OVERVIEW
How to create a new sales representative

SCREEN OVERVIEW
New/view sales rep
Existing asles reps
Buttons

Overview

The definition of a sales rep goes beyond an employee at your company. Quite often, companies partner with other individuals and businesses for a variety of reasons, from outsourcing to reselling. That means you have a vested interest in tracking sales closed by everyone associated with your business, whether or not they are your employees personally. That's where Method's sales rep function comes in. This function allows you to assign the designation of sales rep to employees and vendors, and in turn assign those reps to leads, customers, and opportunities, and associate them with estimates and invoices, sales orders and sales receipts. This is a great way of tracking who is generating income and in what numbers, which helps build out your trail of breadcrumbs in terms of income sources and interactions with customers and business opportunities at every stage of the pipeline.

This section will show you how to create a new sales rep and will provide a breakdown of the screen to show you around!

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How to create a new sales representative

1. There are several ways to access the New / View sales rep screen:
   • Navigate to your CRM Hover Menu and click QuickBooks > Lists > Sales rep. This option will open the New/view sales rep screen with the Existing sales rep grid below.
   • From Method CRM, go to New lead > Add additional info > Sales rep > Add new. This will generate only the New sales rep screen.
   • From Method CRM, go to New customer > Add additional info > Sales rep > Add new. This will generate only the New sales rep screen.
2. Once the New / View sales rep screen, choose an employee or vendor from the Name drop down list: this person will be your new sales rep.  Depending on which type you choose, the associated type will appear in the Type field below.
3. It is mandatory that you include initials for this new rep (otherwise Method won't save the record) so try to choose something that makes sense: for example, Bob Crenshaw would be abbreviated BC.
4. If you want this sales rep to appear in the drop down menus throughout Method, make sure you click Sales rep is active? Otherwise the only place the rep will appear is in the Inactive sales rep and Sales rep filters of the Existing sales reps grid.
5. Depending on the way you chose to access this screen, you will have different button options.
• If you used method 1 from above (QuickBooks tab), click on Save & New to save the rep and clear the fields. When you refresh the screen, the new rep will appear in your Existing sales reps grid and will be found in drop down menus throughout Method. Clicking Clear/New will clear the fields without saving.
• If you used method 2 or 3 from above (CRM tab), you will have the above two options as well as the option to Save, which will save the fields but allow you to continue editing, Save & Close which will save the fields and return you to the New customer or New lead screen, respectively, or Cancel / Close which will close the New sales rep screen without saving any changes.

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Screen overview

The following is a breakdown of the New/view sales rep screen. We'll take a closer look at each element of the screen (drop down menus, buttons, etc.) so you know exactly what each element does. We hope this will be a useful "glossary" of sorts for new users!

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New/view sales rep

Technically speaking, there are two screens: New sales rep (accessed through the Customer and Lead tabs as described above) and New/view sales rep (accessed through the QuickBooks tab group as described above). However, the "new" section of both screens are identical, so we're lumping them together. Just remember - you won't see the Existing sales rep grid unless you're in your QuickBooks tab group!

• Name: Choose an employee or vendor from this drop down list - it will show all existing contacts of these types in your Method account.
• Initials: The only mandatory field on the screen, use this writable field to assign initials to your sales rep. Obviously they should be initials that make sense (for example, Bob Crenshaw might be BC). If you happen to have two reps with the same first and last initial, adding a third initial is also possible.
• Type: This section will be auto-filled when you choose a contact from the Name drop down list (it will list the type as "employee" or "vendor").
• Sales rep is active?: Check this box if you would like the sales rep to appear in drop down menus throughout Method.

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Existing sales reps

Of course, this grid functions the same way as other grids in Method (see our article on Grid functionality for more information). However, there are always unique parts of every grid, including the Filter by view drop down and the searchable fields. The options in this Filter by view drop down are:

• Active sales reps: This view will display only sales reps with Sales rep is active checked off.
• Inactive sales reps: This view will display only sales reps with Sales rep is active unchecked.
• Sales reps: This view will display all sales reps currently in your Method account.
• Additionally, the grid can be sorted and searched by Initials, sales rep Name, sales rep Type (employee or vendor), and whether or not the sales rep Is active.

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Buttons

As mentioned above, all of these options are only available on the New sales rep screen: the New/view sales rep screen offers only the first two.

• Clear / New will clear the two fields in preparation for a new Sales rep to be inputted.
• Save will save the information in the fields without closing the screen.
• Save & New will save the information in the fields and then clear them in preparation for a new Sales rep to be inputted.
• Save & Close will save the information in the fields and then close the screen, returning you to the New lead or customer screen.
• Cancel / close will close the screen without saving, returning you to the New lead or customer screen.

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