Questions about Converting

[JRender]

Hi,

We've recently begun using EspoCRM as a means of logging communication between and amongst staff and students in our educational program. I've read all of the documentation and searched the forum, but have been unable to find the answers to the following questions:

1. I know that I can convert Leads into the following default entities: Account, Contact, and Opportunity.
A. Is there a way to set it up so that the records within those other entities can be converted from one to the other or even into Leads. For example, is there a way to set it up so I could convert a record in the Account entity into a record in the Opportunity entity or convert a record in the Contact entity into a record in the Lead entity? If that is possible, how do I go about enabling/setting that up?
B. If it's not possible to do that with the default entities, is there a way to create custom entities that would allow converting between and amongst each other? If that is the case, how would I go about enabling/setting that up?

2. In the documentation in the Sales Management section of the User Guide it says, "A converted Lead won't be removed from the system. It will have status Converted, records it was converted to, will be available in the Converted To panel on the right."
A. Is there a way to do a "full" conversion between entities rather than a duplication? For example, is there a way when I convert a Lead record into an Account, where after the record is duplicated into an Account entity, the system deletes the record from the Lead entity?

Thank you, and I assure you that I greatly appreciate any help that you can provide.

[shalmaxb]

Hello, I don`t know, if I will be able to answer all of your questions correctly, but here is, how I understand it.

1. A Lead is to be considered the very initial interest of someone, who heard about your offers. It is not a real contact, which it may become in the future, when you convert it.
2. A converted contact cannot be reverted to Lead. This would not be logical. If you converted a Lead and want to go back you may though delete the contact and set the before converted Lead back to not converted. But it would not exist as a contact anymore. You cannot have the same Person/Company as Lead and contact at the same time. For that reason a lead will not be created, if the E-Mail address already exists (because the E-Mail Address is one of the unique identifiers at this stage).
A. The same is for Accounts or Opportunities, which cannot be reverted to leads without deleting the already existing records of these entities to not have duplicate records of the same content.
B. On the other hand you can convert Accounts or Contacts into other entities by constructing relationships, where the necessary fields have to be tranferred by formula to the following entity. (I do that e.g. in an administration of a workshop, where I can convert contacts to reservations and reservations to applied participants in a workshop). You can create with custom entities whatever chains of stages a contact could be part of.

2. The preserving of a former Lead as converted keeps in the system, that a Lead will not cause to have duplicate contacts or accounts. As written before, you would have to delete formerly converted contacts or accounts before you set a Lead back to not converted.

I do not recommend to bypass any of these logical functionality, because you could cause problems afterwards, that you not even can imagine. I am working more than 5 years with espoCRM and one thing I can guarantee: There is nothing conceptual, that does not make sense. espoCRM is very well thought and it is only necessary to understand the concepts. Customization helps to realize, what you may need for your purpose. So far I quite never came across obstacles to realize, what I needed. And my apps are very far from being plain CRM.

[JRender]

Thank you shalmaxb. I had a feeling that everything you described was the case, but I wanted to make sure that there wasn't a way to do what I was asking, and I just didn't know how to do it.