Leads

For: People using the software to capture and follow up on potential customers

Purpose: Understand what the Lead module does and how it helps your sales team track prospects from first contact to a won or lost deal

What This Module Does

A lead is a potential customer you want to follow up with. It stores the person's name, phone, company name, and details like lead source, industry, campaign, priority, and the sales person the lead is assigned to. As you work the lead, the system keeps a full history of what changed (for example, status changes) and a list of activities (calls, emails, meetings, tasks). When a lead is ready, you can raise a quotation from it, and later a sales order — so you can trace a deal all the way from first contact to a confirmed order.

The Lead module lets you:

• Create and edit leads, and assign each lead to a sales person.
• Import many leads at once from a spreadsheet (bulk upload).
• Track a lead's status (e.g. New, Contacted, Qualified) with full change history.
• Log activities (Call, Email, Meeting, Task, Other) and notes against a lead.
• See quotations and sales orders linked to a lead.
• Filter, search, and export the lead list to Excel.
• Delete a lead when it is no longer needed (only when no quote has been created from it).

Main Features (What You Can Do)

1. Create a New Lead

When you create a lead you typically enter:

• Full name and phone: these are required.
• Company name: the prospect's business (optional, but used for duplicate checks).
• Move-in date: required; move-out date is optional (used to flag a lead as due for follow-up).
• Email, city, and address: optional contact details.
• Lead source, industry, campaign, and platform: optional classifications, chosen from your master lists.
• Lead status: the stage the lead is in. If you leave it blank, the lead starts as NEW.
• Priority: HOT, WARM, or COLD.
• Potential: an optional number for the expected value of the deal.
• Assigned to: the sales person responsible for the lead. This is required.
• Note: free text saved with the lead.

Duplicate check

• If you enter both a company name and a phone, the system checks whether a lead with the same company name (case-insensitive) and the same phone already exists. If it does, you get a clear message and the lead is not created. This prevents the same prospect being added twice.

What the system does when you save

• It generates a unique lead number (e.g. LEAD00001).
• It records who created the lead.
• It adds the first entry to the lead's history — the starting status (the chosen status name, or NEW if none was selected) with the reason "Lead Created".

2. Import Leads in Bulk

You can upload many leads at once (for example, after a trade show or a campaign). You provide a list of rows, each with the same basic fields as a single lead (full name and phone are required; move-in date is required).

During a bulk import the system:

• Checks for duplicates within your file — two rows with the same company name and phone are not allowed.
• Checks for duplicates already in the system — if any row matches an existing lead's company name and phone, the import stops with a message.
• Matches your master data by name: Lead Source, Industry, Lead Status, and Campaign are matched by name. If a lead source, industry, or status name in your file does not exist yet, the system creates it automatically. (Campaigns are matched only; unknown campaign names are left blank.)
• Generates a unique lead number for each row in sequence.
• Sets Assigned to and Added by to the person doing the import, and adds a "Lead Created" history entry for each lead.

If any row is invalid or a duplicate is found, the whole import is rejected so you can fix the file and try again.

3. View and Search Leads

You can list leads with:

• Date range: filter by a move-in date range (from–to) or a single move-in date.
• Lead status, lead source, industry, campaign: filter by any of these classifications.
• Priority: HOT, WARM, or COLD.
• Assigned to: show only leads for a chosen sales person.
• Due leads: show only leads whose move-out date has already passed (overdue for follow-up).
• View: switch between an active view and all leads.
• Search: by lead number, name, company name, email, phone, city, address, note, priority, or by matching lead source / industry / status name.

The list is paginated and sorted by newest first. Each row shows the lead's key details along with the status colour, who added it, and who last updated it.

4. Open a Lead (Full Details)

When you open one lead, the system shows:

• Header: lead number, name, phone, company name, priority, potential, and current status (with its colour).
• Classifications: lead source, industry, campaign, and platform.
• Assignment: the sales person the lead is assigned to.
• History: every change made to the lead, newest first — who changed it, when, and the old and new values (status changes also show the status colours).
• Activities: every logged call, email, meeting, task, or note, newest first — with who performed it and the lead's status at that time.
• Quotations: any quotes raised from this lead (quote number, status, date, expiry, total).
• Sales orders: any sales orders created from those quotes (order number, status, date, total, payment status).

5. Edit a Lead

You can edit a lead at any time. When you change fields, the system records exactly what changed so you keep a clear trail.

When you edit a lead:

• The same duplicate check applies — if the new company name and phone match another lead, the change is blocked.
• For each changed field (for example status, lead source, industry, campaign, assigned to, dates, or notes), the system adds a history entry with the old and new values and the reason "Lead Updated". Only fields that actually changed are recorded.
• If you change the status, the new status name is stored in the history entry.
• If you include an activity type while editing, an activity is also logged (using your note as its description).
• The system records who updated the lead and when.

6. Log Activities and Notes

You can add an activity to a lead to record an interaction. Each activity has a type — Call, Email, Meeting, Task, or Other — and an optional description. The system stores who performed the activity and stamps it with the lead's current status, so the activity timeline shows how the conversation progressed over time. Activities appear on the lead, newest first.

7. Delete a Lead

You can delete a lead only when no quotation has been created from it. If one or more quotes exist for the lead, the system blocks the deletion and tells you which quote number(s) are linked, so you can handle those first. When a lead can be deleted, it is removed in a single safe step (as a transaction), so the record is either fully removed or left untouched if anything goes wrong.

8. Export Leads to Excel

You can export the current list of leads (after applying your filters and search) to an Excel file. The export uses the same filters shown on screen (date range, status, source, industry, campaign, priority, assigned to, due leads, and search). To keep exports fast and reliable, a single export is limited to 1,000 leads — if your result is larger, apply more filters to narrow it down. The exported rows include the lead's details along with source, industry, campaign, and status names, and the people who added and updated each lead.

Summary of Rules (Quick Reference)