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Best Practices by Industry
This page walks through how to set up Insightly’s standard objects for five common industries. It focuses on the order to work in and the decisions to make along the way; the detailed procedures are documented on their own pages.
On this page:
The shared pattern
All five setups configure the same objects in the same order, so the sequence below applies even if your industry is not one of the five.
Leads, for anything that is not yet a customer. Update your Lead Sources so you can trace inbound interest back to a channel, such as purchased lists, online advertising, social media, telemarketing, or referrals. Use Lead Statuses to track qualification, adding as many open and closed statuses as you need; common closed statuses include Send to Marketing and Future Interest. If leads should be handed out automatically, set up Lead Assignment Rules to distribute them evenly across a team or by criteria. Add custom fields for what you need to know beyond basic contact details, usually budget, timeline, and some form of interest or market. Finally, create a Web to Lead form so submissions from your website arrive as leads without manual entry.
Contacts and Organizations, for people and companies you already deal with. Use a multi-select dropdown field to segment them by type. Beyond that, decide which custom fields to add by working backward from what you want to filter, segment, and report on. Fields that come up across the guides include Source as a dropdown of marketing channels, Referred By or Referred To as a lookup or text field, Best Contact Method as a dropdown, Status as a dropdown for active or passive, Timing as a dropdown of timeframes, and Motivation as a dropdown of set options.
If a lead field should carry over when a lead converts, set up Lead Conversion Mapping instead of recreating the field on Contacts. Use Page Layouts to hide any fields you do not need.
Opportunities, for the deal you are trying to close. Custom fields capture what the deal is about, and a pipeline tracks the stages it moves through. Attach Activity Sets to pipeline stages so each stage creates the tasks it needs automatically.
Custom objects, for anything Insightly has no standard object for. When you choose the Record Name Field, a text field lets you enter a meaningful name and Auto Number generates one for you. Use text for records people refer to by name, such as a property or a street address, and Auto Number for records nobody needs to name.
To link many records to many other records, put a connector object between them. The connector holds a lookup relationship to each side, plus any fields that describe the link. Three of the five industries below need this.
Events, for anything scheduled. Logging an event against a lead, contact, or opportunity puts it on the Insightly calendar for the whole team. Add custom fields to Events to link an event to whatever it concerns.
Custom list views, once your data is in. You can rebuild any spreadsheet as a list view by choosing the columns you need. View a filtered list as a Kanban board when you want to see items move through stages.
Workflow Automation, last. Set up your objects first, then automate. Common uses are notifying a team when a record reaches a threshold or changes status, and creating a follow-up task on a delay.
Consulting
In a consulting business, Leads bring in new work, and a won opportunity becomes a Project, where the delivery work is tracked.
Use Categories to separate the kinds of opportunity you run at once, such as New Business, Upsell, and Renewals, and give each its own pipeline. Categories work on Projects too, so you can group them by vertical or service. If you would rather not use Categories, a custom field does the same job on either object.
On Projects, add custom fields for scope of work, the responsible team members, and key dates. When projects follow a consistent path, put them on a pipeline and use Activity Sets to schedule status-report reminders and due dates automatically. To track billable hours and expenses against a project, add a custom object to the Project record; it shows on the Related tab and is available to reports and dashboards.
Two integrations are useful here. PandaDoc merges Insightly values into document templates, so you can generate a proposal from an opportunity and add its linked contacts as recipients. QuickBooks Online shows your accounting data inside Insightly, copies and links data between the two systems, and can create QuickBooks customers from Insightly records.
A couple of automations to consider: notify the team when an opportunity over $15,000 is won, and create a check-in task for the project manager seven days after a project moves to In Progress.
Recruiting and staffing
You are managing two groups, candidates and clients, plus the reqs that connect them.
Store candidate profiles as Contacts. Custom fields cover demographics such as location and diversity, and employment details such as level, desired salary, active or passive status, and timeline. Once those are populated, filtered list views and Tags let you build candidate pools. A Web to Contact form collects new candidates from your site, and Workflow Automation can alert the team when one arrives. Standard features handle the rest: meeting notes as Notes and documents as Files under Related, and follow-up tasks and scheduled interviews under Activity.
