How is Pipedrive data organised?

Some features require a specific subscription to access.

Organising your leads, deals, contacts, projects, organisations, activities, products, and emails is essential to your sales process. Pipedrive helps you organise all your items and link them together for better visibility and efficiency.

If you are just getting started with Pipedrive, you can check out our Pipedrive videos to get you started.

Leads

At the start of your sales process, you may have potential deals that are not yet ready to pursue. Pipedrive's Leads Inbox provides a separate space to keep these prequalified leads until they become deals.

Use the “Add lead” button to input leads individually or via spreadsheet import, or use LeadBooster.
In the add lead dialog, all fields are optional except either the organisation name or the person name.
Once a lead is qualified, click “Convert to deal” to move it to your pipeline, where you can define its pipeline, visibility, and value.

Deals

Deals in Pipedrive represent ongoing transactions with people or organisations. They progress through stages in your pipeline until they are either won or lost.

Deals consolidate all actions taken to close a sale and pull in information from associated persons or organisations.
Deals can be linked to persons, organisations, or projects and can have products added to them.
Any actions performed on deals are reflected in the linked persons/organisations.
Deals can be imported from a previous CRM or via CSV/XLS files.
The progress of deals is tracked, reflecting the overall progress in your account.

People (Contacts)

People contacts are your customers, and any interactions with them, such as scheduled activities or emails, are tracked in their detail view.

People contacts can be linked to one organisation.
They can have multiple deals open at the same time.
Contacts can be synced with your provider, imported from a previous CRM, or via CSV/XLS files.

Organisations (Contacts)

Organisations are companies where your contact people work. All associated people, activities, notes, and deals are listed in the organisation's detail view.

Organisations contain details like mailing addresses and industry information.
Multiple people, deals, or projects can be linked to an organisation.
Organisations can be synced with your provider, imported from a previous CRM, or via CSV/XLS files.

Activities

Activities represent actions toward closing a sale, such as calls or meetings. They can be scheduled with persons, organisations, projects, leads, or deals.

Activities can be synced with various calendar providers.
They can be linked to persons, organisations, leads, deals, or projects.
Associating an activity with a deal, lead, or project also links it to the relevant person and/or organisation.
Activities can be imported from a previous CRM or via CSV/XLS files.

Projects

Projects encompass one or more deals under a larger objective, typically created after a deal is won.

Projects can be linked to deals, people, and organisations.
You can create tasks, subtasks, and activities within projects, which are reflected in linked persons, organisations, or deals.
Progress is tracked via a progress bar in the detail view and a kanban board showing the project's workflow.

Products

Note: For more information about price variations, check out this article.

Products are items you sell, often linked to ongoing deals. They have specific fields such as product code, price, and tax.

Mail

Note: Email sync is available for Advanced, Professional, or Enterprise plans. For more information on email sync, check out this article.

The mail tab stores emails you choose to record in Pipedrive, brought in via email sync or Smart Bcc.

Emails can be linked to people, deals, leads, or projects.
If the recipient is a contact in Pipedrive, the email is associated with them; if not, a new person is created.
Replies are documented in the same email thread and forwarded to your Pipedrive mailbox.
Email attachments are available wherever the email is linked and in the files tab of any detail page.
If a contact is linked to a deal, the email is also reflected there.

If multiple deals are open for a person, Pipedrive provides a list of open deals to choose from for association.

Data Relationships

Here’s a basic rundown of how different data types relate:

Leads	Deals	Leads represent potential deals not fully vetted. Once vetted, they can be converted into deals and added to your pipeline.
Contacts	Leads/deals/activities/mail	Contacts are those you conduct deals and schedule activities with, as well as send emails to. They can be represented as individual people (e.g., Steve Johnson) or organisations (e.g., The Steve Factory).
Activities	Leads/deals/contacts	Activities can be linked to leads, deals, or contacts, but can also exist independently.
Mail	Leads/deals/contacts	Emails can be sent from or linked to leads, deals, or contacts if email sync is enabled. Without email sync, use Smart Bcc to link emails to your leads, deals, and contacts.

Learn more about Pipedrive terms and relationships in our glossary.

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