billerickson 4 min read

Genesis CRM for WordPress

Genesis CRM allows you to manage all your prospective clients, active projects, and completed projects using the WordPress interface.

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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.

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