How to: Save Business Cards to Contacts

This is a core expectation of any business card scanner. You want a fast and free business card to contacts export capability on your phone. With Folocard this is automatic, and it is part of the follow-up process.

First, enable automatic contact saving:

1. Go to the Template Options screen (small gear icon)
2. Enable ‘Add to Contacts’

After you have done the above, you should enjoy this workflow:

Fast. Accurate. Automatic

Now when you scan a business card you will get another step before you can use the business card scanner again:

1. Scan a business card & confirm email.
2. Email draft is composed (in your native app).
3. Once you Send (or save) the email you return to the Folocard app.
4. Now you are on the contact detail screen, confirm to save contact.
5. Back at the scan screen.

Here we have already filled out some of the business card details into the contact fields:

1. Name (full) <- select to see more options if incorrect.
2. Phone number (s) <- there can be several
3. Email
4. URL
5. Notes <- Here we include the rest of the text recognized from the business card scan.

Scanning Business Cards to Contacts is part of your Workflow.

We do plan to upgrade the contact fields saved to include more of the details found on common business cards including:

1. Company Name
2. Title / Position
3. Address
4. Social Network handles

The reason we add all the scan results to the ‘notes’ field is mainly for search purposes. The notes field is searchable on your contact management app (desktop or mobile). If the word ‘CEO’ is in there, it will show up. As will a company name like ‘Apple‘. While addresses are tricky, but if you search ‘Cupertino’ you should get closer to finding what you were looking for (in case you forget the Name ‘Tim Cook’ ).

Note that you can fix the scan results in the contact confirmation screen, as well as adding more fields. However, you can also do this in the contact management app you have. This can be your Google Contacts, Address Book, or OEM built-in contact app (whatever you have configured on your device).

It’s worth noting that once you have your business cards scanned into your contacts app, you can usually export from there to other systems. The feature usually is called ‘backup’ or ‘export’ or ‘sync’. With Folocard you get unlimited .CSV file export, making for an excellent free business card to excel solution. You can save business cards to outlook contacts with either of these methods. For advanced users, we offer an API (via Zapier) that can do more with your scanned business cards using automation.