Leads

A lead is somebody who might become a client. The Leads screen keeps every enquiry in one pipeline so nothing is remembered only in a WhatsApp thread, and so the firm can see what is actually in play.

The app offers a walkthrough the first time you open the page. Take it — it is faster than reading about the columns.

Before you start

Nothing has to exist first. To turn a lead into a client later you will want at least one service priced up, because that is what a proposal is built from.

Add a lead

1. Open Leads from the left menu.
2. Click New Lead, top right.
3. Fill in the company name — it is the only thing required. Add the contact person, phone, email and where the enquiry came from if you have them.
4. Set a priority and, if you want to be reminded, a follow-up date.
5. Save. The lead appears in the first column, New opportunities.

Move a lead through the pipeline

The board has five columns, left to right, in the order a real enquiry travels:

• New opportunities — just arrived, nobody has spoken to them.
• Discovery done — you have made the first call or sent the first email.
• Qualified leads — they passed your vetting and are worth a proposal.
• Proposal sent — the ball is in their court.
• Lost leads — did not convert, kept so you can see the pattern later.

Drag a card to the next column, or open it and change the stage from inside. Use List instead of Kanban at the top if you would rather work in a table, and Emails to see what has been sent.

Mark a lead as lost

You will be asked why. The reason is required — a Lost column full of names tells you nothing, while a list of reasons tells you what to fix.

1. Click Mark as Lost on the lead's card, pick Lost from the stage list in the table view, or drag the card into Lost leads. All three open the same box.
2. Pick one reason: looking for cheaper services, lost to another firm, not responding, scope conflict, decision deferred, or other. If you pick Other, you must describe it. For the rest, the detail box is optional but worth using — "quoted 40% under us" is the part you will want next year.
3. If it is worth trying them again, tick Remind me to try them again later and set a date. It defaults to three months out. Leave it unticked if the deal is truly dead.
4. If the lead has live proposals out, you will also be offered the option to reject them so the proposal screens agree with this. It is ticked by default.
5. Click Mark as lost.

The reason then shows on the lead's card in the Lost leads column, so you can read the column without opening anything.

If you later move the lead back out of Lost, the reason is cleared — it is no longer true, and leaving it would count a live lead as a loss in your figures.

See why you are losing work

Open the Leads dashboard and look for the Why we lose panel. It counts the reasons recorded on every lead lost in the period you have selected, biggest first, with each one's share of the total. Change the period at the top of the page to compare a quarter against the one before it.

The panel counts leads by the date they were lost, not the date they came in — a lead you first spoke to two years ago and lost last week belongs in last week's picture.

It stays empty until leads start being closed with a reason, so it fills up from the day you begin using it rather than showing history you never recorded.

See when an enquiry arrived

Every lead shows when it came in. On a board card and in the list you see it in plain words — Received 2 hours ago, Received 3 days ago — and hovering over that line shows the exact date and time. Open the lead and the header carries the full arrival time.

Use it to decide what to pick up first. A website enquiry that arrived twenty minutes ago is a different call from one that has been sitting since Friday.

Keep notes on a lead

1. Open the lead card.
2. Add a note describing what was said and agreed.
3. Save. The note is stamped with your name and the time.

Notes are the record of the conversation — write the outcome, not just that a call happened.

Convert a lead into a client

1. Open the lead.
2. Choose Convert.
3. Confirm the company details — they are carried across, so correct anything that was rough.
4. Save. A client business is created with its contact, and the lead is marked converted and linked to it.

From there you raise a proposal against the new client in the usual way.

What the system does on its own

• Website enquiries alert the firm straight away. When your own website sends a lead into PracticeStacks, the owner and every administrator get an email and a WhatsApp message with the person's name, phone, email and the time it arrived, plus a button that opens the lead. Nobody has to be watching the screen for the enquiry to be noticed.
• WhatsApp goes to your WhatsApp number. If you have filled in a separate WhatsApp number on your profile, every alert goes there rather than to your login phone. Firms whose office number runs a WhatsApp Business account need this — that number cannot receive messages.
• A daily follow-up digest. Early each morning you get one email listing every lead whose follow-up date has come up — one message covering all of them, not one per lead.
• Closing a lead stops its reminders. The moment a lead is marked lost or becomes a client, any follow-ups still outstanding on it are cancelled — so nobody is chased about a deal that is already decided. This happens however the lead closes: you marking it lost, the client rejecting the proposal, the client signing it, or the app giving up on a lead that ignored a whole email sequence. When you mark it lost yourself, a message on screen tells you how many follow-ups were cancelled. The one exception is the revisit reminder you set in the same step — that one is deliberately kept. The cancelled reminders stay on the lead, so you can still see what had been planned.
• Daily lead emails. Where you have set a lead email sequence running, the day's messages go out mid-morning without you opening the app.
• Your firm brochure is attached. Lead follow-up emails carry the brochure from your firm profile, so a prospect always has your current profile alongside the message.
• The board counts itself. Column totals and the conversion figures on the dashboard update as cards move.

What you cannot do (and what to do instead)

• You cannot close a lead without giving a reason. If none of the six fit, pick Other and write what happened in your own words.
• You cannot convert the same lead twice. Once converted it is tied to the client it became. If a second company came out of the same conversation, add it as a new lead and convert that.
• You cannot edit or delete somebody else's note. Only the person who wrote a note can change it. If a colleague's note is wrong, add your own correcting it — the trail keeps both, which is the point.
• You cannot invoice a lead. Billing starts at the client record. Convert the lead first.
• Converted leads are hidden by default. They are not deleted. Turn on Show converted to see them in the board.

Common questions

A colleague added the same company twice. What now?

Keep the one with the better notes and mark the other as lost. Deleting loses the history of who spoke to whom.

Can I see only my own leads?

Yes — switch All Leads to My Leads at the top of the board.

A lead came in from our website and nobody was told.

Check two things. First, your profile in Settings: if your office phone runs a WhatsApp Business account, fill in the WhatsApp Number field with a personal number, because alerts cannot be delivered to a Business API number. Second, the alert goes to the firm owner and administrators — a team member on the ordinary member role is not alerted about website enquiries.

The follow-up digest did not arrive.

It only lists leads with a follow-up date that has come due. A lead with no date set is never chased — set one when you leave the call.

I marked a lead lost, but I want to try them again next quarter.

Tick Remind me to try them again later in the box that asks why you lost it, and set the date. That reminder is kept even though every other reminder on the lead is cancelled. If you have already closed the lead without setting one, open it and add a follow-up in the usual way.

I stopped getting reminders for a lead and I did not cancel them.

Check the lead's stage. If a proposal to that client was rejected, or the client signed it, the lead closes itself and its reminders are cancelled with it. Open the lead and you will see them listed as cancelled.

The Why we lose panel is empty.

It only counts leads closed since you started recording reasons, and only those lost inside the period selected at the top of the page. Widen the period, or give it a few weeks of ordinary use.