User Guide. Everything you need to use and administer your CRM: your customer records, tasks and interactions, pipeline and quoting, your dashboard, and the settings that let you tailor it to your business.
New here? Start with Welcome and Getting Around to learn how the screen works, then dip into any topic below. Use the search box on the left to jump straight to a feature.
Welcome to Unbound CRM
Getting Started
Unbound CRM brings everything your team needs about a customer into one place, sales activity, orders and invoices, contacts, pricing, quotes and more, so you rarely have to go hunting for information.
It's designed for more than just salespeople. Internal sales, customer service, quality and accounts staff all use it, and because everyone can arrange their own screen, each person can put the information they care about front and centre.
Working alongside SYSPRO
Unbound CRM works hand-in-hand with SYSPRO. A lot of what you see (customer details, orders, invoices, pricing and sales figures) is drawn live from SYSPRO, so it's always up to date. When you edit a key field in the CRM, your change is saved straight back to SYSPRO. Throughout this guide, a SYSPRO tag means the information on that page comes from SYSPRO.
The same everywhere you work
The CRM looks and works the same on your computer, your phone and even inside Outlook, so there's no second app to learn. See Getting Around for how to use it on mobile, and the Outlook Add-in page for email.
The Basics
Getting Started
If you learn one thing about Unbound CRM, make it this. At its heart the CRM is simple: add a customer or account, create tasks against them, complete those tasks, and repeat. Everything else builds on that.
Start at your dashboard
Your dashboard shows everything relevant to you: your tasks, interactions, and the projects and customers you follow, along with your sales figures. It's your home base each day.
At the top right you'll find a customer search field and a project search field, so you can jump straight to any record.
Add a customer or account
Click the plus (+) button to add a new account to the system. From there, open the account and fill in whatever information you need. (An account is any non-trading entity, such as a prospect, supplier or architect; a customer is a business you actively trade with. See Customers, Accounts & Projects.)
Work through tasks
The CRM runs on tasks. Create a task against a customer or account, and if it's assigned to you it shows up on your dashboard. Work through it however you need to, add comments, push the due date out, follow up, and when you're done, complete it.
Completing a task turns it into a historic interaction with that customer, which lands in their Interactions feed. That feed becomes the full record of your dealings with them, built automatically as you work.
Then explore the rest
Once that rhythm is second nature, the other panels make your sales activity far more powerful: Open Orders & Invoices, Pipeline & Quoting, Sales, Contacts, Attachments and more. Dip into them as you need them; they're all covered in this guide.
Getting Around: Panels
Getting Started
Information in the CRM is organised into colourful panels. The colours stay the same everywhere, so you quickly learn where to look, for example, Contacts are always green and Attachments are always purple.
Make the screen your own
- Drag to rearrange. Move panels around so the ones you use most sit at the top.
- Half-height & stack. Shrink panels to half height and stack them, so you can fit more on screen at once.
- Stow away. Tuck a panel to the side as a small tab if you don't need it; click the tab to bring it back and drag it into place.
Panel controls
- Menu (☰). Most panels have a small menu with extra options for that panel.
- Flip view. A switch button flips a panel over to a related view, for example, Open Orders flips to Invoices, and Contacts flips to Superseded Contacts.
On your phone
There's no dedicated app to download. Unbound CRM is a web app, so on mobile you simply open the same website in your phone's browser that you use on your computer. Everything works the same way.
You get the same panels too, just tap or swipe through them one at a time instead of seeing them side by side. Nothing is missing and nothing to relearn.
Records: Customers, Accounts & Projects
Getting Started
The CRM keeps information against a few types of record. They all share the same panel layout, so once you know one, you know them all.
| Record | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Customer | A business you actively trade with. Most details come from SYSPRO. |
| Account | Any non-trading entity you want to track: most often a prospect, but also a supplier, competitor, architect or builder. Most accounts are prospects you can convert into a customer once they start trading, but they don't have to be. |
| Project | A flexible record for anything that spans customers, a building, a marketing campaign, a competitor. See Projects. |
| Dashboard | Your personal home screen, pulling together everything relevant to you. See Your Dashboard. |
Accounts and customers are linked, so when you convert an account its history (tasks, interactions and attachments) comes across with it.
