Contacts, companies and leads

Three related records that answer three different questions: who is this person, who do they work for, and is this someone we are still trying to win.

Contacts

A contact is a person. Add one from Contacts, then New contact. Only a name is required — everything else can be filled in as you learn it, and a half-complete record is more useful than one nobody created because they lacked a phone number.

A contact can hold several ways of reaching them. Emails, phone numbers and fax numbers are stored as separate entries rather than single fields, so somebody with a desk line and a mobile does not force you to choose which one is real.

Linking a contact to a company

Set the company on the contact record. Once linked, the person appears on the company’s page and the company appears on theirs, and anything you record against either is visible from both.

Companies

A company is the organization a contact belongs to. Add one from Companies, then New company. Use these when you sell to a business rather than an individual: invoices, tickets and portal access can all be scoped to a company, so everybody there sees the same history.

Leads

A lead is somebody you are still trying to win. They are kept in their own list so your customer records stay clean — a pipeline of maybes mixed into your contacts makes every count and every export wrong.

Add one from Leads, then New lead. When a lead becomes a customer, create the contact and company records for them; the lead stays as the record of where they came from.

Getting existing data in

If you are moving from a spreadsheet or another system, send it to us rather than retyping it. We will map the columns, check the result with you before anything is written, and tell you plainly what did not map. Raise a ticket from your dashboard with the file attached.