In the previous onboarding article, you created a lead. This article will continue where that left off and will guide you through creating an activity.
An activity is a record of any interaction you or your company has with any customer or vendor in your contacts app.
These interactions can be anything: an email, a phone call, a meeting, a reminder.
When viewing your lead, you will see closed and open activities in the right App Panel for the contact.
At the moment, it says "No records to display" because there are no activities for this brand new lead. Time to create a new activity.
Create a New Activity
In this scenario, let's say Jane called us requesting a quote for a product. We will create two activities: One to record Jane called us, and another one to remind us to follow-up with her.
In the App Panel of your new lead, select the Activities Open tab and then click ⊕ New Activity.
A new activity screen will open in the App Panel. At the top, you will see pertinent information of the contact you created this activity for. If need be, you can add in tags to further categorize the activity.
The main area will have comments about the activity. Write "Jane called requesting a quote for a skating rink." In a real life scenario, you'd probably put in more details about the phone call.
Next up, are the activity details. There are a few fields you may be unfamiliar with, but we will cover that later. For now, do the following:
Type: Change the type to Phone Call Incoming.
Status: The status will automatically change to Completed.
End Date & Time: This will disappear because it doesn't make sense to keep track of that for a phone call.
Create a Follow-up Activity
For all intents and purposes, you've filled in enough information for the new activity. However, this activity was just to keep track you got a phone call.
To ensure nothing falls through the cracks, it'd be great to create a follow-up activity. In our scenario, we'll create a second activity, a follow-up to this one, to check up on the estimate we will eventually send her.
Check Create a Follow-up Activity. A new section will become visible for you to fill in information.
Fill in the appropriate activity details for the Follow-up. In this scenario, I've changed the Follow-up Type to To-Do and I've updated the comments to state we are sending an estimate and expecting a reply.
At the bottom of the screen, you will find a number of buttons. Click Save & Back to create your two new activities.
Review the App Ribbon
When you save your activity, you will see a change in the app panel under Activities Open:
Remember, we created two new activities. The first one logged our phone call and was immediately closed. The second activity was a follow-up with Jane to make sure she liked our estimate (which wasn't sent yet).
If you click Activities Closed in the App panel, you will see the first activity we created:
You have now created a lead and associated activities to keep track of the interactions you've had with your lead.
If you recall, we did promise her an estimate, so our next goal in the onboarding series is to create one.
Depending on your version of QuickBooks, please see one of the following articles:
For those on QuickBooks Online, Create an Estimate.
For those on QuickBooks Desktop, Create an Estimate.