CRM is where you manage clients and the sales pipeline — from first enquiry through to handover — and where you run client selections, the process of getting clients to choose their finishes against the allowances in your estimate. It’s the sales and client-facing front end that feeds jobs, contracts and the client portal.
The CRM dashboard
The CRM dashboard is your sales overview — where leads are up to, what’s in the pipeline, and what needs following up. The kanban board gives you the same pipeline as a drag-and-drop view (below).
Clients
A client is a person or company you’re selling to or building for.
Adding a client
- Open Clients and Create client (or add one quickly while creating a job).
- Capture their contact details, the lead source (where they came from — website, referral, signage, repeat client, and so on), and an initial budget.
- Set their sales defaults if needed: sales account, invoice due terms, GST treatment, discount, credit limit (and whether to block invoices over it), region and bank details. These pre-fill when you invoice the client.
Clients can be synced with Xero as contacts, edited, deleted and restored, and each client’s record shows their interaction history and projects.
The sales pipeline
Every client has a status that tracks them through the pipeline:
Lead → Qualified → Proposal → Negotiation → Contract → Pre-Construction → Construction → Handover → Warranty — or Lost.
Status moves as the client progresses (and broadly mirrors the job’s own status). You can set it manually with a recorded reason where you need to override the automatic flow.
The kanban board
The kanban view shows your pipeline as columns by status. Drag a client from one column to the next as they progress — a fast way to keep the pipeline current without opening each record.
Logging interactions
Keep a history of every touchpoint with a client.
- From the client’s record, log an interaction.
- Choose the type — phone call, email, meeting, note, quote sent, or follow-up — and write a summary (plus notes).
These build a timeline on the client’s record, so anyone picking up the relationship can see exactly what’s been said and when.
Turning a lead into a job
When a lead becomes real, create a job straight from the client’s record — it pre-fills the client and their budget so you’re not retyping. From there you estimate, contract and build (see Jobs & Job Cost and Estimating).
Client selections
Selections are how clients choose their finishes — flooring, tapware, kitchen, and so on — against the prime cost (PC) and provisional sum (PS) allowances in your estimate. Done well, this keeps the client engaged and keeps the budget honest, because the difference between the allowance and what they pick becomes a tracked adjustment.
How a selection works
A selection is one choice the client needs to make — for example “Kitchen tapware” — with:
- a category and item name,
- the allowance amount carried from the estimate’s PC/PS line,
- a due date by which the client must decide, and
- one or more options for them to choose from.
Each option has a name, image, supplier, product code, delivery time, and a price adjustment — the difference (plus or minus) from the allowance.
Setting selections up
- Open Manage selections for the project.
- Create a selection, linking it to the relevant cost code and the estimate’s PC/PS allowance line, and set the allowance amount and due date.
- Add the options the client can choose from, with images and prices.
To save time, use the selection template library — build reusable selection templates (with their options) and drop your standard selections onto a project rather than rebuilding them each time.
Drafting and releasing selections
Selections are released in two stages, and this catches people out: a selection is not visible to your client until you release it.
They draft themselves. Create or edit a head contract carrying PS/PC allowances and CortexPM raises a draft selection for each one. You’ll see “N allowance selection(s) drafted from this contract.” Editing the contract again never duplicates them. You can also run it on demand with Draft from Allowances.
Those drafts are created hidden. The client sees nothing.
Adding options. Build each selection’s options by hand, or pull them from your price library — Add Options from Price Library brings the rate, image, supplier and product code through with them. Each option shows the client what choosing it would do to their price.
Releasing. On the selections board every card is flagged Visible to client or Not yet released, and the header tells you how many are still hidden.
- Release to Client on a single selection.
- Release All Ready releases every unreleased selection that has at least one option.
A selection with no options can’t be released — the button is disabled with “Add at least one option first”. An empty selection in a client’s portal would only confuse them.
Withdraw from Portal pulls a released selection back, but only while the client hasn’t chosen yet. Once they’ve made a choice it stays.
Tip: draft everything when the contract is signed, then release in stages as the job runs — tapware when you’re near fit-off, not at slab stage. A client given forty decisions at once makes none of them.
Watch out: manually created selections are released by default. It’s only the ones drafted from allowances that start hidden.
The client choosing
The client makes their choices in the client portal (see Client Portal):
- They review the options and select one. The selected price and the date chosen are recorded.
- Where their choice differs from the allowance, CortexPM creates an allowance adjustment (a contract action/variation) so the cost difference flows into the budget and contract rather than being lost (see Contracts).
You can track which selections are still outstanding and which are due, and reminders keep clients moving.
Giving clients portal access
To let a client see their project and make selections, invite them to the portal:
- From client portal management, find the client.
- Send a portal invitation — they get a secure link to set up their access.
The full client-side experience — what they see and do once they’re in — is covered in the Client Portal guide.
Where to next
A won lead becomes a job in Jobs & Job Cost and a contract in Contracts. Selections play out in the Client Portal, where clients also see their documents, schedule, photos and invoices.