Opportunities

An Opportunity is defined as a sales prospect, requested service or product. An opportunity can be a possibility of converting a lead to a possible customer or a winning a new sales opportunity from an existing customer. Opportunities can be converted to sale quotes or sale orders if the lead or customer chooses to proceed.

Prerequisites

Getting started with CRM (required)
Set up Leads (recommended)
Set up Products (recommended)

Add a new opportunity

New opportunities in Cin7 Core can be created by navigating to the CRM → New → Opportunity page, as well as being created from an existing lead or customer record. View existing opportunities by navigating to CRM → Opportunities.

Enter opportunity details

Opportunity fields marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory. This information will be inherited by the sale quote if opportunity is later converted to a sale quote. Enter the opportunity details into the document header and Save your changes to add the opportunity.

The following opportunity fields are available:

Name*: Select customer or lead name from the dropdown field. Click + to enter details to add a new lead.
Contact: Select a lead or customer contact to autofill their contact details to the opportunity. Click + to enter details and add a new lead contact or customer contact.
Phone: Enter an optional phone number for the lead or customer. If you have selected a lead or customer contact with a phone number, this field will be autofilled.
Email: Enter an optional phone number for the lead or customer. If you have selected a lead or customer contact with an email, this field will be autofilled.
Reference: Optional customer or lead reference field.
Billing Address*: Enter a billing address for the lead or customer.
Price Tier*: Defines the default price tier that would be applicable for the opportunity. If you have selected a lead or customer, this field will be autofilled.
Terms*: Defines the payment terms for the lead or customer.
Sales Representative*: Defines the sales representative in charge of the specific opportunity.
Account*: Defines a sales account for the opportunity.
Tax Rule*: Defines the default tax rule for the opportunity.
Location*: Defines the location of the opportunity (and later the sale).
Date*: Date of the opportunity.
Ship to Company: Shipping company. Autofilled from the customer or lead details. Check Ship to different company to enter another value.
Ship to Contact: Shipping contact. Autofilled from the customer or lead details. Check Ship to different company to enter another value.
Shipping Address: Shipping contact. Autofilled from the customer or lead details. Check Ship to different company to enter another value.
Comments: Optional comments field.

Add a new opportunity from a lead

Generate a new opportunity from an existing lead record by navigating to CRM → Leads → [select lead] → Opportunity.

Add a new opportunity from a customer

Generate a new opportunity from an existing customer record by navigating to Sale → Customers → [select customer] → Opportunity.

Add products and services to an opportunity

Once you have entered the opportunity details into the document header, you can add items to your opportunity. There are two fields where items can be added. In the upper field, you can add stock items to the opportunity. Saving the opportunity will display the buttons In Progress and Mark as Lost.

The lower field is for additional charges – any non-inventory or service items (e.g. shipping, handling), which need to be added to the opportunity.

Stock items can be added one by one, added as a family or imported in CSV format. See Sale quotes and orders for more information if necessary. Once stock and service items have been added to the opportunity, double check the quantity, price, discount and tax rule fields to ensure they are correct. The product and service details will be inherited by the sales quote if the opportunity is won.

Note: To view more detailed information about the product, including available stock, hover your cursor over the product record.

Approve and authorize an opportunity

Once you have finished adding products and services to your opportunity and saved your changes, you may click In Progress to mark the opportunity as in progress, e.g. to mark when a sales representative starts working on an opportunity.

Then, you can click Authorize to change the opportunity's status to Won. If an opportunity is created for a lead, during the conversion of the opportunity to a sale automatically the lead will be converted to a customer. If it the opportunity is created for a customer then the opportunity will be converted to a sale under the given customer.

Note: If opportunity approval is enabled, clicking Authorize changes the opportunity status to Awaiting Approval. An authorized user must then Approve or Reject the opportunity. Only users with the Cin7 Core CRM → Task Approval user permission are able to approve opportunities.

Enable/disable opportunity approval

Set whether an opportunity can be authorized straight away, or if it must be approved first. Go to Settings → General Settings → Cin7 Core CRM and enable/disable Enable Opportunity Approval.

Upon opportunity authorization, this will give the user the option to Approve or Reject the opportunity. Users can open rejected opportunities and select Review to return the opportunity to an open but unauthorized state.

Convert an opportunity to a sales quote

Opportunities that have been authorized/won can be converted to authorized sales quotes. All details related to the sale opportunity should be inherited by the sale quote. This includes customer details and products and additional charges or service information. If the opportunity was created for a lead, the lead will automatically be converted to a customer.

When there are any open tasks for the opportunity attached during the conversion all tasks will be marked as closed by the system. Tasks are not inherited by the sales quote. The conversion process cannot be reversed.

