Leads & Estimates

Staying On Top of Follow-Ups

Use the priority groups and scheduled appointments so no lead goes quiet and no move date passes unbooked.

Your working list is CRM → My Dashboard, on the Followups tab. The Follow-ups link under CRM in the sidebar opens it directly. It shows every lead assigned to you that still has an open estimate (or no estimate yet), grouped by priority, so the list reads top to bottom in the order you should work it.

Each group is a card with its lead count and Est. Value. Click a card to open its list. There you can search by customer, phone, email, city or estimate number, sort by move date, received date, last touched or customer name, and narrow the list to a move-date or received-date range.

The priority groups

You give each lead a priority from 0 to 5. It exists to manage the pipeline and follow-up urgency, and it decides which group the lead is in:

  • Priority 0 — Waiting on Pictures/Quote. The ball is in someone else's court. Chase what you are waiting for.
  • Priority 1 — Critical. Work these first.
  • Priority 2 — High.
  • Priority 3 — In-Home Estimates. Visits to schedule or complete.
  • Priority 4 — Normal.
  • Priority 5 — Scheduled Virtual Calls.

A lead with no priority set lands in Priority 0, so nothing falls off the list by being untouched. If a lead is not where you expect, its priority is usually the reason. Change it on the lead's Priority tab.

The group that catches what you missed

After the priority groups comes Past Move Date / Booked Elsewhere, flagged Action Needed on purpose whenever it holds a lead. A lead lands there when:

  • its move date has already passed and it was never booked, or
  • it has been marked lost.

This is the answer to "am I missing anything". A lead here is one you either lost quietly or forgot. Check this group before you do anything else: everything above it is still winnable, and everything in it already slipped.

To tidy up in bulk, open a priority group and click Transfer leads. It moves unbooked leads from that priority (or all of your past move-date leads) to another priority or to Past Move Date / Booked Elsewhere. It never books, deletes or reassigns a lead, and booked jobs are never included.

What each row shows

Each row shows the customer, the route, the move date, and when the lead was last touched. Under the estimate number is the price of the latest estimate given to the customer:

  • It is the moving estimate's price, not an Auto Transport one, unless the lead only has Auto Transport estimates (then it says "Auto").
  • An estimate the customer was sent always wins over a newer draft. "Not sent" means nothing has gone to the customer yet, so you are seeing the newest draft.
  • When the lead has more than one estimate, the number the price comes from is shown beside it.

A row tinted red has a move date that has passed. A row tinted green has an appointment today.

Scheduling an appointment

Priority tells you what to work now. An appointment (a call, visit, meeting or payment at a set date and time) brings the lead back to you later. Appointments are the dated entries; the Followups tab is your list of leads to work.

  1. Open the lead.
  2. Click Appointment. The Schedule Appointment dialog opens for that customer.
  3. Pick the Appointment Type (Phone Call, Facetime, Email, Meeting, Site Visit, Payment, Customer Service or Other) and give it a Title.
  4. Set the Date and Time. They start at today, 9:00 AM.
  5. Add Notes if they will help future-you remember the context.
  6. Leave Email me 15 minutes before ticked if you want an email reminder.
  7. Click Schedule Appointment. You will see Appointment Scheduled!

If your calendar is connected (Google Calendar in My Profile, or Outlook through your company's Microsoft 365 app), the appointment is added to it automatically. Otherwise, tick Download Invite File (.ics) to add it to your own calendar by hand. Either way, the appointment in the CRM is the one that counts.

Where appointments show up

  • Appointments in the top bar lists today's appointments and refreshes every minute.
  • In your follow-up lists, a lead with an appointment today is tinted green.
  • My Dashboard → Calendar shows My Appointments.
  • Appointments in the sidebar opens the shared company calendar, one month at a time, filtered to All, Payments or Other Appointments. If your account has Block Appointments, that page does not open, but your own appointments still show in the places above.

Getting reminded

Email me 15 minutes before is ticked on every new appointment unless you untick it. The email goes to you with the customer, job reference, reason and a link back to the CRM.

To stop one reminder, untick the box on that appointment. To stop them altogether, an administrator sets your Appointment reminder email to Off under Settings → Notifications (see Your Notifications).

When a lead books

If that was the customer's only open estimate, the lead leaves Followups and moves to the Booked tab. Followups only ever shows open work, so a customer you booked who is missing from Followups is the system doing its job, not losing them.

A booked customer who gets a new estimate from you shows in both places: in Booked for the move they booked, and back in their priority group for as long as the new estimate is open. That row carries a green Booked marker so you know it is an existing customer. A cancelled estimate does not count as open.

A habit that works

Once in the morning: clear Past Move Date / Booked Elsewhere first, then work Priority 1 down. Once in the afternoon: everything under Appointments in the top bar. That is the whole routine, and it is why the list is ordered the way it is.