Leads usually consist of information about a Person (or people), an Organisation and, potentially, a sales Opportunity. Only once you've validated this information you are likely to want to create new records in your database.

Importantly, you won't necessarily want to create records for a Person, an Organisation and an Opportunity.  For example, the Organisation in the Lead may already exist in your Workbooks database, but you may want to record a new Person. Alternatively, the Lead may provide information on a new Person in a new Organisation which you wish to record, but there may be no Opportunity at this time.

Workbooks can create a combination of up to three linked records for you via the Convert Leads process: Opportunity, Person and/or Organisation.

Data on the new record(s)

If there are custom fields on a Lead record which you also want to appear on the Person, Organisation and Opportunity records that are created when a Lead is converted, the same custom fields must also be created on each of those target record types (ie, the fields must have exactly the same name and be of the same data type).

In addition, when converting a Lead, Workbooks will copy any Notes and/or Activities related to the Lead to the Opportunity and to the Organisation.

How to convert a Lead

To convert a Lead, open the appropriate Lead record and click Save & Convert. This will bring up a screen like this one:

Workbooks will automatically create a new Opportunity, a Person record and an Organisation record for you.  If you don't want to create all three records, simply remove the tick from the checkbox next to the type of record you want to omit.

Before converting a Lead Workbooks checks for any existing duplicate Person or Organisation records and displays any possible matches in the greyed-out screens on the right.  If the record already exists, you can remove the tick from the checkbox next to Create a new Person/Organisation, which activates the right-hand screen, where you can select the appropriate record.

If you would not like the 'Create a new Person' or 'Create a new Organisation' tick boxes to be automatically ticked each time you convert a lead, go to Start > Configuration > Database > Other Settings. Go to the 'Sales Lead' section at the bottom of the page and uncheck the appropriate tick boxes.

When you create the Person record, Workbooks can create a relationship showing that Person's role in the opportunity (such as Budget Holder, Advisor, Evaluator, etc) and can record their status (ie, Positive, Negative or Not Known).

This relationship and status refers to the specific opportunity you're creating, not to their general role in the Organisation.  To choose the appropriate options, use the drop-down menus next to Role in opportunity and Status of person.

Click on Next to complete the Lead conversion.  If you left the box next to Create a new opportunity ticked, Workbooks will open a new Opportunity form for you to complete.

Converted Sales Leads

The converted Leads remain on your database for historical purposes which allows you to carry out statistical analysis, for example:  How many leads did we create in each month last year?  How does that compare with this year? and so on.

If historical Sales Leads are not of use to the operations at your company then you may delete them.