account, lead, and opportunity relationships

[gfa]

i'm in an interesting situation as it applies to the sugarcrm model --

i hae three types of accounts: agents, merchants, and banks

when a merchant comes in as a lead, often there is an agent associated with it. I see that if i look at the agent account, i can add the lead on that page -- but thats contrary to the workflow as the salesperson will be looking at the lead (or the data will come in on the web lead capture) to enter the agent. how do i make it so you can add an account on a lead just as easy as you can add a lead on an account?

further, on an opportunity, i need to associate it to the agent account (carried over from the lead) as well as multiple bank accounts. again, i see on the agent, and bank account screens that i can add opportunities, but on opportunity i cant add banks or agents (any accounts other than the 1 merchant.) how do i flip around THIS functionality so its bidirectional as well?

I experimented on opportunity by added an account subpanel, which shows promise, but it also shows the merchant and agent accounts next to the banks. i want those in seperate fields in the detail, not the subpanel. I dont immediately see a way to filter that. also , i'd like to see on that subpanel a status field of the relationship between that opportunity and each bank (accepted, declined, in progress, etc). I also want to see on the "opportunity" subpanel on the bank account page a list of associated opportunitise and the status, as banks and opportunities have a many to many relationship. i'm missing something on how i would add that status field in this context, i'm afraid an extra table is necessary, i hope not?

i smell that what i want can be very easy since all the relationships are there already.

any ideas?


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