Opportunities: General Information

You define a sales opportunity in the system to track potential deals as they progress through your sales pipeline toward closing. This topic provides information about creating opportunities in MYOB Advanced.

Learning Objectives

In this chapter, you will learn how to do the following:

  • Become familiar with ways of creating opportunities
  • Learn about the copying of the settings of contacts and business accounts to opportunities
  • Develop a general understanding of the settings of opportunities
  • Learn about address validation and enrichment through third-party providers
  • Learn about opportunity statuses
  • Learn about shipping settings in opportunities, sales quotes, sales orders, and invoices
  • Create an opportunity through lead conversion
  • Create an opportunity manually
  • Create an opportunity with an item without an inventory ID

Applicable Scenarios

You may want to learn how to create opportunities in MYOB Advanced in scenarios that include the following:

  • A lead has contacted you and confirmed the intention to buy the company's products or services.
  • An existing customer has confirmed the intention to again buy the company's products or services.

Creation of Opportunities in MYOB Advanced

In MYOB Advanced, an opportunity represents a potential, ongoing, or closed deal with a prospective or existing customer. An opportunity record, which is created on the Opportunities (CR304000) form, has a variety of settings, such as the prospect or customer’s contact information, the financial and shipping information, any emails and activities related to the opportunity, and any associated quotes, sales orders, and invoices. With these settings and the related documents, you can easily keep track of and update the most important information about the deal, as described in Settings of an Opportunity. Each opportunity must have an opportunity class selected, which gives you the ability to use the opportunity workflow and stages, as described in Opportunity Management: Opportunity Stages.

An opportunity can be created in any of the following ways:

  • On the Leads (CR301000) form if you click Convert to Opportunity on the More menu for a selected lead. When the lead confirms their interest in buying products or services (and thus the sales team considers the lead to be qualified), you can convert the lead to an opportunity and create an opportunity record in the system, as described in Qualifying Leads (Sales).
  • By manually entering opportunity data on the Opportunities form: For an existing customer, you can create an opportunity and associate the opportunity with an existing contact and business account by selecting the contact and business account. For a prospective customer, you can specify contact information on the Contact tab of the same form; you can then create an associated contact or both a business account and a contact by clicking Create Contact or Create Account on the More menu, respectively.
  • By using the MYOB mobile app: For an existing customer, you can create an opportunity and associate the opportunity with a contact and business account that have already been created in the system.
  • By using an import scenario to import a list of opportunities on the Import by Scenario (SM206036) form. You can use an import scenario if you want to import opportunities from a legacy CRM system. You can use the predefined Import Opportunities from Excel import scenario.
  • On the Opportunities tab of the Contacts (CR302000) form if you click Add New Opportunity on the table toolbar. You may want to create an opportunity on this tab if you are viewing a contact on this form and need to create an opportunity on the fly.
  • On the Opportunities tab of the Business Accounts (CR303000) form for a business account of the Business Account or Customer type if you click Add New Opportunity on the table toolbar.
  • On the Opportunities tab of the Marketing Campaigns (CR202000) form for a selected marketing campaign if you click Add New Opportunity on the table toolbar.
  • By using the Acumatica add-in for Outlook based on the details of a selected email recipient or sender.

Creation of Opportunities Through Lead Conversion

As a rule, during lead conversion, you create a contact and a business account (if they have not yet been created in the system), which the system associates with the sales-qualified lead. A business account must be created before or during the lead conversion for leads of a class if the Require Account for Conversion to Opportunity check box (in the Conversion Settings section of the Details tab) on the Lead Classes (CR207000) form is selected.

On the Details tab of the Opportunity Classes (CR209000) form, if the Show Activities from Source Lead check box is selected, the activities associated with the lead (which are listed on the Activities tab of the Leads form) become associated with the newly created opportunity, and you can track the history of communication with the lead, from creation in the system to conversion to an opportunity.

Processing of an Opportunity Through Statuses

As an opportunity is being processed by a sales team, it progresses through various statuses. The current status of an opportunity is displayed in the Status box in the Summary area of the Opportunities (CR304000) form.

In MYOB Advanced, an opportunity may be assigned one of the following statuses:

  • New: The opportunity has been created, but no work has been done on it yet.
  • Open: The opportunity is being worked on by a sales team.
  • Won: The deal has been successfully closed.
  • Lost: The deal has been canceled.

