The records CLEO keeps

Everything CLEO shows you — Home, Attention, the answers in Ask CLEO — comes from a small set of records. Each one answers a single question about your business. Once you know which record answers which question, the rest of CLEO is easier to read.

Customer

Who · a lead or a client

• Request

  What they asked for

  can lead to work

• Work

  What you are delivering

  • Action item

    What needs to be done

• Booking

  When it is scheduled

  may link to work

• Payment

  Money received

  may be for work

• Follow-up

  A promise to get back to them

One question each

Customers

A customer is anyone your business knows and serves, a person or an organisation. Each customer has one record for their whole history.

Every customer is at one stage:

• Lead — someone who might become a client.
• Client — someone you already work with.
• Lost — a real opportunity that didn't go ahead.
• Not a real opportunity — a lead that was never going to be one, such as a duplicate or a wrong fit.

A lead can still have appointments, requests, work and payments. Booking a lead doesn't make them a client.

Requests and work

A request is what a customer asked for, kept in their words. You add one with Log a request — a phone call, an email or something said in person all count.

Work is one thing you are delivering for one customer. Each piece of work has a kind, such as a renovation or a treatment plan, and moves through that kind's stages. You start it with Create work.

The two are connected, but they are not the same:

• A request can lead to new work, be added to work that already exists, or simply be answered.
• Work doesn't need a request. Plenty of work starts without anyone asking in writing.
• Starting work from a request doesn't finish the request. You finish it once it has been handled.

Action items and follow-ups

An action item is something that needs to be done to move one piece of work forward: what, who does it, who on your team is responsible, and when. You add them on the work with Add an action item.

A follow-up is a promise your business makes to itself to get back to a customer on a certain day, for a reason.

Work also has a next step: a single line saying what happens next. If you leave it empty, CLEO shows the next open action item in its place.

Bookings

A booking is the record of an appointment: who, when, where, and what it is for. Screens call the list Bookings and the event itself an appointment. They are the same thing, seen as a record and as a time.

A booking can be linked to a piece of work with Related work, but booking someone never creates work. When the appointment is over, you record what happened.

Payments

A payment is money a customer actually paid you, including any tax, recorded on the day it arrived. Money you give back is recorded separately, as a refund. A payment can be marked as being for a particular piece of work, but it doesn't have to be. You add one with Record a payment.

How they fit together

Easy to mix up

• A request is not work. One is what was asked; the other is what you are delivering.
• An appointment doesn't create work. Link them when they belong together.
• A follow-up is not an action item. A follow-up is about a person; an action item is about work.
• A payment is not revenue. CLEO shows the money you recorded, nothing it had to estimate.
• Booking a lead doesn't make them a client. Their stage only changes when you change it.