Lead to Opportunity conversion help

[Philgood]

Okay.. to be honest the owner of our company wants us to use sugar. I am the one responsible for setting it up. Im really not an IT guy but im usually pretty good with software.

For what we need we really only need two options to use in sugar and what we need are very simplistic for as complex as you can get with sugar. Only 4-5 people will ever even log in. The receptionist, 2 sales people, and an admin.

I have created a customized lead form. We dont generate leads from the web. People call in and we have a paper form we fill out with various information. Instead of putting this into a contact form it goes into a lead form because if they are calling in they are already a lead. Our job is to list this lead as an opportunity (in other words the leads that we are going to close is what we consider opportunities)

The rest of the leads we label as hot/follow ups, or cold.

The problem is this.. when I go and enter a new lead and fill out the form and save it it saves just fine. Says converted, but then doesnt appear under the opportunities tab like it is suppose to.

I went in and customized the opportunity form to look exactly like the lead form thinking that would help it convert easier. When i click on the saved lead and choose convert it wants me to create a contact. (i want to avoid this all together)

Then when i fill in all the information it wants it says "creating an opportunity requires an account, please create a new one or select an existing one"

I click on my account and enter the info it asks and it doesnt really work. and then sometimes it does

Maybe i am doing something wrong???

Once converted i should be able to click on the opportunities tab and view the lead i converted correct?



Now for the ideal situation. One lead form when we get a call. We enter in all of the info. We can then go in and if we call the lead back and make the sell it goes into our opportunity folder, if its in limbo it stays in our leads folder, and if it doesnt sell then we are able to put it into a "graveyard" of sorts where its like "these leads never converted so i dont want them in our active leads file but i want to keep the records of them so maybe i could pull a mailing list from them later or be able to pull up if they call in the future and decide they are interested and i can put them back into active leads.


Thanks for any assistance you can offer

Oh. Im on Vista 64 bit and my version is Community Edition 5.2.0a

[Philgood]

bumping because i still have the issue and when i do get it to convert to an oppy and it says "converted" on the lead page... I then click on the opportunities tab it isnt there.