Info Panel SYSPRO
Working with a Customer
The Info panel is your customer's key details at a glance, name, email, address and more. Most of it comes straight from SYSPRO.
- Edit in place. Many fields can be edited right here. When you save a change, it's written straight back to SYSPRO and the panel refreshes with the latest details.
- Show the fields you care about. You decide which fields appear and in what order, see Settings & Customisation.
- Add your own fields. Track things SYSPRO doesn't, like employee count or a customer's product type, with custom fields.
Tasks Everyday
Working with a Customer
Tasks are how you keep track of what needs doing for a customer, calls to make, quotes to follow up, visits to book.
Creating a task
- Click New Task and choose a type (and sub-type), for example a call, a meeting or a specific kind of visit.
- Assign it to yourself or a colleague, give it a name and a comment, attach files, and set a due date.
- Tag colleagues so they're notified when the task is created and when it's completed, handy for letting your manager know about an important job.
Working your list
- See all upcoming tasks for the customer. Tasks with no name against them are assigned to you.
- Add comments as you go, "tried calling, no answer" → "tried again", and push the due date out to follow up later. Call, comment, reschedule, repeat.
- When you complete a task it becomes a permanent record in the Interactions feed, keeping all your comments and files with it.
Interactions (Feed)
Working with a Customer
The Interactions feed is the complete history of everything that's happened with a customer, newest first.
- Your activity. Completed tasks, notes and calls all land here.
- Automatic history. Changes made in the CRM are logged automatically, so you can see what changed, when, and who changed it.
- Quotes. When you email a quote, a copy of the PDF is saved to the feed exactly as it was sent, a handy record of what the customer received and when.
- Emails. Emails you track from Outlook appear here in full, with their attachments. If the customer replies, use Fetch Conversation to pull the whole thread in. See the Outlook Add-in.
Outlook Add-in
Working with a Customer
The Outlook add-in lets you save important emails against a customer, and even use the whole CRM without leaving your inbox.
Tracking an email
- Open the email in Outlook and open the Unbound add-in.
- If it suggests the right customer, click the suggested name. Otherwise, type the customer's name.
- Click Track, the email (and its attachments) is saved to that customer's Interactions feed.
Works in both desktop and web Outlook.
The whole CRM, inside Outlook
The add-in isn't just for tracking emails, the full CRM runs inside it. You can check your tasks and notifications and open any customer's record right from Outlook.
Details Panel
Working with a Customer
The Details panel holds the fuller picture of a customer, beyond their basic info.
- Business summary & strategy. Free-text notes on who the customer is and your plan for them.
- Face-to-face tracking. See how many in-person visits you've had, and how many in the last three months. Set a target frequency, if you fall behind, a friendly sad-face reminds you it's time to reach out.
- Interaction tracking. The same idea for all interactions (calls, notes, etc.), with a quick breakdown of what those interactions were.
- Key dates. Last price review date and the anniversary of their first order (as far back as SYSPRO records go).
Open Orders & Invoices SYSPRO
Working with a Customer
See a customer's live orders and invoices (straight from SYSPRO) and print the documents they ask for, on the spot.
Open Orders
- See what's on order: items, order quantity, quantity still to come, order date and order number.
- Print a pro forma invoice without leaving the CRM. Your documents are set up to match your SYSPRO stationery, so they look exactly the same whether printed here or in SYSPRO.
Invoices
Use the panel's flip button to switch to Invoices, where you can see what's overdue along with invoice and due dates, and print an invoice or a dispatch note, perfect for quick customer requests and audit time.
Contacts SYSPRO
Working with a Customer
All the people you deal with at a customer, kept in sync with SYSPRO's contacts.
- Multiple contacts per customer, each with details like position, preferred name, email, phone/fax and birthday.
- Add a photo and extra notes to a contact if you like, entirely optional.
- Archive, don't delete. Contacts can't be deleted. Instead you archive (supersede) them, recording why and when, so nothing is ever lost. Use the flip view to see superseded contacts.
Pipeline & Quoting
Working with a Customer
Track the deals you're working on and build quotes for your customers, all in one place.
Two ways to add a deal
- Opportunity, a quick, simple entry: title, probability, close date, amount and notes. Good for logging an expected value (e.g. "$100,000 expected in September, at tender stage").
