Leads and customers

Where work comes from, and who it is for: leads, the pipeline, web-to-lead forms, customers, contacts, notes, files and the vault.

A lead is somebody who might become a customer. A customer is a company (or a person) you work for, with the people at it as its contacts. A lead becomes a customer when you convert it, and the lead is kept as the record of where that customer came from.

Leads

Leads in the menu opens the list. Search by name, company, email or phone, and narrow it with Any status, Any source, Anyone (the owner, or a colleague added to the lead) and Companies and people, then press Filter. Converted, lost and junk leads are left out unless you tick Include closed; Clear puts every filter back.

The buttons above the list: Compact (see below), Export (the rows the filters show, see Exporting), Forms (the web-to-lead forms), Pipeline (the board) and New lead. Tick rows to act on several leads at once.

Follow-ups

Chase again on puts a date on a lead. The Follow-ups chips above the list filter by it: Due today, Overdue, Next 30 days (each with a count of open leads) and None arranged. Press a chip again to take the filter off.

The compact list

Compact narrows the list and shows the lead you click in a pane beside it: its status, email, phone, value, source, owner, when it was last contacted, the start of its description, its two latest notes and its latest activity. The up and down arrow keys move through the list; Enter opens the full page, and so does Open. The choice is remembered for you; press Compact again to go back to the full list. The pane shows only leads you could open anyway.

The pipeline board

Pipeline shows the open leads as cards in one column per status, each with its owner and value, and a count at the head of the column. Drag a card to another column to move the lead to that status; it is saved at once. Dragging needs permission to edit leads. List goes back to the list, and the button opens Settings → Leads.

Under Settings → Leads you can order each stage's cards — in the order people drag them, newest, oldest or highest value first — and cap how many a stage shows. A stage holding more says so (12 more in this stage) and links to the list filtered to that status, rather than stopping quietly at thirty and looking like the whole truth. The order in use is written above the board.

Adding and editing a lead

New lead on the list or the board opens the form; Edit on a lead's page opens the same form filled in. Press Create lead or Save changes.

When you change a lead's email address, proposals already sent to the old address follow it to the new one, and the message after saving says how many were moved. Otherwise the next reminder or share link would go to an address the person has told you they no longer use.

A company or a person

A lead is a company by default, and can be a person instead. It is shown on the lead's page and can be used to filter the list, and it decides what the lead becomes when it is converted: a lead marked A person becomes a person customer, not a company named after them.

Who is on a lead

A lead has one owner, the person answerable for it, and any number of colleagues under Also working it. Somebody added that way sees the lead — even a private one — and it appears under their name in the list. The owner is still the single answer to "whose is this?", which is what the reports and the permission scopes read.

Duplicate leads

While somebody types a lead, anything already on file that looks like it is shown at the top of the form — leads, and optionally customers and their contacts — with a link to each. Which fields count is yours to choose under Settings → Leads: email, phone, company, name, website. With none ticked the check is off and the form says nothing.

The choice matters more than it looks. A business with one contact per company wants company in the list; one with six people at each client emphatically does not, or every new contact at a client you already know gets flagged.

A phone number is compared by its digits, so +44 20 7946 0000 and 020 7946 0000 are recognised as one number. A website is compared without http:// or www. Only records the person typing could open are shown, so the check cannot be used to find out who holds a private lead.

The lead page

A lead opens on its Profile and has tabs for Proposals, Estimates, Contracts, Tasks, Files, Reminders, Notes and Activity. Only the tab you are looking at is loaded, so a lead with a long history costs one tab's work to open. The profile shows the AI score panel when AI assistance is on, Lead details, Where it came from, and the consents and privacy tools while the GDPR tools are on.

Estimates and contracts belong to a customer, so before a conversion those tabs show what a lead can have — an estimate request — and say where to go instead. Quote a prospect with a proposal, which can go to a lead directly. After a conversion, the account's estimates and contracts appear there too.

The buttons at the top: Star, Remind me (see Reminders), Edit, Convert to customer, and the menu.

