who needs to receive inspection reports for that site only. Their roles and visibility are limited to that individual building and do not affect other buildings under the same account.

🔹 Account Contacts

• Represent central contacts (e.g. superintendents)
• Are visible across all buildings tied to the account
• Roles assigned here (like “Billing/Invoice Contact”) are inherited by each building
• Inherited roles appear grayed out at the building level and cannot be edited there

🔸 Building Contacts

• Represent site-specific individuals (e.g. facility managers, owners)
• Are visible only at that building
• Roles assigned here apply only to that building
• Can supplement account-level roles or be used when local contacts differ

📌 Key Rule: A contact can only be assigned to one Account, but can be added to multiple Buildings. 

Contact Roles 

Contact Roles in Inspect Point define how and where a contact participates in your workflow — from receiving inspection reports to populating information on invoices and proposals. Assigning roles ensures the right people receive the right documents, and that data flows correctly.

Each contact in Inspect Point can be assigned one or more role that control what actions or documents they’re tied to. These roles can be set at either the Account level or the Building level, depending on how centralized or site-specific your contact structure is.

Note: A contact can hold multiple roles simultaneously, and these roles can differ between accounts and buildings.

👉 Related Article: How to Set and Manage Contact Roles in Inspect Point

How Role Inheritance Works

When a role is assigned at the Account level, it is inherited by all associated Buildings.

• Roles set at the Account level are automatically inherited by all buildings under that account.
• These inherited roles cannot be changed at the building level.
• You can assign additional building-level roles that supplement inherited ones.

📌 Example:
If Gilbert is assigned the Report Contact role at the account level for Barry's Bungalow, he will receive reports for all buildings under that account — unless overridden. 

🛑 To remove an inherited role, you must update or remove it at the Account level.