Everything you do in Whapick eventually points back at your contacts. A broadcast needs recipients. A follow-up needs a name. An order needs a phone number. The Contacts page in your sidebar is where all of that lives, and getting it organised once pays off every day after.
Your Contacts Build Themselves
The first thing to know: you do not have to add customers one by one. Whenever someone messages your WhatsApp number, Whapick creates a contact for them automatically, using the name from their WhatsApp profile. So by the time you open the Contacts page, the people who have already chatted with you are sitting there, ready to broadcast to or check an order against.
Adding people by hand is for the ones who have not messaged you yet — customers you met offline, a list from your old phone, a reseller network.
Adding a Contact by Hand
Click Add Contact and you get four fields:
- Phone number — the only required field. Spaces and the leading
+are handled for you, so+234 801 234 5678and2348012345678are treated as the same person. - Name — what you call them. This is the name your broadcasts can greet them by.
- WhatsApp name — what shows on their WhatsApp profile. You can leave it blank; it fills in on its own when they message you.
- Tags — comma-separated labels like
vip, wholesale.
To change anything later, click Edit on the contact’s row. Nothing about a contact is permanent.
Importing a Whole List at Once
If you already have customers in a spreadsheet or a notes app, do not type them in. Click Import and you get three ways to bring them across, all in the same window:
1. Upload a file
Drag in a CSV, JSON, Excel (.xlsx/.xls) file. The columns Whapick looks for are phone, name, whatsappName and tags. Only phone is required — the rest can be missing and will simply be left blank. If you are unsure of the format, the Download template button gives you a ready-made CSV you can fill in:
phone,name,whatsappName,tags
+234801234567,John Doe,John D,customer,vip
+234808765432,Jane Smith,Jane S,leadTags in a cell can be separated by commas (customer,vip) and each becomes a separate tag.
2. Paste the data
Prefer not to fuss with a file? Choose Paste Data and drop in CSV or JSON straight from your spreadsheet or notes app.
3. Let AI read it for you
This is the one that surprises people. Choose AI Parse, paste almost any unstructured text — a chat transcript, a WhatsApp conversation where people gave you numbers, a messy list — and Whapick pulls out the contacts it can find. It shows you what it extracted, lets you fix or remove any row before saving, and then imports them. It uses AI credits for the parsing step, and it never saves anything you have not seen and approved on screen.
What happens to duplicates
Imports never create duplicates. Whapick matches on phone number: a number you already have is updated with any new name, WhatsApp name or tags from your file, and only genuinely new numbers are added. The import result tells you exactly how it went — how many were new, how many were duplicates, and how many rows were skipped for having no phone number.
Groups: Your Best Tool for Targeting
Tags are useful, but groups are what make broadcasts quick. A group is a named bucket of contacts — “VIP customers”, “Lagos delivery”, “Resellers”, “Abuja walk-ins”. Create one from the Groups panel, then tick the people who belong in it (or add them when you edit a contact).
From then on, a broadcast is one tap: pick the group. Each group shows a live member count, so you can see your audience size before you send. A contact can be in as many groups as you like — someone can be both a VIP and a Lagos customer — and if you broadcast to two groups they overlap in, no one gets the message twice.
Groups live alongside tags rather than replacing them. Think of tags as many small labels and groups as the shortlist you actually send to.
Finding and Cleaning Up
- Search by name, WhatsApp name or phone number from the top of the page.
- Filter by group to see just that audience.
- Delete a single contact, or tick several and delete them in one go. Deleting removes the contact from your list and from any broadcast they were going to receive.
The Balance Column
You may notice a Balance column next to each contact, and a Fund button on their row. This is store credit — money you hold on behalf of a regular customer, which they can then spend on orders instead of transferring for each one. It is very handy for resellers and repeat buyers who do not want to make a fresh transfer every time.
It is entirely optional. If you never fund a contact, the column simply reads zero and nothing changes. It is separate from your own wallet balance, and separate from the payments your other customers make. Use Fund to add credit, and it shows in the ledger when the customer spends it. Never a duplicate charge, because each movement is recorded against the order it belongs to.
Why This Matters More Than It Looks
A tidy contact list quietly improves every other feature:
- Broadcasts get faster and more targeted when you have groups.
- Order lookups work by matching the phone number the customer messaged from, so saved contacts make everything smoother.
- Personalisation — the AI knows a customer’s name, and your templates can greet them by it.
- Store credit lets your best customers pay in one tap.
Spending twenty minutes importing your list and creating three or four good groups will save you that time many times over.
Common Questions
Will importing the same file twice create duplicates?
No. The second import matches on phone number and updates rather than adds, so your list stays clean.
Can I delete a contact and stop getting their messages?
Deleting removes them from your list immediately. If they message you again afterwards, WhatsApp delivery may create them anew — deleting a contact is not a block.
Do I need to fill in the WhatsApp name myself?
No. It is filled in automatically the first time they message you. You can set it by hand if you want it sooner.
Does importing cost anything?
Plain file and paste imports are free. Only the AI Parse option uses AI credits, and it tells you how many it used.
Conclusion
Your contact list is the raw material of every campaign and every order. Contacts you have already chatted with appear on their own; add the rest by import; then organise them into a few well-named groups. Search, tags and store credit are there when you need them — but even just an imported list and two groups will make your broadcasts dramatically quicker to send.