Lost and junk

Mark as lost first asks Mark this lead as lost?, with a box for Why was it lost? (optional); press Mark as lost. The lead stays in the reporting and its page shows a Marked as lost. banner with the reason after it, which is what somebody reopening it later wants to know. Mark as junk takes it out of the pipeline entirely. Keep the two apart and your conversion rate stays honest — junk was never really a lead. Both drop the lead off the board and out of the list (tick Include closed to see it). The same menu then offers Reopen lead and Restore lead to undo either. Both need permission to edit leads.

Deleting a lead

Delete, at the foot of the same menu, removes the lead after you confirm, and takes you back to the leads list. It needs the Delete permission for leads, and not the Edit one: a role that may delete leads but not edit them gets the menu with Delete alone. A lead that was converted leaves its customer untouched: the customer keeps its own note of where it came from (see below).

Notes

The Notes tab on a lead or a customer is a running log. Type in Add a note... and press Add note; each note shows who wrote it and when. Anybody who can open the record can add a note to it. Delete under a note removes it after you confirm; you can delete your own notes, and an administrator can delete anybody's. When a lead is converted, its notes are copied to the new customer.

Files

The Files tab keeps documents against a lead: the brief they sent, the notes from a call. Choose up to ten files and press Add; each is checked against the same allowed types and size limit as every other upload (the limit is shown under the box, and set under Settings → Uploads). If one is refused you are told which and why. Click a name to open it; the button removes it after you confirm. Adding and removing files needs permission to edit leads. Customers have the same tab.

Converting a lead

Convert to customer on a lead's page opens a short form:

Press Convert. The customer is created as a company, or as a person when the lead is marked A person, with the lead's phone, website and address, the contact gets the lead's job title and phone, the lead's notes are copied across, and you are taken to the new customer. Files stay on the lead. The lead is marked converted and not deleted — it stays as the record of where that customer came from, which is what makes the source report meaningful. It needs permission to create customers, and a lead can be converted only once.

The customer keeps a note of where it came from: when the lead was first seen, the status it reached, and who brought it in. That is a snapshot taken on the day, not a live reading — the lead can later be deleted, anonymised for a privacy request or have its status renamed, and none of that should change the answer to "where did this account come from".

Privacy on a lead

While the GDPR tools are on, a lead's profile carries its Consents, with Record consent, and a Privacy card with Export its data and Anonymise. These are described under Privacy and GDPR.

Where leads come from

• Added by hand
• Imported from a spreadsheet, with duplicates shown before anything is written (see Importing)
• A web-to-lead form you publish — see below
• An email address the CRM reads — see below
• The public Request an estimate form (see Client portal settings)
• Posted to the REST API by your website's contact form

Web-to-lead forms

Leads → Forms builds forms you can publish. Each one gets a link and an iframe snippet to paste into your own website. The list shows each form's name (Off when it is not accepting submissions), the status and source its leads land in, who they are assigned to, how many questions it has, how many submissions it has taken and when the last one arrived. The button opens a live form in a new tab.

Creating a form

Press New form, fill in the settings below and press Create form. The form is saved with the five questions that make a lead — Your name, Email address (both required), Phone, Company and How can we help? — and opens for editing, where you can relabel, reorder, require or remove them. Creating a form needs permission to create leads; changing one needs permission to edit them.

Editing a form

Click a form's name to open it. Change the settings and press Save changes. On the right:

• Publishing it — the Link (with a button to open it) and the Embed in your website snippet to copy into a page of your site. While the form is switched off it says the link answers "not found".
• Questions — the questions in the order the visitor sees them. Drag one by its handle, or use the Move up and Move down arrows beside it; the new order is saved as it moves, with no button to press.

Add opens an empty question; the button on a question opens it filled in. Press Save question. The button removes a question after you confirm.

A question of your own goes into a custom field on leads when you point it at one, and into the lead's description when you do not — so nothing a visitor typed is ever silently dropped. Behind every form there is a throttle, a honeypot field no person can see, and reCAPTCHA if you asked for it.

