Leads and opportunities
Convert a lead into a customer
Turn a qualified lead into a customer or an organisation, open a sales opportunity in the same step, and avoid creating duplicate companies.
3 min readLast updated
In this article
When a lead is ready to do business, you convert it. Conversion creates the records you need to sell to it - a customer, an organisation, a sales opportunity - from the details the lead already holds, so nothing is typed twice. The lead itself stays as the history of how the customer was won.
Before you start
Your company's Lead conversion setting in CRM settings decides which of the two panels below you see: Create a customer (current behaviour) or Create an account first, no finance record.
To open an opportunity during conversion, at least one opportunity stage must exist. See pipelines.
Start the conversion
Open CRM › Sales › Leads.
In the lead's Actions menu, select Convert. You can also open the lead and select Convert on its Conversion tab.
Convert is not offered for a lead that is already converted or closed.
Classic conversion: straight to a customer
The Convert lead panel shows the lead's name.
Leave Create opportunity on if there is a concrete deal to follow. Then check the opportunity's Name (the company name by default) and Amount (the lead's estimated value), and choose its Stage. All three are required while the switch is on.
If your company uses custom fields on opportunities, the matching values are carried over from the lead; review them.
Select Convert.
The system creates:
a customer, with a receivable account in the ledger;
a primary contact from the lead's contact person, e-mail, phone and mobile;
if requested, a sales opportunity for that customer, with the lead's expected close date and the same responsible person.
Conversion through an organisation
The Convert lead to account panel opens instead when your company converts through organisations.
Under Account, choose New account to create an organisation from the lead, or Existing account to attach the lead to a company that is already in the CRM.
Choose the organisation's Roles.
Turn on Create opportunity if there is a deal, and fill its Name, Amount and Stage.
Turn on Also make it a customer if you will invoice it now. Choose the Customer group; the Branch (optional) defaults to yours. You need the permission to promote organisations to see this switch.
Select Convert.
If organisations that look like the lead already exist, the system lists them before it creates anything. Pick the right one, or select None of these — create a new account anyway.
What happens next
The lead's status becomes Won and it can no longer be moved on the pipeline board, edited into another stage or converted again.
The lead page's Conversion tab shows View customer, which opens the new customer.
Continue the sale on the opportunity, then issue the quotation and invoice from the sales screens.
Common questions
Can I convert a lead into a customer I already have? In organisation mode, choose Existing account and pick that customer's organisation. In classic mode a new customer is always created, so check the customer list first.
Why is Convert refused with a missing stage? With Create opportunity on, the stage is required. Choose one, or turn the switch off.