You can use the following commands on the More menu of the Opportunities form to change the status of an opportunity:

  • Open: Opens the Details dialog box, where you select the reason and the stage for opening the opportunity and then you confirm that you want to perform the command. The status of the opportunity will be changed to Open. This command is available when the status of the opportunity record is New.
  • Close as Won: Opens the Details dialog box, where you select the reason and the stage for winning the opportunity and then you confirm that you want to perform the command. The status of the opportunity will be changed to Won. This command is available if a business account has been specified in the Business Account box of the Summary area and the status of the opportunity record is New or Open.
  • Close as Lost: Opens the Details dialog box, where you select the reason and the stage for closing the opportunity as lost and then you confirm that you want to perform the command. The status of the opportunity will be changed to Lost. This command is available when the status of the opportunity record is New or Open.

As the opportunity is assigned different statuses, you can select the applicable stage of the opportunity. For details, see Opportunity Management: Opportunity Stages.

A system administrator can configure notifications related to the statuses of opportunities. For more information, see Business Events: Use of a Data Entry Form as a Source.

Settings of an Opportunity

You can use and modify the settings on the Opportunities (CR304000) form to track the information related to the opportunity. You can do the following:

Copying of Settings from Contacts and Business Accounts to Opportunities

In MYOB Advanced, contact and address settings are copied to an opportunity when you specify an account in the Business Account box in the Summary area of the Opportunities (CR304000) form. The contact information from the business account or contact specified in the Summary area of the Opportunities form is displayed on the Contact tab as read-only by default, but you can modify it if you select the Override check box on this tab.

Tip: If you modify the contact or address settings of a contact or business account associated with an opportunity on the Contacts (CR302000) or Business Accounts (CR303000) form, the settings displayed on the Contact tab of the Opportunities form will not be changed unless you select and then clear the Override check box on the Contact tab of the Opportunities form.

Also, if you select a different business account for an opportunity, the system replaces the existing contact settings specified on the Contact tab of the Opportunities form with the new settings of the contact associated with the newly selected business account.

The overriding of settings applies to all the settings on the Contact tab of the Opportunities form.

Shipping Settings in Opportunities

When you create an opportunity on the Opportunities (CR304000) form, the system searches for shipping settings in the following entities and populates the Ship-To Address section of the Shipping tab with the first data it finds:

  1. The project specified in the opportunity. If the Calculate Project-Specific Taxes check box on the General tab of the Projects Preferences (PM101000) form is selected, the data in the Ship-To Address section are copied from the project settings that are specified in the Project Address section on the Addresses tab of the Projects (PM301000) form.
  2. The location specified for the opportunity in the Location box of the Summary area. The system copies the information to the Ship-To Address section from the General tab of the Account Locations (CR303010) form.

To populate the data in other sections on the Shipping tab of the Opportunities form, the system copies the corresponding data from the General and Shipping tabs of the Account Locations form.

By default, the shipping settings populated by the system on the Shipping tab of the Opportunities form (in the Ship-To Address and Ship-To Info sections) are displayed as read-only, and the Override check boxes in these sections are cleared. If you select the Override check box in the corresponding section, you can modify its settings on the current form. If the system has inserted settings in the Tax Settings section and you change these settings, the applicable taxes are automatically recalculated for the opportunity on the Taxes tab if sales taxes have been configured in the system. For details, see Taxes.

If at least one Override check box is selected on the Shipping tab, and you change the business account specified in the Summary area of the Opportunities form, the system opens a dialog box that asks whether you want the contact or address settings of the opportunity to be replaced with the settings of the new business account. If you click No, you can keep the previously specified contact or address settings; in this case, the Override check box remains selected on the Shipping tab to indicate that these settings of the opportunity differ from those of the contact, business account, or location selected in the Summary area.

Tip: If you use the Account Locations or Customer Locations form at a later time to modify the contact or address settings for the location specified for an opportunity, the system does not change the settings on the Shipping tab of the Opportunities form unless you select and then clear the Override check box in the appropriate section on the Shipping tab of the Opportunities form.

Shipping Settings in Quotes, Sales Orders, and Invoices

The shipping settings specified for an opportunity on the Opportunities (CR304000) form are copied to any sales order, invoice, or quote that you create based on that opportunity.

If a primary quote exists for an opportunity, the shipping settings specified for the primary sales quote on the Shipping tab of the quote are synchronized with the shipping settings specified for the opportunity on the Shipping tab of the opportunity in both directions.