Mark an opportunity as lost

Opportunities with any status can be removed from the list by selecting Mark as Lost.

Clone an opportunity

Opportunities can be cloned from the top-right of an opportunity's detail screen. Clone will recreate a new sale opportunity with the same details including lead/customer, products and services.

View opportunities

The Opportunities dashboard page provides users an overview of created CRM opportunities. Opportunities can be viewed in list or Kanban board format. Opportunity display is limited to the most recent 1000 records to improve performance. The user can further filter records by selecting a custom date range.

Opportunities Listing

View your opportunities in list format from the List view. List view can be filtered by date range, opportunity status and sales rep using the filters in the toolbar, as well as import opportunities. You can choose to show sales only, opportunities only, or sales and opportunities on this view.

Click on an opportunity to open the opportunity's details screen. In the top-right, click the Refresh icon to load the latest Cin7 Core data and the Settings icon to enable or disable columns in the table.

Opportunities Kanban board

View your opportunities in Kanban board format from the Kanban view. Each status (Draft, In Progress, Waiting for Approval, In Review, Won, Lost) corresponds to a Kanban board column. Kanban view can be filtered by date range and sales rep using the filters in the toolbar. Voided opportunities will not be listed.

Note: Enabling Opportunity Approval will display the Waiting for Approval and In Review Kanban board columns.

Click on an opportunity to open the opportunity's details screen. In the top-right, click the Refresh icon to load the latest Cin7 Core data and the Settings icon to change how opportunities are grouped.

Opportunities can be dragged and dropped between columns to change their status. An opportunity card at any status except In Progress to move directly to Draft, which will Undo the opportunity.

Allowed status changes when Opportunity Approval is enabled:

	Draft	In Progress	Waiting for Approval	In Review	Won	Lost
Draft		Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
In Progress	Yes		No	No	No	No
Waiting for Approval	No	Yes		No	Yes	Yes
In Review	No	No	Yes		No	No
Won	Yes	No	Yes	No		No
Lost	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No

Allowed status changes when Opportunity Approval is disabled:

	Draft	In Progress	Won	Lost
Draft		Yes	Yes	Yes
In Progress	Yes		Yes	Yes
Won	No	Yes		Yes
Lost	No	Yes	No

Import opportunities

Import large numbers of opportunities via CSV file to save time. Opportunities are imported from the opportunities dashboard (CRM → Opportunities).

Click Import.
Download the opportunities CSV template. You can expand the Field Specification for more information about what to enter into each entry.
Populate the template with the opportunity values, making sure the information matches the column headings. The column headings must not be changed for the import to work.
Save the CSV Template.
Browse your files for the populated CSV file and click Upload. Entries with the same lead/customer and opportunity date will be summed into a single opportunity.

Export opportunities

Export opportunity information in CSV format. Opportunities are exported from the opportunities dashboard (CRM → Opportunities).

Select one or more opportunities by clicking the checkbox next to the entry. This will make display a new toolbar.
Click Export.
Confirm the download of the CSV file.

Print and email opportunities

Print will print a document or save a PDF version. Email will open a pop-up window where you can enter an email message and recipients, the opportunity will be attached as a PDF.

You can also perform print or email multiple opportunities at once by going to the opportunities dashboard (CRM → Opportunities), selecting the checkbox next to one or more opportunities to make the actions toolbar visible.

Click Print to generate one PDF document (each opportunity will begin on a separate page of the document), or Email to send email with attached PDF. Email template subject and body template must be configured before bulk email action can be performed.

Note: Opportunity and document templates can be customised by going to (Settings → Document and email templates → CRM). See Managing Document and email templates for more information.

Undo and void opportunities

Undo will reverse the opportunity to Draft status if it has already been saved, authorized, or lost. Void will close the opportunity and change the status to Voided. It will remove all the details entered.

Undo or void an opportunity from the top-right of an opportunity's detail screen.

You can also undo or void multiple opportunities at once by going to the opportunities dashboard (CRM → Opportunities), selecting the checkbox next to one or more opportunities to make the actions toolbar visible. Next, simply click Undo or Void.

Attachments, logs and attributes

Documents can be attached to the sale opportunity in the Attachments tab. All printed and emailed documents will be saved here in PDF format automatically.

The final tab is Logs & Attributes, consisting of two sections.

Section 1 covers additional attributes. Using additional attributes, you can add up to 10 custom fields to your sales process. If you have no additional attributes applied to the sales process, this section will not be visible.

Section 2 covers activity logs. All user activities from the creation of the new sale opportunity onwards are logged.