Counterparties
What this page is — the project's address book of external parties: the companies and people you send documents to, captured automatically as you work.
What it is for — so the same counterparty is picked rather than retyped on every agreement, and spelled the same way in every report.
The problem it solves — the same counterparty is spelled five ways across agreements, and every report splits it into five.
Route: /org/papers/project-settings → Counterparties · Permission:
Manage counterparty access and redlines..
1. What it is
A counterparty entry is contact details only — name, email, company, phone and notes — scoped to one project. Being on the list grants no access to anything. Access only ever comes from being added as a party to a specific document.
The list confuses people most often next to Customers:
| Counterparty | Customer | |
|---|---|---|
| Is | A role on one document | An identity that logs in |
| Access | A magic link scoped to one document | A login to the customer portal |
| Account | None | Verified email, password, profile |
| Best for | One-off or occasional dealings | Ongoing relationships |
| Revoking | Kills that party's links at once | Suspends the project, keeps the account |
| Managed with | Manage counterparty access and redlines. | Manage which customers can access the Papers document portal for a project (enroll by email, suspend/remove, send invitations). |
The same person is often both: they sign an NDA by magic link in January, and are enrolled as a customer in March. That January NDA then appears in their portal without re-sending anything.
2. Why you would use it
- The list builds itself. Adding a party with a new email to any document files them here.
- Picking beats retyping. Consistent names mean reporting groups one counterparty as one.
- The documents count shows who matters. A high count is a frequent counterparty; zero is an entry never used.
- History survives departures. Deactivating a contact hides them from pickers without breaking old documents.
3. Step by step
Let it fill itself — add parties to documents as normal.
Seed it by hand — Add counterparty → name and email, optionally company, phone and notes.
Retire a contact — deactivate the entry.
4. Field reference
| Field | Required | Rules | Refusal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Yes | — | name is required |
| Yes | A valid address, unique within the project | a valid email is required · a counterparty with this email already exists in this project | |
| Company | No | — | — |
| Phone | No | — | — |
| Notes | No | — | — |
| Column | Shows |
|---|---|
| Documents | How many document parties in this project share this email |
| Status | Active, or deactivated — hidden from pickers, row kept |
Auto-capture only adds; it never overwrites an existing entry.
5. Counterparty or customer — deciding, and keeping the list clean
Ask one question: will they come back?
| Situation | Choose | Because |
|---|---|---|
| One document, no relationship to maintain | Counterparty | Asking them to create an account is friction with no payoff |
| Repeat business, or they will need to look documents up later | Customer | One place to find everything, instead of old email links |
| Genuinely unsure | Counterparty | The lighter option — enrolling them later loses nothing |
What each record actually stores
| Counterparty entry | Customer record |
|---|---|
| Name, email, company, phone, notes | Verified email and phone, password, preferred language, customer code, loyalty points, marketing opt-in |
Contact details for someone you send documents to belong here. Anything implying an account or an ongoing commercial relationship belongs to Customers.
Access ends differently. Revoking a party's portal access on a document kills every outstanding link for that party at once. Suspending a customer removes one project's access and leaves their account and other projects untouched.
Who manages which. Counterparties are managed with Manage counterparty access and redlines., a documents permission; customers with Manage which customers can access the Papers document portal for a project (enroll by email, suspend/remove, send invitations)., a settings permission. It is normal for a document author to manage counterparties but not customers — a missing tab is the permission split, not a fault.
Keeping the list clean
| Problem | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| The same company twice | Two addresses — a personal and a company email | Deactivate the one with the lower documents count |
| An entry nobody recognises | Auto-captured from a one-off party | Leave it; deactivate once the deal is closed |
| A contact left the other company | — | Deactivate — never retype over it, because the email is the identity |
| A new project starts empty | Nothing has been captured yet | Seed the known parties by hand before the first round |
6. Worked example
A procurement team in the Vendor Contracts project deals with the same twenty suppliers every year.
Before a sourcing round they seed five new suppliers by hand. During the round, a buyer adds
[email protected] as a party to a quotation request — Fabrikam is filed automatically. By month end the
list has 26 entries.
The documents count shows Northwind at 14, and a stale Northwind Old Office entry at 0. Its contact left in March, so the team deactivates it. The entry disappears from party pickers; the three documents from last year that named that contact are untouched.
A second buyer tries to add Fabrikam again under the same email: a counterparty with this email already exists in this project.
7. The admin contract
| Must be true | Where | What breaks without it |
|---|---|---|
| The role holds Manage counterparty access and redlines. | Role editor | The section is missing |
| Parties are added with real emails | Documents | Auto-capture cannot file them |
| A counterparty lives in this project | Project scope | It is not offered in another project's pickers |
8. Downstream
| When you… | Then |
|---|---|
| Add a party with a new email to a document | They appear here |
| Deactivate an entry | Hidden from pickers; existing documents unchanged |
| Enrol the same person as a customer | Their earlier documents appear in their portal |
9. Don't confuse this with…
| Customers | People with a portal login |
| Parties on a document | Who one document involves — the only thing that grants access |
| CRM contacts | Orbit's CRM records. This list belongs to Papers, per project |
10. Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| The list is empty | No parties have been added to documents in this project yet |
| The same company appears twice | Two different emails |
| An entry is not offered when adding a party | It is deactivated, or belongs to another project |
| Adding someone to the list did not give them access | The list grants nothing — add them to a document |