Deleting a form

Delete at the top of a form removes it after you confirm, and its link stops working. The leads it produced are ordinary leads and stay. It needs the Delete permission for leads.

Leads from an email address

Settings → Lead mailboxes watches an address over IMAP and turns what arrives into leads. Useful when you cannot configure your mail server to pipe messages in: hand over an address and a password instead.

Test the connection logs in and lists the folders your server reports, so you pick the folder rather than guessing whether yours wants "INBOX.Leads" or "INBOX/Leads". Each mailbox carries its own check interval, so one address can be read every five minutes and another every hour.

What happens to each message

Every one of those decisions is written to a log on the same screen, so "why did that email not become a lead" always has an answer. The message body is not kept there — a log holding every enquiry in full would be a second copy of the mailbox with none of its access control.

This needs PHP's OpenSSL extension, which nearly every host has. Without it the screen says so rather than failing quietly at midnight.

Settings → Leads

Three cards, saved together with Save changes. Opening the page needs permission to view settings; saving needs permission to edit them.

Notifications go to the bell, and by email to anybody who has that switched on. Nobody is chosen as shipped.

Customers

A customer is a company — or a person, when you work for somebody directly. Everything else hangs off it: contacts, invoices, projects, tickets, files and notes, each on its own tab.

Customers in the menu opens the list. Search, pick a group under All groups or Active / Inactive under Any status, and press Filter. The buttons above: Export (the customers the filters show, and their contacts — see Exporting), Registrations (the portal registration queue, shown while self-registration is on or anybody is waiting — see Client portal settings) and New customer.

Adding and editing a customer

New customer opens the form; Edit on a customer's page opens it filled in. It has three tabs. Press Create customer (you are then taken to the new customer) or Save changes.

The customer page

A customer opens on its Profile and has a tab for each kind of record: contacts, the statement, invoices, payments, credit notes, estimates, proposals, contracts, subscriptions, expenses, projects, tasks, tickets, files, the vault, reminders, notes and activity. You see the tabs your role allows, for modules that are switched on and sold to this customer, and each tab lists only the records your own scope for that kind reaches: somebody who may open the customer but sees only their own invoices gets an Invoices tab with their own invoices on it, and the Payments tab follows the invoices. Only the tab you are looking at is loaded, so a customer of eight years costs one tab's work to open.

A customer converted from a lead says so at the top, with when the lead was first seen, the status it reached and who brought it in, and a link to the lead.

The buttons at the top: Star, Remind me, Statement (the account statement report, for people who may view reports), Edit, Export data (while the GDPR tools are on; see Privacy and GDPR) and the delete button.

Deleting a customer

The button removes the customer after you confirm and takes you back to the list. It needs the Delete permission for customers. A customer that has invoices cannot be deleted, from its page or in bulk, because the invoices must be kept with it: mark it inactive instead (untick Active), or anonymise the people at it under Privacy.

Who looks after an account

A customer has one owner — the single answer to "whose account is this?" — and any number of colleagues under Also on the account. Both count as working the account: the customers scope Their own records, and the Their clients scope on invoices, credit notes, estimates, estimate requests, proposals, contracts, subscriptions, expenses, projects, tasks and tickets, take in the owner and everybody listed alike. So putting somebody on an account is what actually gives them access to it and to its records.

What a customer is sold

Not sold to this customer withholds modules from one account. A support-only retainer does not need a Projects tab that will never have anything in it, and their portal should not offer one either.

Paying online

Can pay invoices online is per customer. Turn it off for an account invoiced on terms: their invoices then show your offline instructions instead of a Pay button, and the public payment page refuses a card even if somebody posts to it directly. The invoice is still payable — by transfer, as agreed.

Contacts

Contacts are the people at a customer. Email addresses live here rather than on the company, because an address belongs to a person. The Contacts tab lists them with their job title and Portal access: Enabled, No access, or — for somebody who registered in the portal — Email not confirmed or Waiting for approval. The primary contact is marked Primary.

Adding and editing a contact

Add contact on the tab, or the button on a contact. Press Add contact or Save changes. It needs permission to edit customers.