- Quote, a full quote built line by line, with live pricing (below).
Stages & weighted value
- Deals move through stages (for example Open, Demo Completed, Contract Supplied), and each stage carries a default probability. You can override the probability on any individual deal.
- Probability gives you a weighted value: a $100,000 deal at 50% counts as $50,000 in your forecast, a realistic view of what's likely to land.
- If you sell across divisions or product types, you can run multiple pipeline categories (opportunity types), each with its own independent stages, weightings and quote template.
Building a quote
- Enter a title, close date and any notes.
- Add a quote number, an expiry date and the delivery address (pulled from SYSPRO, editable if needed), plus an attention line.
- Add line items by stock code and quantity. Prices come live from SYSPRO (including contract pricing, buying groups and quantity price breaks) so your quote matches what SYSPRO would produce.
- Click the question mark (?) on a line item to see more about that product: quantity price breaks, warehouse quantities, pack size, minimum order quantity and pan size. (Minimum order quantity and pack size appear only if you're using Customer Hub.)
- Apply a further discount if you need to, and add freight (see below).
- Click Create.
Once the quote exists
- Print it, formatted to match your stationery (with a different layout per category if you have them).
- Email it, a PDF copy is saved to the customer's Interactions feed, timestamped as sent.
- Create Order, turn a won quote into a SYSPRO sales order, which then appears in Open Orders.
Sales SYSPRO
Working with a Customer
See a customer's sales figures, live from SYSPRO. You get the full picture (trends over time, budgets and targets) on your Dashboard Sales panel.
Upcoming Projects
Working with a Customer
Shows any projects this customer is linked to, for example, a building they're the builder on. A quick way to see the bigger jobs a customer is involved in.
Pricing & Stock SYSPRO
Working with a Customer
Check pricing and availability for any product, for this customer, without leaving their record.
- Type a stock code to see the customer's best price, including their contract pricing, buying groups and price breaks.
- See stock on hand in each warehouse, so you can confidently tell a customer whether you can supply.
- See last cost, margin, list price discount and the last time this customer bought that item.
- The discounts section lists any buying groups or contract prices the customer has; click one to see the items and discounts included.
Account Feed SYSPRO
Working with a Customer
The financial side of the customer, laid out much like it is in SYSPRO, so salespeople have the context that usually only the accounts team can see.
- See the customer's terms, outstanding order value and related financial details, so you're on the front foot before a visit.
- An interaction feed lets the accounts team log their conversations here too, keeping everything about the customer in one place.
Attachments Everyday
Working with a Customer
Keep all a customer's documents and photos together, with version history and quick photo mark-up.
Files & versions
- Rename any file to something clear, no matter what it was called on your computer.
- Upload a new version of a file and the old one is kept as a superseded version, so you always have the history.
- Download history shows who downloaded what and when.
- Paste to upload: copy files on your computer and press
Ctrl + Vin the panel to drop them straight in.
Mark up a photo
- When you add an image, you can crop it and add notes, for example circle a damaged item and write "this one is scratched".
- The marked-up version is what gets saved, so the note travels with the photo. Ideal on your phone when you're on site.
- The same crop-and-note tool works on images you add to tasks and interactions too, handy for sending a photo through to the quality team.
AI Assistant New
Working with a Customer
Ask a question about the customer and get a quick, helpful answer drawn from their information.
- Ask for a tip, a summary, or help drafting an email to the customer.
- The assistant is newer and still growing, expect it to become more useful over time.
Accounts
Accounts & Projects
An account is any non-trading entity you want to keep in the CRM. Most accounts are prospects you're working to win, but an account can just as easily be a supplier, a competitor, an architect or a builder, anyone you deal with who doesn't buy from you. It looks and works just like a customer record, so there's nothing new to learn, it simply leaves out the panels that only apply once someone is trading:
- No Open Orders
- No Sales
- No Pricing
- No Account Feed
Everything else (Info, Tasks, Interactions, Details, Contacts, Pipeline, Attachments and the AI assistant) is exactly the same. When the prospect starts trading, you convert them into a customer and their whole history comes along.
