Turning a lead into an event — Help

A lead is only worth capturing if it can become a booking with as little re-typing as possible. When a lead is real, 1pm turns it into an event and a contact in a couple of clicks, carrying across everything the lead already told you. No copying names into a new event, no re-keying the date or the guest count.

This article covers converting a lead, the contact-matching step, what gets created, and raising a quote first.

Convert a lead

In the Leads inbox, find the lead (on the New or Qualified tab) and click Create event. A short step opens asking you to link the lead to a contact. Once you confirm, 1pm creates the booking and takes you straight into it to finish the details.

Linking it to a contact

Every event needs a client contact, so before the event is created, 1pm sorts out who this lead is in your address book:

If their email already matches a contact (or a few), you're asked to pick the right one, or to create a new contact instead. This is how you avoid ending up with the same caterer or repeat client twice. If you do spot duplicates, it's worth consolidating them later.
If no contact has that email, 1pm tells you a new contact will be created, and you just confirm.
Either way, you can pick anyone else in your address book. Matching only looks at the email address, so a repeat client who enquired from a work address last year and a personal one this year won't match. Use Pick a different contact to search your contacts and tie the lead to the record you already have, rather than creating a second one for the same person.

Click Create event to finish.

What gets created

Converting does three things in one move:

It creates the event as a tentative booking, with the lead's name, event date, and guest count already filled in from their submission. The date comes from the built-in event date field every lead form carries. From then on the date lives on the event: change it there, and the lead follows.
It creates or links the contact, and saves any custom-field answers from the form straight onto that contact record. The event type they picked or the detail they typed is now part of their permanent record, not stranded on an old lead.
It moves the lead to Converted, where its row keeps a View event button so you can always get back to the booking it became. The conversation thread stays with the lead too, so the email history isn't lost.

You land in the event editor with the basics in place, ready to add the run of show, pricing, spaces, and everything else.

Link to an event you already have

Sometimes the event exists before the lead does. You might have blocked out the date on the calendar already, or set the booking up for a repeat client, and then a matching lead lands. Rather than create a second event, attach the lead to the one you already have.

On a New or Qualified lead, click Link existing event (it sits next to Create event). A picker opens listing your events; search by name to narrow it, then click Link on the right one. The lead moves to Qualified and points at that event, and its View event button takes you straight there.

A few things worth knowing:

The event keeps its own client contact. Unlike Create event, which sets the contact from the lead, linking leaves an existing event's client untouched, because that event already has an owner. Linking is about connecting the lead to the booking, not overwriting who it is for.
One lead per event. The picker only offers events that aren't already linked to another lead, so you can't accidentally attach two leads to the same booking.
The event inherits the lead's form. Once linked, the event counts as having come in on that lead's form. That matters if you run automations or reports scoped to a particular form: a booking you first created straight on the calendar has no form of its own, but linking a wedding lead to it means your wedding-form automations and reporting now include it.

Changing the link from the event

Everything above works from the lead. You can do the same job from the other end, which is usually where you are when you notice it is wrong.

Open the event and go to its Settings. Beside the Program picker sits Linked lead. It shows the lead this event came from, with a link straight through to it, and it lets you change it:

Pick a different lead to re-point the event.
Leave it blank to detach the two, leaving both records intact.

The picker only lists leads it can actually accept, so a choice cannot fail for a reason the form never showed you: leads that are live (New or Qualified) and not already holding an event of their own. It shows the 50 most recently worked, newest first, and says so rather than quietly stopping at the end of the list. A lead attached by hand is almost always one you have been working lately.

A Converted lead is shown read-only here. A converted lead always has an event by definition, so unpicking it from this side would break that. Send the lead back to Qualified on the lead itself, then change it.

Raise a quote first

Sometimes the right next step isn't a booking, it's a number. From a New or Qualified lead you can click Quote instead of Create event. That raises a quote for the lead, pre-filled with their details, and opens the quote editor. You can send the quote to the lead through the same email thread, and when they accept it, the event is created for you with the pricing already seeded. Quotes are covered in Quotes and invoices.

When a lead doesn't proceed

Not every lead becomes a booking. Mark a Qualified lead as Lost to take it out of your working pipeline; it stays on the Lost tab and can be reopened if the client comes back. Converting, losing, and reopening are all reversible, so nothing you do here is final.

Working the leads inbox covers the pipeline and the actions on each lead.
Replying to leads covers the email conversation before you convert.
Tracking events from lead to done covers the event status pipeline a converted booking then moves through.