- Manual creation — a signed-in team member fills out the Create Lead form.
- Automated creation — a lead is created for you from an inbound web form or phone call. There is no acting user in this case.
- Converting an inbox conversation — a signed-in team member turns a message thread from a connected messaging integration (such as Thumbtack, where enabled for your workspace) into a lead with Convert to Lead. This follows the same rules as manual creation, with the contact difference noted below.
Who can create a lead
Creating a lead manually is limited to Branch Management roles: Admin, Sales Admin, Ops Manager, and Client Coordinator.- Editing a lead requires the same roles.
- Deleting a lead is limited to Admin, Ops Manager, Sales Admin, and Client Coordinator.
- Anyone in your workspace can view leads.
Branch requirement
Manual creation: You must have a branch assigned to your account. If you don’t, the Create Lead form will not let you save and you’ll see an “A branch must be assigned before creating a lead” message. The new lead is automatically assigned to your branch — there is no branch picker on the form. Automated creation: A branch is optional. If the system can’t determine one, the lead is created with no branch, and the branch is filled in later by matching the lead’s address to the nearest branch (see Branch matching for automated leads).Required contact fields
Every lead must have a primary contact, and that contact must include at least a last name and a phone number.- First name is not required.
- The lead’s displayed first/last name always comes from its primary contact.
A contact needs an email or a phone number
Every contact — including ones created while capturing a lead — must have either an email or a phone number. A value that is only spaces counts as empty. If neither is present, the contact can’t be saved. For automated leads, the same rule applies earlier: if an inbound web form or phone call has neither a usable email nor a usable phone number, the lead is skipped entirely (it isn’t created, and it isn’t reported as an error). This applies to every way a contact can be created.How contact details are cleaned up
When a contact is saved:- The email is trimmed and converted to lowercase.
- The phone number is standardized to international format and then validated. A phone number that can’t be recognized is rejected with an “Invalid phone number” message.
- For automated leads, an unrecognizable phone number is simply dropped (defaulting to a US number format) so the lead can still be created.
Postal code
- A postal code, if provided, must be exactly 5 digits, or you’ll see “ZIP code must be 5 digits.” The field is optional — leaving it blank is fine.
- Before storage, the postal code is trimmed, and anything shorter than 5 digits is discarded.
Address geocoding
When a lead is saved, its address is geocoded so it can be placed on a map (latitude/longitude are filled in automatically and aren’t editable by hand).- On creation, the address is always geocoded. On an update, geocoding only re-runs if an address field (street, city, state, or postal code) changed.
- If coordinates are already supplied, they’re kept as-is and not recalculated.
- The address must be specific enough to locate — at minimum a city or a postal code. If it isn’t, the map coordinates are cleared.
- If the address can’t be located, the coordinates are left empty and the lead is still saved successfully — geocoding never blocks saving.
Lead source and referral requirements
Choosing a lead source is optional. When you do select one, that source’s configuration decides whether referral details are required. Each lead source has two referral settings, and each can be set to None, Optional, or Required (the default is None).- Internal referral = Required ⇒ a referring salesperson is required (“Sales person is required”).
- External referral = Required ⇒ a referral contact is required, and it must include first name, last name, phone, and email.
- External referral = Optional ⇒ once you start filling in the referral, all of those referral fields become required; remove the referral to skip it.
- None ⇒ no referral details are needed.
How a referral contact is stored
A referral is saved as its own contact, marked as a company referrer, with an optional company name. It’s only saved when the referral actually has something in it — at least one of first name, last name, phone, email, or company name is filled in, or you’ve pulled in an existing contact. Like every contact, a new referral still needs an email or phone number — a referral with only a company name is rejected with “Either email or phone number is required.” If the referral points at an existing contact, that contact is reused and updated in place (referrals are matched only by their existing record, not re-matched by name, email, or phone the way primary and secondary contacts are).Branch matching for automated leads
This applies to automated leads only. When an inbound lead has a usable address, the system looks at the branches in your workspace that have a base address set and assigns the one closest by driving distance. If there’s no address, no branches with a base address, or any problem during matching, the lead is created with no branch. Manual leads do not use distance matching — they’re assigned to the creating user’s branch.Lead source for automated leads
This applies to automated leads only. The system tries to match the inbound lead to one of your existing active lead sources using, in order:- The campaign source combined with the campaign medium.
- The campaign source on its own.
- The website domain the lead came from.
- If you have an active default lead source, it’s used, and the tried keys are added to it so future leads match directly.
- Otherwise a new lead source is created automatically, named after the first key tried, set active and not default, with no referral requirements.
Converting an inbox conversation to a lead
When a message thread comes in from a connected messaging integration (such as Thumbtack, where enabled for your workspace), you can turn it into a lead directly from the conversation with Convert to Lead in the message header. This is a manual action, so the same roles as manual creation apply (Admin, Sales Admin, Ops Manager, and Client Coordinator), and — like manual creation — the lead is assigned to your branch, so you must have a branch assigned. Because these platforms usually hide the customer’s real contact details, the Convert to Lead form asks you to fill them in:- A last name is required; the first name is optional.
- At least one of a phone number or an email is required. Unlike the Create Lead form — where a phone number is required — an email on its own is enough here.
Starting status
On every creation path, a new lead is automatically given your workspace’s active New status. If you don’t have a status in the “New” category configured, the lead is created with no status (this is not an error). Status is never chosen by the user at creation time.Lead channel
Every lead records the channel it came in through — Web Form, Phone Call, or Manual Entry.- Manually created leads are always Manual Entry.
- Automated leads use the channel of the inbound source (web form or phone call).
Duplicate handling
There are two separate mechanisms, and they behave very differently. Automated leads — duplicate block: Before creating an automated lead, the system checks for an existing, non-deleted lead in your workspace whose primary contact has the same email or phone number and was created within the last hour. If it finds one, creation is skipped (logged, not an error). If neither an email nor a phone number is supplied, no duplicate check runs. Manual form — match assist (not a block): As you type a primary contact’s phone or email in the Create Lead form, the system looks for an existing client that matches and surfaces it in a banner, auto-filling the contact details. This is a convenience only — it does not stop you from creating a new lead. Obvious placeholder values (a repeated-digit phone number and an “unknown” example email) are ignored and won’t trigger a match. In short: only the automated path has a hard duplicate block. On the manual form, the match is purely an assist.Reusing contacts within a lead
When you save a lead, its primary and secondary contacts are matched against existing contacts:- If the contact points at an existing record, it’s reused when the name matches and either the email or phone also matches; changed fields are updated in place. If the existing record’s details have changed so much it’s clearly a different person, a new contact is created instead — so the wrong person is never overwritten.
- If there’s no existing record, a new contact is created.
- Creating a new lead uses smart matching; editing an existing lead updates the same contacts in place.
Ownership, deletion, and view tracking
- Every lead belongs to a workspace, and all create, read, and update actions are scoped to your current workspace. Manually created leads record who created them; automated leads have no creator.
- Leads use soft delete — deleting a lead hides it rather than erasing it, and deleted leads are filtered out of lists. Deleting a lead also checks that you have access to that lead’s branch.
- The system tracks when a lead was last viewed and by whom (deduplicated within a 5-minute window). View tracking never blocks anything if it fails.