Projects
Accounts & Projects
Projects are a flexible record for anything that doesn't sit neatly against a single customer. A project has its own Info, Tasks, Interactions and Attachments, and can be linked to a customer, a builder or a prospect.
When to use a project
Use a project whenever information spans more than one party, or when one contact is involved in many separate jobs. For example, if you talk to an architect about several different buildings, each building can be its own project, so the conversations stay neatly separated instead of piling up against the one contact.
Other handy uses
- Competitors, keep notes and intel on competing products.
- Marketing activity, a customer's shopfront refit or a conference, linked back to the customer.
- Anything else, projects are deliberately flexible, and their fields can be tailored to whatever you need to track.
Your Dashboard
Your Dashboard
Your dashboard is your home base, a personal view that pulls together everything relevant to you. It's where most people spend their day.
It's made up of a few panels, each covered on its own page:
| Panel | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Tasks & peek panels | Your to-do list, with a quick way to glance at a customer without leaving the dashboard. |
| Followed projects | The projects you've chosen to keep an eye on. |
| Notifications & shortcuts | When you're tagged or a task completes, plus quick links. |
| Sales & targets | Your sales figures, trends, budgets and targets. |
| Filtered & followed customers | Snapshots of your customers, and your key accounts. |
Tasks & Peek Panels
Your Dashboard
Your task list on the dashboard works just like the Tasks panel on a customer, but with a great time-saver called peek panels.
- Each task has small blue squares. Double-click one to "peek" at that customer's information right there, without opening their full record.
- Peek their Interactions to remind yourself of your last conversation; peek Contacts and click a number to start a call; peek Info and click the address to open it in maps.
- Line your tasks up for the day, then use peek panels to get what you need for each one, no navigating away.
Followed Projects
Your Dashboard
Shows the projects you've chosen to follow, so the jobs you care about are always in view.
To follow something, click the star in the top-left of any record. Once you follow a customer or project, you'll be kept in the loop on activity even if you're not directly tagged. See Following & Notifications.
Notifications & Shortcuts
Your Dashboard
- Notifications appear when someone tags you in an interaction, completes a task you're tagged in, or there's activity on something you follow.
- Shortcuts give you quick links to the places you go most.
Sales & Targets SYSPRO
Your Dashboard
Your sales figures, live from SYSPRO, with the full picture in one place.
- Trends over time, look back over previous periods to see how sales are tracking.
- Budgets, compare against set budgets.
- Targets, use your SYSPRO sales targets, by salesperson, customer or product class, and filter to the area you look after.
Filtered & Followed Customers
Your Dashboard
- Filtered customers. Filter by branch, salesperson, state or account type, and sort by year-to-date or month-to-date sales. Each customer shows a snapshot with a little trend chart, and peek panels work here too.
- Followed customers. Follow your top handful of accounts to get an email whenever a note is added, and keep them permanently in view, a simple way to manage your key accounts.
Settings & Customisation Admin
Setup & Administration
Settings is where administrators tailor the CRM to your business, which fields show, what data people can pick, and how activity is categorised.
Choose and arrange your fields
- Rearrange the fields on the Info panel by dragging, put what matters most at the top.
- Show more SYSPRO fields. Any standard SYSPRO customer field can be added to the panel, each with its own icon (which you can change).
- Custom SYSPRO fields your business already uses in SYSPRO can be shown here too.
- Control what's editable. Core fields can be edited in the CRM; others are read-only so they stay controlled in SYSPRO.
Add your own custom fields
- Create a new field and give it a name (e.g. "Employee count").
- Pick an icon and choose who is allowed to edit it.
- Choose the field type: text, attachment, or a single-choice list, and more.
- Drag it into position and it appears on the Info panel.
Account vs customer fields
You can set up fields separately for accounts (prospects) and customers. They're linked, so when you convert an account to a customer the matching details carry across automatically.
Task & interaction types
Define your own task and interaction types and sub-types. This lets you report not just on how many meetings your team had, but what kind, giving you a much richer view of activity.
Pipeline stages, categories & quote templates
This is also where you set up how your pipeline works:
- Categories (opportunity types). Create as many as you need, for example one per division or product line. Each is completely independent.
- Stages & default weightings. For each category, define the stages a deal moves through and the default probability (weighting) that each stage applies to a deal's value.
