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 Acumatica.

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 using sales territories for the distribution of opportunities between owners
  • 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 Acumatica 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 Acumatica

In MYOB Acumatica, 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 Opportunities: Settings. 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 Acumatica, 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.

Assigning Sales Territories to Leads, Contacts, Business Accounts, and Opportunities

A sales territory is a territory that in most cases is determined based on the geographical location of the lead, contact, business account, or opportunity. By using sales territories, you can distribute the lead, contact, business account, and opportunity records between different sales territories and the sales representatives who are responsible for the sales territories.

To configure the sales territory functionality, you need to create each sales territory on the Sales Territories (CS204100) form, which is available if the Customer Management and Sales Territory Management features are enabled on the Enable/Disable Features (CS100000) form. You can assign each sales territory one of the following types:

  • By Country: A territory made up of a country or multiple countries
  • By State: A territory made up of a state or multiple states of the selected country
  • Other: Another type of territory that can be assigned only manually

After sales territories have been created on the Sales Territories form, the system automatically assigns a sales territory (excluding territories with the Other territory type) to records during record creation or if a user changes a country, a state, or both of these for an existing record. You can also assign countries and states of a country to an existing sales territory directly on the Countries/States (CS204000) form.

You can see the sales territory to which a record has been assigned on the CRM Info tab of the following forms:

You can manually specify a sales territory if the Override Territory check box is selected on the data entry form for a record. In this case, the sales territory is not updated automatically if you change a country, a state, or both of these in the address settings of the record. If another record is created based on this record, the system copies the state of the check box and the selected sales territory to the target record.

You can also use the sales territory ID as a setting on the Conditions tab of the Assignment Maps (EP205010) form, based on which the assignment of leads, contacts, business accounts, or opportunities to owners proceeds in the following cases:

  • The creation of new records if the Assignment Map option is selected in the Default Owner box of the appropriate form to define a class of leads, contacts, business accounts, or opportunities
  • Mass-assignment of records to owners by using the following mass-processing forms: Assign Leads (CR503010), Assign Contacts (CR503011), Assign Business Accounts (CR503310), and Assign Opportunities (CR503110)

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. For details, see User-Defined Fields.

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.