The true power of the CRM Contact module lies in its ability to adapt to any industry, sales process, or qualification framework. This adaptation is achieved through custom fields. Before you start entering contacts, we strongly recommend spending time in the settings area to configure these fields. Doing so ensures that every lead captured by your team contains exactly the information you need for segmentation, reporting, and follow‑up.

Where to find settings

From your ERP main menu, navigate to Settings (or CRM Settings depending on your user permissions). Inside, locate CRM Contact settings. Here you will find options for creating, editing, and assigning custom fields.

Understanding custom fields and categories

OffConOn provides a large library of pre‑built custom fields, grouped into categories for easy browsing. Example categories:

• CRM characteristic / Income revenue
• CRM characteristic / Company size
• Demographics (for Private Persons)
• Lead source
• Industry & sector

Each category contains multiple fields. For instance, the "Income revenue” category might include a dropdown field "EUR Revenue Bands” with options like:

• €0 - €100,000
• €100,000 – €500,000
• €500,001 – €2,000,000
• €2,000,000 – €90,000,000

If the built‑in library does not meet your needs, you can create a brand‑new custom field from scratch, define its type (text, dropdown, date, checkbox, number, etc.), its possible values, and which category it belongs to. Once created, it becomes available for assignment just like a system field.

Assigning a custom field to the creation form

The most important use of custom fields is to make them appear on the contact creation form. This forces (or encourages) your team to capture vital data from the very first interaction.

Step‑by‑step guide:

1. Go to Settings → CRM → Custom Fields → Assign to Form.
2. Choose the Contact Type to which the field will apply: Business or Private Person. (Fields can be assigned to both via separate configurations.)
3. A three‑step wizard appears:
• Step 1: "Is this required?” – Select Yes if the field must be filled in before the contact can be saved. This ensures data completeness. Select No if the field is optional but desirable.
• Step 2: "Is this searchable?” – Select Yes if you want to be able to filter the CRM Contact List by this field’s value later. Searchable fields also appear as columns in the list view. Non‑searchable fields are displayed only on the dashboard.
• Step 3: "Choose a category” – Click the dropdown and browse the hierarchical category list. Choose the category that contains the field you need (e.g., "CRM characteristic / Company size”).
4. After selecting a category, a list of the specific fields in that category expands. The system shows a sample of the field (for a dropdown, you will see the actual options). This preview lets you confirm you’ve picked the right one.
   For example, if you select "EUR Revenue Bands”, you will see the four revenue ranges, so you know it’s the revenue band field and not a similar one like "Annual Turnover (USD)”.
5. Click Save. The assignment instantly takes effect. The field now appears on every new creation form for that contact type.

Example: A B2B electronics distributor wants to qualify leads by company size and existing IT infrastructure. The sales operations manager performs two assignments:

• For Business type, assigns the field "Number of Employees” (required, searchable) from category "Company size”.
• Also assigns "Cloud Provider” (optional, searchable) from a custom category they created named "Technology Stack”.

Now, when a sales rep creates a new company lead, the form asks for the employee count before saving, and offers a dropdown to select the cloud provider. Every captured lead is pre‑qualified for the inside sales team.

Modifying or removing an assignment

If you later need to change the behaviour of an assigned field:

• Edit: Click the edit icon next to the assigned field in the settings list. You can toggle the "Required” and "Searchable” flags at any time. For instance, you might make a field that was originally optional now mandatory to improve data quality.
• Delete: Click the delete icon. A confirmation dialog warns: "Delete this assignment? The field will no longer appear on the creation form. Previously saved values for this custom field will remain on existing contacts.” This is crucial — deleting an assignment does not erase any data already stored. Historical records are preserved for accurate reporting. Only newly created or edited contacts will no longer see the field.

Important protection: You cannot accidentally break your database. The separation between field assignment and stored data gives you the freedom to refine your process over time without losing information.

Creating a new custom field from scratch

If the library doesn’t contain what you need (e.g., "Preferred communication channel” with options "Phone”, "Email”, "Chat”), you can create a new field:

1. In the Custom Field settings, click Create New (or Add Custom Field).
2. Define the Field Name (e.g., "Preferred Channel”).
3. Choose the Field Type:
4. If you selected Dropdown, enter the Options, one per line (e.g., "Phone”, "Email”, "Chat”).
5. Select (or create) a Category to which this field belongs. Organising fields into categories helps later when assigning them.
6. Save. The field is now available in the assignment wizard under the chosen category.

Example of user‑created field: A real estate agency creates a dropdown field "Property Interest” with options: "Buying”, "Renting”, "Selling”. They assign it to Private Person type, required and searchable. Now, every new lead is immediately tagged, allowing the team to filter all buyers for a new listing campaign.

Which type of custom field to use?

• Dropdown: best for standardised, reportable values (industry, source, rating).
• Text: for unique identifiers (e.g., a membership number) that don’t need filtering.
• Checkbox: for binary flags (e.g., "VIP client”).
• Number: for quantities or metrics that might be used in math operations (though not in basic CRM; more for reporting).

Custom fields vs. the "Specifications” box

Once a custom field is assigned to the form, it appears on the creation screen and also in the Specifications box on the contact’s dashboard. But importantly, the Specifications box is flexible: even if a field was not assigned to the form, you can manually add any available custom field to an individual contact from its dashboard. This is useful for one‑off data points. For example, a rep may discover that a specific lead has a "Preferred call time: mornings” and add a custom field "Preferred Time” to that contact only, without changing the global form. This keeps the form clean while still capturing all needed data.

Using Sales Teams and Responsible Persons as settings

While not custom fields, two organisational elements influence the creation form and overall CRM behaviour:

• Sales Teams: defined in the separate Sales Team module. They represent your sales structure (e.g., "EMEA Enterprise”, "SMB Local”). Assigning a contact to a sales team is optional but recommended. It enables later analysis of plan‑vs‑actual revenue per team.
• Responsible Person: a member of the selected sales team (or any CRM‑enabled employee if no team is chosen). This person becomes the owner of the relationship and receives notifications for all activity on the contact. The responsible person is mandatory – a contact cannot exist without ownership. If you attempt to remove the responsible person from the system, you must first reassign their contacts to another employee.

Best practice: In the settings, you can also define default languages, pipeline templates, and other global parameters that affect how the CRM Contact module behaves, but the core customisation lies in custom fields. Plan your custom fields based on the stages of your sales cycle and the reports you want to generate.

A full customisation scenario

Let’s walk through a complete setup for a B2B software company selling to automotive manufacturers.

1. The sales director sits down and lists the must‑have information about every lead:
• Company revenue band (to route to the right sales tier)
• Number of employees
• Manufacturing segment (passenger cars, trucks, EV, etc.)
• Current ERP system (to know the competitive landscape)
2. From the OffConOn library, she finds:
• "EUR Revenue Bands” (required, searchable)
• "Number of Employees” (required, searchable)
• "Industry Vertical” with automotive subcategories (required, searchable)
3. The library lacks the "Current ERP system” field, so she creates a new dropdown with options: "SAP”, "Oracle”, "Microsoft Dynamics”, "Other”, "None”.
4. She assigns all four fields to the Business type creation form. All are required and searchable.
5. She then creates the sales teams: "Auto OEM”, "Tier 1 Suppliers”, "Aftermarket”.
6. When reps now log a new lead, they must fill in all four fields. The marketing team can later filter the full list by "Industry = EV” AND "Revenue > €500K” to invite to a specialised webinar. The sales team can track conversion rates by ERP system.

The entire configuration takes 20 minutes, but it shapes data quality forever.

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