Client and matter management

What matters are

A matter is a way to partition work inside a single Ghost organisation. Law firms typically create one matter per client engagement; in-house teams might use one per brand, subsidiary, or project. Privacy request cases, redaction sessions, processing activities, and compliance records all belong to the active matter, so switching matters changes which data you see everywhere in Ghost.

Matters are managed from Settings > Matters. The page shows how many active matters you have and, if your plan has a cap, how many you have left.

Creating a matter

1. Open Settings > Matters and click Add matter. If you have reached your plan limit the button is disabled and Ghost shows a "Matter limit reached" message.
2. Fill in the required name (this appears throughout Ghost wherever matter context is shown).
3. Optionally fill in industry, company size, and a DPO name and email. These values feed into Article 30 register exports and compliance reports for that matter.
4. Add an address and set the privacy role (controller, processor, or both) if it differs from the organisation default.
5. Under Regulatory & breach exports you can pre-set the regulatory authority (choose from a dropdown of known authorities or type a custom name and URL) and add breach export boilerplate text that will be included when you export breach records for this matter.
6. Save. The new matter appears in the list and is ready to use.

The matter list

Each matter card shows the name, your role in that matter, the DPO email, and the industry and company size if filled in.

From a matter card you can:

• Copy the intake URL. Every matter gets a unique public intake URL (/dsar/request/<code>). Share this with individuals or embed it on your privacy page so requests route straight to the right matter.
• Open intake in a new tab to preview what individuals see.
• Archive the matter when it is no longer active. Archived matters are hidden from the active list but their data is still accessible. You can unarchive later.

You can toggle between active and archived matters using the list filter. Archiving a matter frees up a slot against your plan limit.

Controlling matter access

By default every team member can see every matter. If your organisation handles confidential client work, enable Enforce per-matter membership in Settings > Advanced (owner only). Once enabled, operators only see data for the matters they are explicitly assigned to. Owners and admins retain full visibility.

Assign members to matters from the matter detail page or from the Teamsettings page. Members without any assignment see a "needs matter access" badge on the Team page as a reminder.

Switching between matters

Use the workspace switcher in the header to change your active matter. The switcher lists every organisation you belong to. Hover over (or tap) an organisation to see its matters in a flyout panel. You can select a matter within the current organisation, or pick a matter from a different organisation and Ghost switches both the org and the matter in one step.

Everything in the Privacy Request Manager, Redaction, Article 30 Register, and Compliance scopes to the selected matter immediately. Creating a new record in any product area attaches it to the current matter.

How to tell which matter is active

On desktop, a thin context strip sits directly below the header. It shows the active matter name and an initials badge so you can confirm at a glance. On mobile the strip is hidden to save vertical space; open the workspace switcher to check.

Get into the habit of checking the context strip before creating cases or records. Records stay with the matter where they were created; switching matters only changes which data appears.

Next steps

• Settings and team management for roles, invitations, and billing.
• Privacy request intake and configuration for setting up the public intake form that matters generate.
• Introduction to Ghost for how organisations and matters fit into the wider product.