Creating Leads
Leads are the opportunities you and your partners exchange — a company and a contact that could become a deal. There are several ways to get leads into Journeybee: create them yourself, let partners submit them through the portal, capture them with forms on your website, sync them from your CRM, or import them in bulk from a CSV.
Where to find it: Go to Leads and click Create lead (top right).
Who can use this: Any member of your team can create and import leads. Partners create leads from their portal.
Creating a lead yourself
Go to the Leads page.
Click Create lead in the top right.
The New lead panel opens with two columns: the lead's details on the left, and the associated partner on the right.
Fields
Company name, First name, Last name, Email and Phone number: The lead's identifying details. Company name, first name, last name and email are required by default — phone number is optional — and you can change which fields are required, or hide them, in your company's field settings. At least one identifying field is always needed to create a lead.
Tags: Add tags to organise leads — see Tags.
Assigned users: Add members of your own team to the lead.
Custom Fields: Any custom fields you have set up for leads of this partner type. Required custom fields must be filled in before you can save; fields hidden by a field rule are skipped. See Custom Fields.
Lead Attribution: Record where the lead came from by picking one or more attribution sources, each with a date. This section only appears once you have created sources — see Attribution.
Associated Partner
Partner type: Choose Referral or Reseller. This selector only appears when more than one partner type is enabled.
Select a partner: Search for and pick the partner this lead belongs to.
Direction (referral only): Choose Received (the partner passed the lead to you) or Sent (you are sending the lead to the partner). This is required for referral leads. Reseller leads have no direction — they always count as received.
Distributor (reseller only): If the reseller is linked to distributors, you can record which distributor the lead is associated with. Requires the distribution module — see Distribution Management.
Assign users: Pick users at the partner to notify. They receive an email with the lead details and a link to your partner portal. This section appears once a partner with portal users is selected, on paid plans.
Products: Attach products to the lead, if the products module is enabled and you have live products. Products set to Calculators only are not offered here; they reach a lead through a quote. See Products.
Notes: Add a note that is attached to the lead after it is created. Notes are shared — the partner can see them.
The submit button reflects the direction: it says Add Lead for reseller leads and referral leads you received, and Send Lead for referral leads you are sending to the partner.
What happens when you create a lead
The lead is created with the status New and appears at the top of your Leads page.
The New lead notification emails your team and the partner. It only fires when the partnership is live — leads on a pending partnership do not notify the partner.
Any partner users you assigned receive the lead-details email with a portal link.
The members of your team assigned to the partner join the lead's assigned users automatically, alongside anyone you picked yourself, and receive the Lead assigned to you notification.
If a CRM is connected, the lead syncs to it automatically.
Lead statuses
Leads have three statuses:
New: The lead has been created but not yet processed.
Accepted: You have accepted the lead.
Rejected: You have declined the lead.
Statuses are set by you, not automatically. You can change a lead's status by dragging its card between columns on the lead board, from the lead panel, or from a deal's Associated lead tab. Creating a deal from a lead does not change the lead's status by itself — accept or reject it from the deal's Associated lead tab when you are ready.
From the partner portal
Partners submit leads from the Leads room in their portal. A lead submitted by a partner is always recorded as received from that partner. Partners only see the fields you have shared with them — shared custom fields, plus whichever standard fields you have made visible.
If you open the portal as an owner, you get two options instead: Received from partner to record a lead the partner gave you, and Send Lead to send one to them. The portal also has its own Import button for bulk CSV upload, unless leads require a quote.
If a pricing calculator is Available on leads for the partner, the add lead form shows an Add a Quote button so they can attach a calculator quote as they create the lead. If a calculator is Required on leads, the partner cannot submit until a quote is attached, and the Import button is hidden. See Quotes on Leads and Deals.
From forms
Forms capture leads from outside Journeybee — on your website or via a shareable link:
Hosted forms: Pages hosted by Journeybee that you share by link.
Embeddable forms: Forms you embed on your own website.
A form submission is matched to a partner by the partner link used or by the submitter's email domain. Submissions that cannot be matched to a partner — a public email domain (such as gmail.com), for example — are not created as leads; instead you receive a notification email so nothing is lost. The same applies when the matched partner's type does not match the form's partner type: the email carries the full submission so you can add the lead yourself. See Forms and Embeddable Forms.
From your CRM
With a CRM connected, leads sync two ways: leads created in Journeybee appear in your CRM, and leads created in your CRM appear in Journeybee. Supported CRMs are HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Attio, Zoho and Rolldog.
You can also create Journeybee leads without leaving your CRM using the Journeybee sidebar widget inside the CRM record. See the individual guides under Integrations.
Other ways to create leads
Campaigns: Marketing campaigns capture their own leads through campaign forms — see Marketing Campaigns.
Slack: With the Slack integration, your team and partners can submit leads directly from Slack — see Slack Integration.
API: Create leads programmatically with the public API — see API Keys to get started.
Importing leads from a CSV
Use the Import button on the Leads page to bulk-import up to 500 leads at a time, with column mapping, partner assignment, attribution and (for resellers) deal creation in the same run. This has its own guide — see Lead Import (CSV).
Troubleshooting
You can't save a referral lead. Referral leads need a direction — pick Received or Sent in the partner column.
The Distributor selector is missing. It only appears on reseller leads, when the distribution module is enabled and the selected reseller has linked distributors.
You can't assign partner users. The partner-user list appears once a partner is selected and that partner has portal users; it is available on paid plans. Invite the partner's contacts first — see Partner Contacts.
The Lead Attribution section is missing. It only appears once your company has attribution sources — create them in Attribution.
The partner wasn't notified. The New lead notification only fires for live partnerships. Check the partnership is live, and that the partner has invited contacts.
A partner cannot submit a lead, or their Import button is missing. A calculator they have access to is marked Required on leads, so every lead needs a quote and CSV import is switched off for them. Open the calculator's Details tab to change the setting, or its Access tab to change who it applies to.
Good to know
Your field settings — which standard fields are required or hidden — apply to leads created in the app, in the partner portal and on a deal's new-lead form. Lead forms keep their own per-form layout, and CSV or CRM imports are not held to them.
Custom fields can be shared with partners or kept internal, and can be made required — required fields also apply to partners submitting through the portal.
Notes on a lead are shared with the partner. Keep internal-only commentary elsewhere.
Journeybee records where each lead came from (created manually, imported, from a campaign or a form), and the History tab on the lead shows the full activity log.
To work with leads after creating them — filtering, boards, the lead panel and its tabs — see Lead and Deal Management.