Tracking leads
Available onEstimatorBuilder
Leads tracks enquiries from the moment somebody asks you to price something to the moment it becomes a quote — or does not.
Why it exists
Section titled “Why it exists”Enquiries arrive by email, phone and word of mouth, and they get lost in exactly the same way every time: nobody owns them, nobody has a list, and the ones that were not followed up are invisible because there is nothing to look at.
That is the most expensive failure in a building business, and it is silent. A job you lost on price is a job you know about. A job you lost because nobody rang back never appears anywhere.
The board makes the list exist.
The stages
Section titled “The stages”A lead moves left to right:
| Stage | Means |
|---|---|
| New | It has arrived, nobody has done anything yet |
| Contacted | You have made contact |
| Qualified | It is real — the budget, scope and timing stack up |
| Quoting | You are pricing it |
| Quoted | The price is with them |
Plus two ways out: Won and Lost.
The board shows the five live stages as columns; won and lost drop off it so what is left is what needs attention.
Qualifying is the stage that matters
Section titled “Qualifying is the stage that matters”Qualified is the one people skip, and it is the one that protects your estimating time.
Pricing a job properly costs you real hours. Doing that for an enquiry with no budget, no drawings, no site and no timeframe is the most expensive way to be busy. Before moving a lead to Quoting, know:
- What they actually want built
- Roughly what they expect to spend — the Budget field
- When
- Whether they are talking to four other builders
A lead that cannot answer those is not ready to quote, and saying so is a legitimate outcome rather than a failure.
What a lead holds
Section titled “What a lead holds”| Field | |
|---|---|
| Contact name, Company (if any) | Who is asking |
| Email, phone | How to reach them |
| Budget | What they expect to spend |
| Estimated value (ex GST) | What you think it is worth |
| Detail | The enquiry itself |
| Stage | Where it is up to |
| Last activity | When anything last happened |
Estimated value is what makes the board answer a business question rather than just listing names — how much work is in the pipeline, and at what stage.
Last activity is the one to watch
Section titled “Last activity is the one to watch”Sort or scan by last activity and the leads nobody has touched surface immediately.
A lead at Contacted with three weeks of silence is the whole reason the module exists. It is not lost — nobody has decided anything — it has just been forgotten, and it is recoverable with one phone call today.