Leads and CRM

A lead is where every job starts. It holds the customer, where the enquiry came from, and the windows they asked about. Everything else in Vinstra Flow, the design, the estimation, the material list and the cut sheet, hangs off the lead.

Contacts and To dos sit alongside leads and make up the rest of the CRM.

Leads, at lead. Placeholder image.

Create a lead

1. Go to Leads.
2. Select Add.
3. Fill in the contact information:
   • Company and Third party company.
   • Address, the site the windows are for.
   • Architect, if there is one on the job.
   • Lead source, how the enquiry reached you.
   • Referrer, who sent it.
   • Sale agent, who is handling it.
   • Status.
   • Remarks, for anything that does not fit a field.
4. Select Save and next to move on to the windows.

Fill in lead source and referrer even when it feels obvious. They are the only record of where work comes from, and nothing reconstructs them later.

Lead statuses

There are three:

Status	Meaning
New	The enquiry has arrived and nothing has been sent
Quotation	A quotation has been produced
Dropped	The enquiry is not going anywhere

Set Dropped rather than deleting a lead. A deleted lead takes its history with it, and dropped leads are the only way to see how much work you are losing.

Add windows to the lead

Once the contact information is saved you add the windows. That is covered in Design Canvas, because it is the part of the product with the most in it.

Read the lead

Lead view, at lead/view/:id. Placeholder image.

Opening a lead gives you a set of tabs. This is the most useful screen in the application, so it is worth knowing what each tab is for:

Tab	What it shows
Summary	The lead at a glance
uPVC window	The windows on the lead
uPVC window details	The detail behind each window
Glass	Glass units the job needs
Files	Attachments
Notes	Free text against the lead
Material	What the job will consume
Estimations	The priced estimation
Cost sheet	How the price was built up
Cut sheet	Cutting sizes for the floor

Contacts

Contacts, at contact. Placeholder image.

Contacts is the address book. It has the same add, view, update and filter pattern as the other lists. Keep it current, because contacts are what you select on other records rather than retyping names.

To dos

To dos calendar, at to_dos/calender. Placeholder image.

To dos are tasks. There is a list view with filters and a Calendar view, which is the better one for anything with a date, such as a site visit or a callback.

1. Go to To dos.
2. Select Add, fill in the task and save.
3. Switch to Calendar to see what is coming.

Saved filters

Leads, contacts, to dos and most other lists support saved filters through a filter view. If you find yourself setting the same filters every morning, save them once and open the saved filter instead.

Activity logs

Leads, projects, production, inventory, accounts and to dos each have an Activity logs screen. It shows what changed on records in that area. When two people disagree about what a record used to say, this is where you look.