- Quote templates. Set the quote document used when printing or emailing a quote. Most businesses use a single template for every deal, but you can assign a different template per category if you need different layouts.
Creating & Converting Records
Setup & Administration
Creating a customer
When you create a customer, you fill in the key SYSPRO details (branch, territory, area and so on). This information is sent through to SYSPRO to set the customer up.
Converting an account into a customer
When a prospect starts trading, you turn their account into a customer. What you see depends on your permissions:
- Administrators see a Convert to New Customer button and can do it straight away.
- Other users see Request Conversion, which emails your accounts team. They check the details (business number, credit limit and so on) and then complete the conversion.
Following & Notifications
Setup & Administration
Following is the easiest way to stay across the customers and projects that matter to you.
- Follow a record by clicking the star in its top-left corner.
- Once you follow a customer or project, you're notified of activity on it, even when you're not directly tagged.
- For key accounts, following also sends you an email whenever a note is added, and keeps them on your dashboard.
You'll also be notified whenever a colleague tags you in a task or interaction, or completes a task you're tagged in. All of this shows in Notifications on your dashboard.
Installing the Outlook Add-in
Setup & Administration
The Outlook add-in lets you track emails into the CRM and run the whole CRM inside Outlook. It's a one-time setup. Once it's in, see the Outlook Add-in page for day-to-day use.
You'll need the add-in file (an Unbound CRM manifest, usually named something like Unbound-Outlook-Add-In.xml) that was sent to you.
Install the add-in
- Save the add-in file that was sent to you somewhere on your computer.
- Open Outlook on the desktop and click File.
- Click Manage Add-ins. This opens the "Add-Ins for Outlook" settings in your browser.
- Click My add-ins.
- Scroll to the bottom to the Custom Add-ins section and click + Add a custom add-in.
- Click Add from file.
- Browse to where you saved the add-in file and double-click it.
Configure it
- Once the add-in appears, open its Settings.
- Type in the URL of your CRM website and click Save.
- The add-in is now configured and ready to use.
Open the CRM inside Outlook
- Click the Unbound CRM button in the add-in and log in with your credentials. This is a full working version of the CRM, so if you spend a lot of time in Outlook it can be very handy.
- Pin the add-in with the pin button so it stays open as you move between emails.
Track emails from Outlook
- Click the Sales Tools button in the add-in. Suggested customers and projects to track the email against appear automatically, based on the sender and recipient of the email you have open.
- If nothing suitable appears, search for the customer or project in the relevant field. Then click Track this email and it's added to the CRM.
- Tracked emails appear against that customer or project in the Feed panel. Click Show More to read the full email.
- If more of the conversation has happened in Outlook, click Fetch Conversation to automatically pull the rest of the thread in and sync it to the CRM.
Reporting & Overviews
Setup & Administration
For managers who want the bigger picture, the CRM Overview gives you a health check across your whole business.
CRM Overview
- Filter by branch, salesperson, user, area, account type, category or record type, over any date range.
- See at a glance: outstanding, overdue and completed tasks; interactions; quoted value; quotes generated; quote conversion rate; total revenue; open vs weighted pipeline; new accounts and customers by month; sales performance; and your top five customers by revenue.
- The overview is refreshed daily so it stays fast to open.
Tips & Tricks
Reference
- Arrange your panels once. Drag, stack and stow panels so what you use most is up top, it's saved for you.
- Use peek panels. On the dashboard, double-click a task's blue squares to glance at a customer's interactions, contacts or address without leaving the page.
- Paste files with
Ctrl + V. Copy files on your computer and paste them straight into Attachments. - Mark up photos on site. Crop and annotate a photo on your phone to capture an issue clearly, the note is saved with the image.
- Follow your key accounts. Star your top customers for email alerts and to keep them on your dashboard.
- Flip panels. Use the switch button to move between Open Orders and Invoices, or Contacts and Superseded Contacts.
- Use single-choice fields when adding custom fields, to keep your data tidy and easy to report on.
- Print documents on the spot. Pro formas, invoices and dispatch notes print in your own stationery, straight from the CRM.
- Work from Outlook. Track emails and open customer records without leaving your inbox.