Your First Steps with Frappe CRM
Welcome to Frappe CRM. If this is your first CRM, you're in good company. Most teams who start here were running sales from spreadsheets, inboxes, and memory, and that works fine until it doesn't.
In the next 15 minutes, you'll get your leads in, bring in your team, send your first email, and turn a lead into a deal.
How it works, in one minute
A lead is anyone who might buy from you: someone who filled in a form, emailed you, or got introduced. You keep notes, emails, and follow-ups on the lead so nothing is lost.
When a lead gets serious about buying, you turn it into a deal. A deal moves through stages, from first conversation to proposal to Won or Lost.
That's the whole idea. Everyone on your team can see who's talking to whom, what was said, and what happens next.
Finding your way around
Everything lives in the sidebar: Leads, Deals, Contacts, Organizations, Notes, Tasks, and your Dashboard. Settings are under your name at the top left.
Sample leads in CRM
Your CRM starts with some sample leads and deals, complete with notes, tasks, and calls. Click around and see how things fit together. When you're ready to start fresh, click Clear Demo Data in the sidebar.
There's also a Getting Started checklist in the sidebar. It follows the same steps as this guide and ticks them off as you go.
Getting started checklist
One quick thing before you begin: if you signed up with a login link, set a password in Settings → Profile so you can always get back in.
1. Get your leads in
Pick whichever way fits how you work today. You can use all of them.
- Add one by hand. Go to Leads and click Create. Just a name and an email is enough to start.
- Bring in what you already have. If your leads live in a spreadsheet, save it as a CSV. If you are coming from another CRM, then export from there the same way. Then go to Leads, open the ⋯ menu at the top right, and click Import. Upload your file, match the columns, and you're done. The same works for contacts, organizations, and deals.
Import leads via data import - Capture them from your website. Go to Settings → Forms and click New. Pick the fields you want, publish it, and either share the link or embed it on your site. Every time someone fills it in, a new lead shows up in your CRM.
Capture leads via webform
Running Facebook or Instagram ads? You can pull those leads in automatically from Settings → Lead Syncing.
Sync leads from Meta
2. Bring in your team
A CRM works best when everyone who talks to customers uses it. Once your team is in, nobody has to ask "did anyone follow up with them?" again.
Go to Settings → Invite User, add their email, pick a role, and send. A Sales User works on leads and deals. A Manager can also change settings. An Admin can change everything.
Invite your sales team
If you have managers and reps, tell the CRM who reports to whom. Go to Settings → Sales Hierarchy and build your org chart — add each person and pick their manager, or drag them under one. This way, you'll be able to limit your users to specific data.
Reporting structure to limit visibility
To share new leads out between your team automatically, set up a rule in Settings → Assignment Rules. Leads can take turns going to each person, or go to whoever has the fewest.
Assignment rule
3. Connect your email
This is what makes your CRM feel like home. Once your email is connected, you can write to leads right from their page, and their replies land in the same place.
Go to Settings → Email → Accounts, click New, and pick your provider. For Gmail, Outlook, and most others, you'll need an app password instead of your regular one. The setup screen links to your provider's instructions.
Turn on Enable Incoming and Enable Outgoing, and mark it as default for both. If you'd like new emails from people you don't know yet to become leads automatically, turn on Create Lead from Incoming Emails too.
Setup your teams email account
Now send your first email. Open any lead, click Email, write your message, and send. When they reply, it shows up right there on the lead, so you never have to dig through your inbox for context.
Lead with email communication
Write the same emails often? Save them as templates in Settings → Email → Templates. And add your signature in Settings → Profile.
4. Stay on top of your follow-ups
Every lead has its own timeline, so the whole story is in one place. From a lead's page you can:
- Add a note to remember what you talked about
- Create a task so a follow-up never slips. All your tasks show up together under Tasks.
- Leave a comment and @mention a teammate to pull them in
- Log a call
As you work a lead, update its status: New, Contacted, Nurture, Qualified, Unqualified, or Junk. It keeps your list honest and makes it easy to see who needs attention.
5. Turn a lead into a deal
When a lead is ready to buy, click Convert to Deal at the top right of the lead's page. You can link it to an existing organization and contact, or let the CRM create new ones for you. All the notes, emails, and tasks come along with it.
Your deals move through stages that are ready to use: Qualification, Demo/Making, Proposal/Quotation, Negotiation, Ready to Close, and finally Won or Lost. Switch Deals to the Kanban view to see your whole pipeline and drag deals from one stage to the next.
Kanban view: Deal pipeline
Set your currency first. Before you add deal values, pick your currency in Settings → Defaults. You can only set it once, so it's worth getting right.
Once you've got a few deals going, the Dashboard shows you what's in your pipeline and what's likely to close.
Sales dashboard
6. What next
When the basics feel comfortable, here's where to look next:
- WhatsApp and Telephony (Twilio or Exotel) to message and call leads from the CRM
- ERPNext to create quotations and sales orders straight from a deal
- Custom views to save the filters and columns you use most
- Mobile responsive: Frappe CRM works in your phone's browser, and you can add it to your home screen like an app.
Resources
That's it. Keep it simple, stay close to your leads, and enjoy a CRM that feels good to use.