On the Opportunities form, if you modify the shipping settings specified for an opportunity that is already associated with a sales order, invoice, or non-primary sales quote, the changes you have made to the opportunity will not be reflected in the settings of the associated document. Similarly, changes in the shipping settings specified for a sales order, invoice, or non-primary sales quote are not reflected in the settings of the associated opportunity.

Ability to Add User-Defined Fields to CRM Forms

User-defined fields are site-specific elements that have been defined to track information deemed as important to the organization. A customizer—a user with particular access rights in the system—can add user-defined fields to the Leads (CR301000), Contacts (CR302000), Business Accounts (CR303000), Opportunities (CR304000), Sales Quotes (CR304500), Cases (CR306000), Activity (CR306010), Task (CR306020), and Event (CR306030) form. From any of these forms, the customizer can open the Edit User Defined Fields (CS205020) form by clicking Manage User-Defined Fields in the Customization menu on the form title bar and specify a set of user-defined fields for the form.

For a lead, contact, business account, opportunity, sales quote, and case, the set of user-defined fields is applicable to either a particular class of the entity or all classes of the entity. For a class, each user-defined field can be defined as required or hidden; also, a default value can be specified for the field.

If user-defined fields have been added for a data entry form of a lead, contact, business account, opportunity, sales quote, and case, the original information in the Summary area of a record's form is displayed on the Document tab. The added user-defined fields are displayed on the User-Defined Fields tab. On this tab, by using these fields, you can easily specify additional information about records they are working with. For details, see Attributes and User-Defined Fields.

Copying of User-Defined Fields Between Records

The values of user-defined fields can be copied between records—CRM entities, project quotes, and customers and vendors—when an associated record is created from another record on the following forms:

In this context, the original record is the record from which the associated record is created. If any user-defined fields are listed on the User-Defined Fields tab of both the original record's form (that is, the form used as a starting point for record creation) and the form of the new record, the system automatically copies the values of the shared user-defined fields to the same fields for the new record.

If a user-defined field has been both added to and defined as required on the form of the new record, the field is displayed on the User-Defined Fields tab of each of the following dialog boxes, which are used for record creation and opened using an action on the original record's form:

  • Create Contact on the Leads, Business Accounts, Opportunities, Customers, and Vendors forms: The set of user-defined fields depends on the class of the new record.
  • Create Account on the Leads, Contacts, and Opportunities forms: The set of user-defined fields depends on the class of the new record.
  • Create Opportunity on the Leads form: The set of user-defined fields depends on the class of the new record.
  • Create Quote on the Opportunities form: The set of user-defined fields depends on the selected type of the quote (Project Quote or Sales Quote).
Note: The user-defined field is listed in the dialog box regardless of whether it has been added to the form of the original record and whether it is required on this form.

These dialog boxes do not have rows that list the optional user-defined fields (those not defined as required on the form where the new record is created). If a customizer has specified a default value for a user-defined field in the original record, this default value is inserted in the same user-defined field for a new record associated with the original record.

If a user creates a new record by using any of the following records as a starting point, the system copies the values of shared user-defined fields to the new record whose form opens in a pop-up window:

  • A lead, opportunity, or case created on the Leads, Opportunities, or Cases tab, respectively, of the Business Accounts form
  • A lead, opportunity, or case created on the Leads, Opportunities, or Cases tab of the Contacts form
  • A sales order or invoice created when the user clicks Create Sales Order or Create Invoice (under Record Creation) on the More menu of the Opportunities form
  • A sales quote created when the user copies an existing sales quote on the Quotes tab of the Opportunities form
  • A sales quote created when the user copies the existing sales quote by clicking Copy Quote (under Other) on the More menu of the Sales Quotes form
  • A project quote created when the user copies the existing project quote by clicking Copy (under Other) on the More menu of the Project Quotes (PM304500) form
  • A service order created when the user clicks Create Service Order (under Services) on the More menu of the Cases (CR306000) or Opportunities form
  • An appointment created when the user clicks Create Appointment (under Services) on the More menu of the Opportunities form

A user can change the value in a user-defined field of any record at any time if the record's current status gives the user the ability to edit the settings' values in the record.

Also, a user can select the values of user-defined fields when the user merges duplicate records. For details, see Record Validation for Duplicates: General Information.