Use Projects to manage a candidate’s application against a specific req. The project pipeline maps the qualification and placement stages, and stage tasks cover the operational steps. A lookup relationship field links the applicant’s project to the open req. Filter a list view on the Role field and view it as a Kanban board to see your applicant pipeline.
Store clients as Organizations, with custom fields for the roles they hire for, contract details, and their hiring process. Link key contacts under Related so you can identify hiring managers by department.
Use Leads for prospective clients before they send a req, and Opportunities to track open reqs. This works well because leads convert into opportunities cleanly and Opportunity Value tracks commission won and lost. Custom fields on the opportunity cover salary, location, required skills, and hiring manager details. Link roles to the client’s contact or organization record from the Related tab; a Linked Items report then shows a client’s roles won and lost over a period.
Education
This setup covers prospects, students, alumni, donors, and affiliates.
Store prospects as Leads. Lead Assignment Rules can distribute them by criteria such as program of interest or language. Custom fields commonly cover program of interest, timeline, preferred language, and pronoun; this example also tracks financial aid interest, campus tour status, and information sessions attended. Convert a lead to an Opportunity once the prospect applies for admission or financial aid.
Separate contact types with a multi-select dropdown field.
Use Opportunities to track the journey after application, with the page layout carrying orientation, admissions, financial aid, placement, and counselor fields. Mark the opportunity Won once enrollment completes.
Add two custom objects. The first holds classes, with scheduling details, class size, and teaching staff. The second is a connector called Registration that links a student to the classes they are enrolled in, with a text field for Semester. Add Registrations from the student’s contact record on the Related tab.
Use Events to schedule tours and appointments from the Activity tab.
Real estate
Whether you work in residential or commercial, the shape is the same: leads convert to opportunities, and opportunities link to listings.
Segment Contacts by type, such as buyer, seller, agent, and property manager. Add Agent as a lookup relationship to Contact, and Buyer Profile as multi-line text or a dropdown.
The Opportunity records what a buyer wants and links to the listings they are interested in. Add ideal property, timeline, and budget fields to the page layout so you can search across open opportunities and bulk-link matching listings.
Use a custom object for listing contracts, with a text Record Name Field so the name doubles as the street address. Fields to consider: List Price and List Price Low as numeric; Street, City, State, Zip, Unit, and County; Property Type as a dropdown; Year Built; Beds and Baths as text; Living Area and Lot Size as numeric; HOA as a checkbox; Levels as a dropdown; and Interior and Exterior Features as multi-select dropdowns.
A second custom object connects listing contracts to opportunities. Use Auto Number for its Record Name, since nobody needs to name these, and leave Show in Sidebar unchecked because the records are not browsed directly. Its fields are Buyer as a lookup to the Opportunity, Listing as a lookup to the Listing Contract, Offer as numeric, and Terms as multi-line text.
An optional third custom object holds properties, with address fields, Property Type, Total Units, Year Built, and lookups to Contacts for the property manager, maintenance manager, or agent.
Schedule tours as Events from the Opportunity’s Activity tab, and add a custom field to the Event to link it to the listing.
ℹ️ To build an import template, export from each object. The export arrives by email as a spreadsheet you can populate and import back in.
Property management
This setup covers properties, maintenance, and listings.
Start from whatever spreadsheet currently holds your property data; its columns become your custom fields. Use a custom object for Properties, with a text Record Name Field so records carry the property name. Add Manager, Agent, and Maintenance Manager as lookup relationship fields to Contacts.
Use Opportunities for units as they become available to rent or buy, covering showings and signing. A lookup relationship field links the listing opportunity back to its property, and interested parties are added as contacts and linked to the opportunity.
Custom list views rebuild your original spreadsheet inside the CRM. An opportunities list view sorted by move-in date gives you available listings in priority order.
Add custom fields to Events to turn the calendar into a maintenance schedule. With a lookup field on the Event, you can schedule maintenance from a property’s Related tab.
Workflow automations worth setting up: notify the maintenance manager and rep when an event is scheduled, notify the maintenance team when a new listing needs prepping, notify the sales team when a listing closes, and notify the property manager when a maintenance request is completed.
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