This article is intended for all users of Pipeliner but is particularly relevant for new users.
Overview
Accounts and Contacts form your core data in Pipeliner - these are the record types (entities) that you use to capture information about the businesses/organisations and individuals that you deal with day-to-day.
There are many advanced features of Pipeliner to help you manage and improve your company's relationships with businesses and people - Mass Emails, Email Sequences, Account Health, Whitespace, Automatizer, to name a few - but this article is intended to cover the basic fundamentals of working with Accounts and Contacts in Pipeliner.
Creating a New Account
Everywhere in Pipeliner, the + symbol creates a new record. You can create a new Account from the Accounts menu, from the main New button or "on-the-fly" when creating a a new Opportunity, or a new Lead.
You must enter an Account name in order to save an Account and, depending on your own Pipeliner system, your Admins may have made other fields required and also added additional custom fields for you to complete. When you've added everything you know at this stage - remembering you will continually add and update Accounts as you know more - click on "Create" to save your new Account or "Create & Open" to save and then continue working with the new Account record ⤵
Account records can also be imported into Pipeliner.
How to prevent duplicate Accounts
When creating a new Account, if you type in the exact same name as an Account that already exists in Pipeliner, when you click out of the Account Name field in order to continue filling in data, Pipeliner will suggest Similar Accounts in the right-hand panel. You can click on "Open" to review the existing Account to check if it is the same. If you want to continue with your new Account, complete the fields and click on "Create" or "Create & Open" ⤵
Searching for Accounts
It's easy to find an Account that you've entered using any of the search features in Pipeliner.
TOP TIP: only type in 4 or 5 letters of the main part of the company name when searching. This will keep your search broad enough to allow for differences in how the company name was entered.
Updating Existing Accounts
Once you've found your Account, click on its Name to open the Account record ⤵
The information that you entered previously is shown in the Detail tab in the middle panel of the screen. The menu buttons at the top of the form give you quick and easy access to creating activities, copying the record or achiving, for example.
You can add new information and change existing in the fields in the main part of the form and will then be prompted to "Save" your changes ⤵
NOTE: clicking on the View Changes menu button will show you an audit of all updates made to the record.
All Tabs on the left hand side of the screen will contain information that is related to (linked to) the Account that you're working on. You can click on each one to see those related records. For example, clicking on the Opportunities tab will show you all Opportunities that this Account has ever been linked to while the Feeds tab will display all ongoing interactions with this Account including linked Emails and Activities (i.e. Tasks and Appointments that you will also see in the Activities tab).
The right hand panel gives you access to system information such as the Creation Date and the Last Contacted Date (at the top of the panel). Scrolling down you'll see widgets that relate to additional features such as Approval Processes and Account Health and, further down, you'll also be able to see which of your Users is the Owner of this Account.
NOTE: depending on your subscription you may not see additional widgets in the right hand panel.
Creating Contacts linked to the Account
Once you've saved and opened your Account, you can click on the Contacts tab to add any Contacts (people who work at or for that Account). Click on "Add Contact" and then "New" to add a new Contact.
Type the name of your new Contact and click into a different field. Pipeliner will recognize if an exact match to your Contact name exists already and will display "similar" contacts in the panel on the right-hand side. If the Contact is not already in Pipeliner, keep completing fields.
Some data - highlighted in yellow - will be pre-populated from your Account record. This is an easy way to speed up data entry but if, for example, this Contact is not at the same address as the Account, you can click on "Undo" to remove the pre-populated information ⤵
Fill in everything you know about your new Contact and then click on "Create" to save your Contact or "Create & Open" to save and then open your new Contact so you can continue to work on it.
You'll see that your Contact has the same type of layout as your Accounts - field information that you keep updated in the middle panel with menu buttons above, tabs on the left that show you records such as Activities or Opportunities that your Contact is related to and the right hand panel with system info, Owner and various widgets.
Notice that certain fields have actions associated with them. If you click on a Phone Number field, you'll see choices related to calling that number and if you click on an Email address entered into an Email field, you'll be presented with several email-related options ⤵
NOTE: some of these features will require you to enable integrations - for example, email integration or Calling integration.
Create New Activities
You can create Activities and link them to Account or Contact records. This will help you track all interactions with any company or person that are not directly related to a Lead or Opportunity. Examples could include Customer Success or Account Management calls.
From the Detail tab of an Account record (or a Contact record), you can select the "Create New Activity" button and then select from either "Task" or "Appointment":
Appointments — meetings that have set date and times they start and end
Tasks — An activity you need to do (i.e. phone call, email)
TIP: Read this Article for more information.
Viewing Opportunities Linked to an Account or Contact
Find and open the Account, or Contact, you are interested in. Click on the Opportunities Tab on the left. All Opportunities linked to the Account or Contact will show in this tab.
Archiving Accounts or Contacts
When you no longer have an active relationship with an Account or Contact, you can remove it from your "active" lists by Archiving. Archived Accounts and Contacts will only be visible from the Archive menu (or via a report for customers on our Starter Tier) and can be reactivated if their relationship status changes back to active.
NOTE: Accounts and Contacts must be Archived first before any user will be able to delete them.
Open up the Account or Contact that you want to Archive and select Archive from the menu (you may have to click on the three dots icon to access this option) ⤵
NOTE: users can archive Accounts and Contacts manually or Admins can set up Automatizer processes to auto-archive records - for example, if there has been no contact for 6 months.
When archiving an Account or Contact, you will also prompted whether to also Archive (or Complete) related records. If there are related Leads, Opportunities, Contacts or Quotes, the prompt will be to Archive these whereas if there are are linked Activities or Projects, the prompt will be to complete them⤵
Open the Archive to see your archived Accounts or Contacts ⤵
For Reporting purposes, you can use the field Is Archived which exists on both Accounts and Contacts. Adding “Account.Is Archived is Yes” in your report Filter tab will show all archived Accounts, for example ⤵
Deleting Accounts and Contacts
Archived Accounts and Contacts can be deleted by the Owner of the record if their User Role gives them deletion rights. More information is included in this article.