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Since this is a child theme of Genesis, you must also have Genesis installed for it to run. If you don’t have Genesis, use CRM Press or build your own theme by porting the code.
Summary
About 6 months ago at WordCamp Phoenix I shared TwentyTen CRM, my first attempt at developing a Customer Relationship Management system. Andrew Norcross and Jared Atchison then contributed a ton of improvements to it, and it’s been mostly unchanged since then.
Just in time for WordCamp SF (and Genesis Connect) I’m sharing my lastest version, Genesis CRM. There’s a few reasons for me making the switch:
- TwentyTen is no longer shipped with WordPress.
- Genesis is my preferred development platform. I build all my client’s sites using it.
- Most importantly, TwentyTen CRM was built specifically for managing prospective clients. Once I landed the project, it was no longer used. Genesis CRM has a screen for prospective projects, active projects, and completed projects, and is a tool I use constantly throughout the day to stay organized.
If you don’t use Genesis, no worries! You can use CRM Press, which Thomas Griffin built as a standalone CRM theme (ported from TwentyTen CRM just like Genesis CRM). Or you can just look at the code I’m using it and build it into whatever you’re comfortable working with.
Finally, I’d like to note that what makes this such a valuable tool is how easily (and often) I can modify it. I’m not building a CRM for everyone – this is specifically built for my needs. I highly recommend you take the concepts outlined in this theme and apply them in your own way. Get on Github, fork this project and build your own CRM.
Features
- Custom taxonomies and metaboxes for collecting your data.
- Prospects page template that is 3 widgetized columns. I’ve built a lot of widgets to analyze prospects, so choose the ones you want. Examples: Activity Graph, Source of Inquiry, Source of Projects, Outstanding Quotes… and more.
- Active Projects page template. This lists all active projects in order of project status. It includes a status summary and budget. There’s also a “Needs Work” radio button when editing a project, and if marked the project will have a yellow background. This let’s you quickly see which projects need work. In the sidebar I list scheduled projects so you can be ready for those when they come up.
- Completed Projects page template. This lists completed projects, the budget, time spent, and effective hourly rate. Use this to see what types of projects you over- or under-quote on to improve your estimates. Note: there is no timer built-in. I use Toggl and every Sunday I transcribe that week’s time data to the fields on each project.
- Any time you click the name of a project it takes you directly to the Edit Post screen. Since I’m constantly editing projects’ status, this saves the extra step of clicking “Edit” and gives you a single interface for viewing this information rather than a single post screen and the edit screen.
- If you’re using Gravity Forms, edit the Form page template with the appropriate form ID and you’ll be able to embed a contact form on your public site that automatically populates your CRM (tutorial here).
- The design is responsive, so on a smaller screen (ex: mobile phone) it shifts to a single column layout.
Recommended Plugins
- Gravity Forms and Gravity Forms + Custom Post Types, for your contact form
- Registered Users Only, to limit site’s access to only you. I’ve also added a filter that excludes the contact form from this restriction (functions.php, around line 375).
- Relevanssi, not only will you improve the search results, by going to Settings > Relevanssi you can specify all the post meta fields you’d like included in the index. This is absolutely a must since your CRM is built on post meta.
Sample WordPress CRMs
Have you built a CRM in WordPress? Share your code! Below are some public CRM themes. Leave a link to yours in the comments and I’ll add it to this list. Look through the code of these themes to get ideas for your own CRM.
- Genesis CRM by Bill Erickson
- CRM Press by Thomas Griffin
- TwentyTen CRM by Bill Erickson, Andrew Norcross and Jared Atchison
romu says
Hi Bill.
I’m trying to figure out how Genesis CRM works indeed because I don’t even know how to install it. But I may misunderstand what Genesis CRM really is.
As I said, my company is using WP as a CMS. We have more than 2000 user accounts, some are customers, some don’t. I thought Genesis CRM would install a new plugin, only on the backoffice side (in the WP dashboard), and would offer some features related to customers.
