Managing Leads

When a customer submits the quote request form on your Customer Portal, it lands in Leads. Triage it, convert it to a Customer + Job, or reject it — all in one place.

Why it matters

A Lead is the first signal that someone wants to do business with you. The faster you respond, the more often you win the work. FabWise routes every quote request from your Customer Portal into one inbox so nothing falls through the cracks.

Each lead has a clear next action: convert it (if you want to quote the work) or reject it (if it's not a fit). Once you convert, FabWise creates the Customer, Contact, and Job records for you in a single step — no re-typing.

Where leads come from

Leads are created automatically when someone fills out the Request a Quote form on your public Customer Portal at fabwise.app/shop/your-slug. The form captures:

Company name
Company name
First and last name
Email
Phone (optional)
Project description
Timeline and budget (optional)

You're notified the moment a lead arrives, two ways:

Email to the address on file for your account, subject "New Lead: [company name]"
Push notification to every admin or supervisor who has the FabWise app installed on their phone — turn this on or off with the New leads toggle under Notifications (it's on by default)

Lead emails go to account owners and admins.

Where to find leads

Sign in to admin.fabwise.app.
Click Leads in the left navigation.

You'll see every lead, newest first, 25 per page. Each row shows the company name, contact name, project description preview, and status.

Lead statuses

A lead is always in one of three states:

New — just arrived, hasn't been touched yet. This is your action queue.
Converted — you accepted it. A Customer, a Contact, and a Job were created. The Lead record stays in the list for audit history.
Rejected — you declined it. No follow-up action; kept for history.

Once a lead is converted or rejected, it can't be changed back. Decide once.

Reviewing a lead

Click any lead in the list to open its detail page. You'll see:

Company name, contact name, email
Full project description
Submission time

This is what you have to go on. Lead forms intentionally don't ask for everything up front — the goal is the lowest possible friction for the customer to start a conversation. The rest comes in the follow-up.

Step 1. Decide: convert or reject

The decision is roughly: "Is this a project we want to quote?"

Convert if:

The work is in your wheelhouse
The customer is in your service area
The project size is one you'd take
You have the capacity to take it on

Reject if:

It's clearly outside your capabilities (residential when you do industrial, etc.)
It's spam or obviously not a real project
You're at capacity and don't want to take new work right now

When in doubt, convert and have a conversation. You can always close the Job later if it doesn't pan out. A rejected lead is a lost opportunity.

Step 2a. Converting a lead

Click Convert on the lead detail page. FabWise does three things in one transaction:

Creates a Customer record with the company name and contact info
Creates a Contact under that Customer for the person who submitted
Creates a Job at the Inquiry stage, linked to the new Customer

You're redirected to the new Job's page with a success message. From here, the normal job lifecycle applies — see the Quotes and Invoices help article for what to do next.

The Lead record stays in your Leads list with status Converted and a link to the Customer and Job it became. Useful for tracking conversion rate and source attribution later.

Step 2b. Rejecting a lead

Click Reject on the lead detail page. The lead's status changes to Rejected. No Customer or Job is created. You stay on the leads list.

There's no automatic email back to the customer when you reject a lead. If you want to send a polite "thanks but no thanks," do it directly from your email client before clicking Reject. Most shops don't bother — silence is the industry norm.

Following up

A converted lead becomes a Job at the Inquiry stage. From there:

Reach out to the contact directly (email or phone) within 24 hours
Get the rest of the project details
Quote the work — see Quotes and Invoices for the quoting flow
Move the Job through its stages as the relationship progresses

The 24-hour rule is real. Leads that sit for two days convert at a fraction of the rate of leads called the same day.

Lead volume and source tracking

Today, all leads come from the public Customer Portal quote form. As FabWise adds more channels (referrals, partner integrations, marketing campaigns), source attribution will appear on each lead. For now, the assumption is: every lead came from your portal.

If you're getting more leads than you can handle, the levers are:

Mark your portal as not public (Admin → Customer Portal → uncheck Public listing) — you keep the quote form working for shared links but stop new discovery
Disable the portal entirely (Admin → Customer Portal → uncheck Enable portal) — the quote button disappears

If you're getting too few, see the Customer Portal Setup guide for tips on improving your listing.

Notifications

FabWise tells you about new leads two ways:

Email to account owners and admins — subject "New Lead: [company name]"
Push notification to your phone or browser — title "New Lead", body "[contact name] from [company name]"

Lead emails always go to account owners and admins — they're not user-configurable today. Push notifications fire to every admin whose device is enrolled (in the supervisor mobile app or with browser push enabled).

If you're not getting notifications, check spam first.

Troubleshooting

"This lead has already been processed and cannot be converted again"

You (or another admin) already clicked Convert or Reject on this lead. Look at the lead's current status — if it says Converted, the Job already exists. Find it under Jobs.

A lead came in but I can't find it

Check that you're signed in to the right account. Leads are scoped to the account that owns the portal slug the customer submitted on.

I want to delete a lead

Leads aren't deletable from the UI — they're kept for audit history. Reject it instead. If you genuinely need a lead deleted (legal request, accidental personal data), contact support.

A lead came in with no project description

Some customers submit the form with the bare minimum. If the description is empty or unhelpful, just reach out to the email address and ask. Don't reject for sparse data — bad leads have already been filtered by the customer's willingness to fill out a form at all.

I'm getting spam leads

Lead submission is protected by Cloudflare Turnstile (an invisible bot check). Some spam still gets through — reject it and move on. If you're getting a flood, contact support and we can tune the threshold.

Where to find it

Admin path: Admin → Leads
Who can manage leads: account owners and admins
Where leads come from: public quote form at fabwise.app/shop/your-slug/quote
Lead notifications: email to account owners and admins + push to admins with enrolled devices (not user-configurable today)

[Set Up Your Customer Portal](customer-portal-setup.md)
[Quotes and Invoices](../job-costing/quotes-and-invoices.md)