Category Area

***** Software On Sailboats Desktop Sales Manager v6
***** Contact management software, sales automation software, CRM software

Category Area

Categories are the buttons that appear in the left side of any pipeline window. They provide a powerful tool for analyzing a pipeline and reports by grouping sales opportunities by different criterion.

Data field and property Categories

Data fields 1-19 can be used as a category. For example, if you have a field called Lead Source, Desktop Sales Manager will display all your sales opportunities within the Lead Source category grouped by lead source. All of sales opportunities with "Trade Show" as their lead source would be grouped together and totaled, etc.

In the same manner any sales opportunities property can be used as a Category. For example the property Booking Month will group sales opportunities together based upon the month that the order is expected. All of the orders expected in August will be grouped together and totaled, etc.

Special Categories - Pipeline and Dashboard

There are two categories that are not derived from the data fields or properties. The Pipeline is a category that simply groups all of the opportunities in a sales pipeline together. The Dashboard view groups by categories like "Overdue", "Big Deals", etc.

The Dashboard in the Category area gives provides information on the sales opportunities within a single pipeline. The Summary Dashboard provides the same information for all open pipelines.

Default Categories

The default categories for new pipelines are Dashboard, Pipeline, Stage and Probability.

Report Categories

Some reports can have the information within the report grouped by Category. Other reports do not lend themselves to Category grouping. For example a report that shows revenue by month is already grouped by month, and grouping by other Categories does not make sense. Reports that do not lend themselves to grouping do not display the Category Area.

Adding and removing Categories

You can add and remove some common Categories from the Category Area using short cuts in the Opportunities --> Categories area. You can add or remove ANY category from the Category Options dialog. The Category Options dialog can be invoked from the small dialog icon in the upper right corner of the Opportunities --> Categories area or by right clicking in the Category Area and choosing Category --> Options.

Category Options Dialog

The Category Options dialog provides control over the visibility and order of any data field or property as a category.

You can control some values used in the Dashboard and Summary Dashboard. You can set a value to show any deals that have had no activity for a period of time. You set the value that monitors deals that have grown old. You can set a threshold and monitor 'big deals' - deals that are significant because they are above a revenue amount that you have set.

Software On Sailboats

Software On Sailboats