Contacts and Opportunities cover leads and deals, but a clinic doesn’t run on leads and deals alone. You have patients, treatment plans, equipment, insurance claims, referring providers — records that don’t fit neatly into a standard CRM field. Custom Objects solve that by letting you build your own record types inside OneSystemCRM, complete with their own fields, their own views, and their own connections back to the people and pipelines you already track.

This guide walks through what Custom Objects are, how to set one up, and where clinics specifically get value from them.

What Custom Objects Do For a Clinic #

Every OneSystemCRM sub-account ships with standard objects — Contacts, Opportunities, Companies — plus now the ability to define up to 10 additional custom object types per location, available on every plan tier rather than gated behind a premium upgrade.

For a healthcare, dental, aesthetics, or physiotherapy practice, that opens up record types like:

• Patients — a dedicated object separate from generic Contacts, with fields for date of birth, primary provider, insurance carrier, and chart number
• Treatment Plans — linked to a patient record, tracking procedure type, session count, start date, and completion status
• Equipment — service dates, maintenance logs, and warranty status for chairs, lasers, imaging machines, or sterilization units
• Insurance Claims — claim number, payer, submission date, and status, tied back to both the patient and the treatment

[SCREENSHOT: Custom Objects list in Settings showing example objects like Patients, Treatment Plans, and Equipment]

Because each object can hold its own fields and still relate back to a Contact, you keep one unified patient timeline instead of stuffing everything into notes or a spreadsheet on the side.

Clinic Example: A Dental Practice Tracking Treatment Plans #

Picture a dental office running cleanings, whitening packages, and Invisalign cases out of the same CRM. Contacts alone can’t show which stage of a multi-visit Invisalign plan a patient is on, or which aligner set is due next.

By creating a Treatment Plans custom object linked to each Patient record, the front desk can see at a glance: plan type, visits completed, visits remaining, and next appointment — all without leaving the patient’s profile. A workflow can then trigger an automatic reminder text when a treatment plan’s next-visit date approaches, or flag the case manager when a plan has gone stale with no updates in 30 days.

How to Create a Custom Object #

1. Go to Settings → Objects in your OneSystemCRM sub-account.
2. Click Create Custom Object.
3. Enter a singular label (e.g., “Patient”) and plural label (e.g., “Patients”) — these appear throughout the interface and in reports.
4. Choose an icon to help staff identify the object quickly in the left navigation.
5. Click Save to create the empty object.

[SCREENSHOT: Create Custom Object modal with singular/plural label fields and icon picker]

Adding Fields to Your Object #

1. Open the new object and select Fields.
2. Click Add Field and choose a field type — text, number, date, dropdown, checkbox, or file upload all work well for clinic data (chart numbers, procedure dropdowns, consent form uploads, etc.).
3. Mark any field Required if staff should never be able to save the record without it — insurance ID or date of birth, for example.
4. Save the field and repeat for each additional field the object needs.

Setting Up Relationships #

1. Inside the object’s settings, go to Associations.
2. Choose which standard or custom objects this one should connect to — most clinic setups will associate a Patient object with Contacts (for communication and billing) and with any Treatment or Claim objects.
3. Set the relationship type (one-to-one or one-to-many) depending on whether a patient can have multiple linked records, such as several treatment plans over time.
4. Save the association.

[SCREENSHOT: Association settings screen linking Patient object to Contact and Treatment Plan objects]

Enabling the Object for Your Team #

1. Go to Settings → Objects → [Your Object] → Permissions.
2. Choose which roles (front desk, provider, billing, admin) can view, create, and edit records of this type.
3. Toggle Show in Navigation so the object appears as its own tab for staff who need quick access.
4. Save your changes.

Once enabled, the object behaves like any other record type — it supports list views with sorting and filters, custom dashboards, workflow triggers and actions, and API access for anything you want to sync with a practice management system.

Where This Fits With Workflows and Reporting #

A custom object isn’t just storage — it can drive automation the same way Contacts and Opportunities do. A few examples clinics commonly build:

• Trigger a follow-up SMS workflow when a Treatment Plan record’s status changes to “Completed,” prompting a review request.
• Trigger an internal task when an Equipment record’s next-service-date field is 7 days out, so nothing falls through the cracks before an inspection.
• Build a dashboard widget filtered to Insurance Claims with status “Pending” so billing staff can see aging claims in one place.

[SCREENSHOT: Dashboard widget showing a filtered list of custom object records, e.g. pending insurance claims]

Troubleshooting & FAQ #

I don’t see the option to create a Custom Object. Confirm your user role has admin-level access to Settings — custom object creation is restricted to admins by default. If you still don’t see it, check that your sub-account plan hasn’t hit the object limit already (10 per location).

Can I convert an existing Contact into a custom object record, like Patients? Not directly — Custom Objects are separate record types. Instead, associate the new custom object record with the existing Contact so both stay linked, rather than trying to migrate the Contact itself.

My custom fields aren’t showing up on the record. Double-check the field was saved under the correct object (it’s easy to add a field to the wrong object when managing several). Also confirm the field wasn’t set to a permission level that hides it from your current role.

Can staff without admin access still use custom objects day-to-day? Yes — set their role permissions to “view” and “edit” without granting access to the object’s structural settings, so they can work with records without being able to add or remove fields.

Is there a limit to how many records I can create within an object, like Patients? No — the 10-object cap applies to the number of distinct custom object types per location, not the number of individual records inside each one.

Will deleting a custom object delete the linked Contacts too? No. Deleting a custom object removes that object type and its records, but any associated Contacts remain untouched since they exist independently.

Related Reading #

• How to Rename Standard Objects in Your CRM — if you’d rather relabel Contacts or Opportunities instead of building a new object type.
• Viewing Your CRM Records: List Views, Sorting, and Filters — for organizing and filtering your new custom object records once they’re live.