Tracking and managing prospects.

This article shows you how to track and manage prospects using customer types and the customer list window.

Built into the Acctivate system is the ability to track and manage customer types. These types are 100% configurable by you and can even include non-customers such as prospects.

Managing Prospects

Prospects are created as customers in Acctivate and use a customer type to differentiate them from current customers. If you don't already have a customer type of Prospect set up in your Acctivate company, you can follow the below steps to set one up. You may have one general prospect type or multiple if you'd like to separate different types of prospects.

1. Select File > Configuration Management to open the Configuration Manager.
2. Open the Customer folder, which will display a list of options.
3. Click the Customer Type option.
4. Make Prospect active by checking the Active box, which will allow you to label a customer as a prospect in the Customer window under the Type field.
   
   

You may not want prospects to sync to QuickBooks as customers until they've made a purchase. Acctivate provides an option to only sync customers with invoices that can be enabled in the Customer section of Configuration Manager using steps 1-2 above and choosing Customer Options in the Customer Folder. Customers using the Pro or Premier versions of QuickBooks may especially consider enabling this option to avoid reaching the list element limitations in those versions. For more information, see Intuit's Website.

Labeling a Customer as a Prospect

After the customer types are developed, simply select the correct type for your "customer" (your prospect).

1. Open the Edit Customer window.
2. In the Customer tab, select Prospect in the Type field to label the Customer as a prospect. The options under Type can be configured as described above.
3. The customer can be labeled as a prospect when a new customer is entered.

Tracking Prospects

 The Customer List Window allows you to search and filter prospect information by Salesperson, Customer Location, Branch, and more. You can also view all prospect activity in one place including related notes, emails, quotes and related business activities.

1. Open the Customer List Window using the left hand menu.
2. Create and save a Filter based on the customer type of Prospect.
3. Find more specific information within the filtered list by searching using the box in the upper left. You may search based on: Customer Name, Company Name, Company Email, Company Phone, Billing City, Billing State, Billing Zip or Billing Country.
4. Select a prospect to view Timeline information about that specific prospect.
   1. Use the Type dropdown on the Timeline to filter the types of customer information you'd like to review, such as notes and emails, business activities, and quotes.