Contacts and pipeline

Contacts are the customers and vendors you do business with. Each contact has its own page with the people who work there, its addresses, a timeline, the activities and follow-ups you log, and its leads. The pipeline is a board of leads: the jobs you might win, by stage, with what each one is worth.

Who can use contacts and the pipeline

Owners and Staff see Contacts and Pipeline under Sales in the sidebar. Staff need Open Contacts and Open Pipeline from their Team. The pipeline is part of the Leads & meetings module: if you don’t see Pipeline, an Owner can switch the module on in Settings › Modules. Contacts are always on. Field crew don’t see Contacts or the pipeline.

The Contacts list with the Total contacts, Customers, Vendors and Active leads cards above the table of contacts

The main ideas

• Contact type. A contact is a Customer, a Vendor, or a Customer & vendor. A customer appears when you pick who a quote or invoice is for; a vendor appears when you record a bill. A Customer & vendor appears in both, so a business that buys from you and sells to you is one record.
• Company or individual. A contact is either a company (with people at it) or a single person.
• Contact persons and addresses. The people you deal with at a company, and its billing, shipping, site and other addresses.
• Timeline. The contact’s quotes, logged activities and meetings, newest first.
• Activities and follow-ups. A call, meeting, note or task you log against a contact or lead, with an optional date to follow up.
• Leads. A possible piece of work for a contact, with an estimated value, a source, an owner and a stage.
• Stages. The columns of the pipeline board. Open stages are leads still in play. Won and Lost stages close a lead.
• Archive or delete. Archiving hides a contact you no longer use but keeps its history. Deleting removes it for good, and only works for a contact with no financial documents.

Tasks

• Add a contact
• Find a contact
• Edit, archive or delete a contact
• Add contact persons and addresses
• Read a contact’s timeline
• Log an activity or follow-up
• Import contacts from a CSV file
• Send a customer a statement
• Add a lead
• Move a lead through the pipeline
• Work a lead from its drawer
• Find leads on the pipeline board
• Set up your pipeline stages
• Choose who can change contacts and leads