Who can use this page: anyone given CRM access — no accounting role needed. A Sales Representative works the leads they own or created; a Sales Manager sees and assigns every lead and reviews won/lost; a Sales Director gives the final approval (see Sales Roles). Staff, Reviewers, Approvers, Viewers and Accountants keep their usual CRM access. Find it under CRM → Leads, CRM → Activities & Follow-ups and CRM → Approvals. On the phone it is the Leads tab (and Approvals for checkers).

What it is for

Every enquiry — a phone call, a referral, a message, a form on your website — becomes a lead with three things that stop it from being forgotten: a stage, a responsible person and a next action with a date. Reminders chase the responsible person until the lead is won or lost, and when the customer says yes the lead turns into a quotation (and later a project) without typing anything twice.

Capturing a lead

  • By hand: CRM → Leads → New lead. A contact person plus an email or a phone number is the minimum; add the job title, where it came from, the likely value and the first next action (tomorrow 09:00 "First call" is pre-filled).
  • From your website: Settings → Organization → Public enquiry form → Turn on and get a link. Put the link on your site, socials or a QR code. Each submission becomes a lead marked Website form, and everyone who works leads is alerted. The same email sent twice in a day is added to the first lead instead of creating another.
  • From another tool (Zapier, a chatbot, a spreadsheet script): POST /api/v1/leads with an API key and an external_ref — the same reference sent twice never creates two leads. See API Access.

Duplicates: if an open lead already has that email or phone, you are shown it instead of a second lead being created. Open it, or confirm Create anyway when it really is a different enquiry.

Working a lead

Open a lead to see the stage track, the details, and the activity timeline.

  • Stages: New → Contacted → Qualified → Quote requested → Quoted. Each move asks for confirmation.
  • Won and lost need sign-off. Mark won… and Mark lost… submit the outcome for approval (lost needs a reason — the most useful thing to know about lost work). The lead stays open, with a waiting for review note, until a reviewer and then an approver confirm it under CRM → Approvals. If they send it back, the note turns red: open the request, read the comment, edit and submit again. The person who submitted an outcome can never approve it. When a customer accepts a quotation on the emailed link, the lead is won straight away — the customer's acceptance is the sign-off.
  • Assign the responsible person — they are notified and receive the reminders.
  • Next action: when and what. This is what the reminders are built on; clear the date only to park a lead.
  • Send email writes to the lead from BareLedger. It goes out under your organization's name ("Acme via BareLedger"), and the lead's reply comes back to the lead: it appears under Emails and on the timeline, and the person responsible is notified (everyone who works leads, if nobody is). Click an email to read it. Each email sent counts toward your plan's monthly lead-email allowance; replies are free. The button shows only when the lead has an email address.
  • Log activity: calls, notes, meetings, and emails you sent from your own mailbox. Add a follow-up (a task with a due date and an assignee) when something must happen later. Done tasks keep their outcome.
  • Make customer creates the customer record from the lead (or links an existing customer with the same email).
  • Create quotation opens the quotation form already filled with the customer and the job; saving it links the quotation and moves the lead to Quoted. From then on the quotation's own page shows the same follow-ups.

Reminders

Settings → Organization → Workflow reminders → Remind about lead follow-ups every N hours. While a lead's next action is due, its responsible person gets a reminder every N hours (in-app, and by email/push if they opted in). Leads with nobody responsible remind everyone who works leads. Overdue follow-up tasks remind their assignee the same way. Blank turns it off.

On the dashboard

The CRM card shows open leads by stage, follow-ups overdue and due today, this month's won/lost and win rate, and the pipeline value — the expected value of open leads in your functional currency at today's exchange rate, plus a version weighted by each lead's probability. Leads in a currency with no exchange rate yet are listed underneath instead of being counted at 1:1.

The follow-ups list

CRM → Activities & Follow-ups shows your open follow-ups across leads, customers and quotations (switch to Everyone, filter by due date, include done). Mark them done from here; the About column jumps to the record.

Plan usage

CRM records are unlimited on every plan, Free included: leads, follow-ups, notes and website enquiries never count against your plan's posted-transaction allowance (see Subscription & Billing). Only accounting records that post to the ledger — such as the invoice raised from a won quotation — count. Emails you send to leads from BareLedger have their own monthly allowance (Free 50, Growth 1,000, Business unlimited); when it runs out, sending is paused until next month or an upgrade.

Common mix-ups

  • "Nothing reminds me." The cadence under Settings is blank, or the lead has no next action.
  • "I can't create a quotation from the lead." Creating quotations needs the sales maker permission as well as CRM access; a Reviewer or Viewer can read leads but not draft quotations.
  • "I can't mark a lead won." Submitting outcomes needs the CRM Preparer level (or higher) under Team & Access; a lead that already has an outcome waiting shows the request instead of the buttons.
  • "There's no Send email button." The lead has no email address (edit the lead to add one), or you can read leads but not manage them.
  • "The reply went to our own inbox instead." Reply capture isn't switched on for this server; replies then go to the organization's contact email under Settings.
  • "The website form stopped working." Someone replaced or turned off the link under Settings; publish the new one.