Customers and organisations
How the CRM fits together
The five records the CRM is built on - organisation, customer, contact, lead and sales opportunity - and how a prospect becomes a customer you can invoice.
3 min readLast updated
In this article
The CRM keeps everything you know about the people and companies you sell to in one place, and links it to the books. Learn five words first; every CRM screen is built on them.
The five records
Record | What it is |
|---|---|
Organisation | The master record of a company or person you deal with: name, tax identity, addresses, roles and the people who work there. It can exist before any sale, for a prospect, a partner or a supplier. |
Customer | The financial side of an organisation. A customer can be invoiced, has a balance, a credit limit, payment terms and its own ledger account. Every customer has an organisation behind it. |
Contact | A person you talk to, linked to an organisation, with a role such as decision maker or financial contact. One contact per organisation is the primary one. |
Lead | Someone who may buy but is not a customer yet: a name, a phone number and where they came from. |
Sales opportunity | A specific possible sale with an amount. It moves through the stages of the sales pipeline until it is won or lost. |
How a prospect becomes a customer
A new enquiry is recorded as a lead, by hand, from an import or from a rep in the field.
The rep works the lead: calls, meetings and follow-ups are logged on its timeline, and it moves through the lead stages.
When the lead is qualified, you convert it. Depending on your company's setting, conversion creates a customer directly or goes through an organisation, and can open a sales opportunity at the same time.
The opportunity moves through the pipeline. When the deal closes, you mark it won and issue the quotation and the invoice from the sales screens.
You can also start at any step. A walk-in buyer can be added straight away as a customer, and a company you are only talking to can be added as an organisation and promoted to a customer later.
Who owns which details
The organisation owns the identity: tax registration number, commercial registration, national ID and national address. On the customer form you can enter them only when the customer is first created. After that the customer screen shows them read-only with Edit on account, and any change you make on the organisation is copied to the customer.
The customer owns the money: credit limit, payment term, opening balance, price-list discounts and the status that decides whether it can be invoiced.
What you see
Each user sees the leads, opportunities and tasks they are responsible for, plus those of their team. Managers with the permission to view all records see everything.
Lists can be searched, filtered and exported to Excel or PDF.
Most records carry attachments (up to 10 MB each), a location on the map and, for users with the audit permission, a history of changes.
Where to go next
Record and work a lead, then convert it.
Track a sales opportunity through the pipeline.