In general, *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_SINGLE_SURFACE, *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL or *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_NODES_TO_SURFACE should handle a beam-to-shell-surface contact situation. All of these contact types take into account thickness offsets. By this I mean that the contact surface is offset from the shell midplane by half the shell thickness and offset from the beam centerline by a radius of the beam’s equivalent circular cross-section. Of course, the contact thickness can be modified by the user on card 3 of *CONTACT_ or by using *PART_CONTACT instead of *PART. The first two contact types mentioned above are single surface contacts and so both the shell and beams parts should be included on the slave side with the master side being null. For an *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_NODES_TO_SURFACE contact, the beam part (or its nodes) should be slave, the shell part (or its segments) should be master. For any of the above, the search for penetration is made between beam nodes (or more precisely, a sphere around each beam node) and shell surfaces.
If your contact situation is beam-to-shell-EDGE, you might have a problem. In that case, you may have to stick with *CONTACT_AUTOMATIC_GENERAL and add null beams (low density beams utilizing *MAT_NULL) along (merged to) the outer edges of your shells. The null beam part should be added to the slave side of the contact.