Am I wrong?
I tried to install it, I put the Genesis-CRM folder into my themes directory. I see Genesis-CRM in the list of available theme, but I don’t want to change my web side theme. I just need a WP dashboard CRM. So I guess Genesis is not for me, right?
Bill Erickson says
This should be installed on a completely separate WordPress installation. For instance, I have mine installed at crm.billerickson.net.
This theme also does not use user accounts as clients. It uses “posts” as clients. The reason we don’t use user accounts is:
romu says
Ok that’s what I understood. I’ve found a plugin which suits more my needs. Thanks for your quick answers Bill.
Daniel McClure says
Hey Bill, Just wanted to say thanks for sharing this, I’m currently using this system for one of my sites after watching your WordCamp talk!
Samuel Than says
Hi Bill,
Thanks for sharing this, this lightweight CRM really get me going in terms of managing client and work.
I’m still trying to understand the thinking behind using this, how do you go about handling repeating/multiple projects from the same client ?
Cause at the moment, one client is tied to one project/task ?…
Thanks again 🙂
Bill Erickson says
I just create a new post with the client’s name as the post title, and the project name in the Project Name field. So the url is /client-name-2.
If the majority of your work is coming from a few clients that provide a lot of projects, you might want to take a different approach. You could have a post type for Client and one for Project, then use Posts 2 Posts to link the two.
Samuel Than says
Thanks ! Good idea.
Keep up the good work.
Jason says
Did you wind up doing that? I’m thinking of doing this myself, but in looking into the code, I don’t want to mess up a great many things, which I’m sure I will.
I was wondering what your approach to it was, if you went ahead and did that.
Samuel Than says
Yes (I used the “create a new post with the client’s name as the post title” for a short period )
and then i’ve shifted to some other workflow 🙂
http://tinyurl.com/primdarke15671 says
Regards for posting “Genesis CRM for WordPress – Bill Erickson”.
I actuallymight absolutely wind up being back for a lot more reading and commenting soon.
Thank you, Karen
Paul says
Where do you input the number of hours spent on a project (ie. those you have recorded in Toggl, for example)?
Andy says
Hi Bill.
If I want to add the ability to add dynamic metaboxes should I follow something like this: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/19838/create-more-meta-boxes-as-needed
?
Josh Eaton says
Hey Bill,
Thanks for posting this, I’ve been using it myself for a bit.
I noticed that the Result of Inquiry and Reason for Forwarding Away widgets weren’t working, and they are both looking for a meta key: _crm_old_project_status that doesn’t exist. None of the metaboxes create it. I’m guessing by the name this was something you used to store the Inquiry status in. I’m going to just modify it to work with my installation but was curious how you used it.
Thanks!
Bill Erickson says
Yep, it looks like that was an old field I was using and isn’t in use anymore. To be honest I don’t really use the widgets anymore. I’m waiting for WP_Date_Query() to make it into WordPress core so I can update all those widgets and make them more useful (data for past 7, 30, and 60 days). Right now it has over 3 years worth of data in it so a lot of the information is stale. It still says like 15% of my inquiries come from DIYThemes and I stopped using Thesis over two years ago.
Haim says
Hey Bill,
Thanks for posting this.
I had actually worked on creating my own CRM from scratch, but then I found this post.
I haven’t used it yet but from an overall it looks great!
The only thing I really needed was a way to store customer info, for example where they domain name is registered, what’s the username and password to their account…
Thanks again.
Jamie Mitchell says
Hi Bill, hope you are well
Do you have sample data available to import? the link at top seem to give a not found…
Thanks so much
Chris says
Hi Bill,
Thanks a ton for all your hard work. I’m excited to give this a go and really appreciate your useful contributions to the WordPress community.
Question: do I need the Gravity Forms Developer package, or can I just purchase a Personal licence?
Cheers
Bill Erickson says
You can use the personal license I believe.
Chris says
Got it. Loving this CRM. Thanks so much for your hard work!