See The customer portal and Getting into the portal for what a contact sees there.

Revoking portal access

Revoke portal access, at the foot of a contact who can sign in, clears their password after you confirm. They can no longer sign in; their details are kept, and setting a new password gives access back.

Removing a contact

The button on a contact removes them after you confirm. If they were the primary contact, the longest-standing remaining contact becomes primary, so the customer is not left without one. To remove a person's details for a privacy request, anonymise them instead (the button, while the GDPR tools are on; see Privacy and GDPR).

Customer notes and files

The Notes and Files tabs on a customer work exactly as on a lead (see Notes and Files above): add a note, delete your own; add up to ten files at a time, open or remove them. Files need permission to edit customers.

The customer vault

Every agency has this problem and solves it badly. The hosting login, the WordPress admin, the analytics account and the FTP details for each client end up in a shared spreadsheet, in somebody's password manager, or in the body of an email from four years ago. The Vault tab keeps them beside the customer they belong to.

• Add credentials opens the form: What for (required), Username, Password, Address (an http:// or https:// link) and Notes. Press Save.
• The button beside a password shows it, and records that you did (Last revealed).
• The button edits an entry. The password box starts empty: leave it blank to keep the password already saved.
• The button removes an entry after you confirm.

The customer map

A customer's page shows their address with an Open in Maps link. That link costs nothing and loads nothing of Google's.

To embed an actual map instead, save a Google API key under Settings → Integrations and tick Show a map on the customer page. Both are needed, and both are off as shipped: embedding puts an iframe of Google's on a page holding a customer's address, which is a decision for you rather than one to make on your behalf.

Roles: cloning and the read-only preset

On Organisation → Roles every role has a Clone button. It makes a copy called "Copy of name" (numbered if that name is taken) with the same permissions, and opens it in the editor so you can adjust it. A copy is never a system role. Cloning the Administrator role gives an ordinary role that holds every permission, which you can then trim; the unrestricted flag itself is never copied.

New read-only role opens the editor with the View box ticked on every module and nothing else. Inside the editor, the Read-only button does the same to the role you are editing. Both leave out the Organisation group (staff, roles, teams and settings), so a read-only person can see the business's work but not who may do what. A module set to "No access" is moved to the first scope that shows something.

Limiting a role to customer groups or departments

Some modules have an extra, optional limit under their tick boxes:

Open the limit with the small arrow and tick the groups or departments. If you tick none, there is no limit. The limit comes on top of the records dropdown ("All records", "Their clients"...): it can only narrow what somebody sees, never widen it. It applies everywhere at once: the list, the record's own page (someone outside the limit gets "not found"), search, bulk actions, exports and the API.

Permissions for one person

When one person needs something a little different from their role, you don't need a new role for them. Open Organisation → Staff, open the ⋮ menu next to the person and choose Permissions. The staff edit dialog links to the same page.

1. Each module shows what the role gives in small grey text ("Role: View, Edit · All records").
2. Switch Override on for a module to unlock its boxes, then tick what this person should have: actions, which records, and any group or department limit.
3. Press Save permissions. The module now shows an amber Overridden badge, and so does the staff list.

An override replaces the role for that one module only, and everything else keeps following the role. If you switch Override on and tick nothing, the module is taken away from this person whatever their role allows. Switch Override off and save to go back to the role.

Team permissions: timeline and messages

The Team timeline module now has a Their teams choice. With it, a person sees only the posts written by people who share a team with them, plus their own. They also can't react to, reply to or remove any other post.

Messages now has its own module, which decides who a person may start a conversation with. It never affects reading or replying.

Existing roles were given "anybody" when you upgraded, so nothing changes until you decide otherwise.

Leave, Attendance and Timesheets set to Their teams show the records of the person's teammates. Anybody who can record these for others (leave approvers, attendance editors, timesheet loggers) can only do so for people within that same reach. The staff pickers list only those people.

Addresses on this page

For reference and for anyone scripting against the panel. Everything here needs somebody signed in to the workspace whose role allows it; anybody else is refused.