In this video, you learn how to manage organizations in Leadtime – all customers, suppliers, and partners your company works with. This is your central hub for managing all business relationships.
First, you explore an existing organization (ACME Inc.) to understand how everything connects. In the Overview tab you find Basic Information like Short Name, color, Type, Legal Form, and the individual Hourly Rate – which you can set differently per organization. Plus the Members (contacts) and linked Projects.
Especially interesting: Contact persons can get free Guest User access to Leadtime. They only see their own projects – no internal data, no other customers. Completely secure and without license costs. In the Journal you document the customer relationship so everyone on the team knows what was last discussed.
In the Letters tab you can generate letters with macros (via the hashtag symbol) in seconds and download them as PDF. In Invoice Settings you set individual billing rules per organization: custom hourly rate, payment terms, late fees on or off – full control over each customer's conditions.
Then you create a new organization yourself (Voltago Energy GmbH): with icon, Short Name, color, Type, and contact details. The color matters because it appears everywhere in the system – in projects, tickets, pipeline. You then add employees as Members.
Finally, the address book: All contacts (internal employees and external) in one place. Via CardDAV Sync you can synchronize all contacts with your operating system – Apple Contacts, iOS, Thunderbird. Changes in Leadtime are automatically updated on all devices. Alternatively, there's the vCard export.
In the last video we set up your own company, your employees and teams. Now we're looking at your company's environment: All other organizations you work with. Customers, suppliers, partners.
This is your central hub for managing all business relationships. And here's where it gets really practical: You can give customers free access, set individual billing rules, and sync all contacts with your operating system.
We'll first look at a finished organization so you understand how everything connects. Then we'll create a new one together.
I'm opening the organization ACME Inc. In the Overview tab you see all Basic Information on the left.
Short Name is "ACME". This is important because this abbreviation appears in all lists. You recognize ACME immediately by its color.
Then you see Name, Type which is "Customer" here, Legal Form and the logo. The Hourly Rate can be individual for each organization. This is gold when you have different conditions with different customers.
On the top right you see the Members, all contacts of this organization. With "Manage members" you can add or remove people.
On the bottom right the Projects, all projects running with ACME. You see Short Name, Name and Type. With "Manage projects" you can create new projects. But careful: Much more on projects comes later. We won't go deep now.
I'm going to the Members tab and clicking on Lisa Miller. Here you see all details about this contact person.
Basic Info: Name, Position, Date of Birth.
Now here's the important part: Access to Leadtime. Here "Allow login" is activated and the Role is Guest. What does this mean?
Lisa Miller can log into the Leadtime system. But, and this is crucial, she only sees her own projects. No internal data, no other customers, nothing. This is completely secure.
And the best part: Guest users don't create license costs. So you can invite as many customers as you want without paying more. You can find more about this in our blog under "Leadtime Access".
Further down you see Contact Details with address, email, phone. And the Personality with Influence Level and Attitude. This helps you assess how important this person is and how they feel about you.
I'm switching to the Journal. Here you document the relationship with the customer. You can create entries, leave notes, record moods.
This is extremely valuable: When a colleague contacts Lisa, they immediately know what was discussed last time. This makes the difference between professional and chaotic.
Back to ACME. I'm going to the Projects tab. This company has one support project. You see its Short Name, Name, Category, Status, Open Tasks.
But as I said: Much more on projects comes later. We'll leave it like this for now.
The Letters tab is a nice little feature. Here you manage all letters for this organization. Even today you occasionally need to write a formal letter.
I'm clicking on "Add Letter". A dialog opens where I select the recipient and enter the subject.
In the content field you can use macros by typing the hashtag symbol. This opens a menu with placeholders like "dear" for the greeting or "clientCompanyName" for the organization name. The macros automatically fill in the correct data.
I click "PDF Preview" and there's the finished letter. "Save and Download" saves it and downloads it immediately.
I'm going to Settings and then Basic Settings. Here are the organization's basic data: Address with Street, City, Country, Tax Number, Registration Number, Register Court.
This is the foundation for all documents and invoices.
Now Settings and then Invoice Settings. Here it gets interesting.
You can set individual billing rules for each organization that differ from your general workspace settings.
For example: Individual hourly rate. The "Hourly Rate" field you can set to 120 euros for ACME, while your standard might be 100 euros. Each organization has its own hourly rate. This calculates automatically in all billings.
Or: Late fees and default interest. You see "Enable late fee" and "Enable interest on arrears". For large, important customers you can turn this off. They don't get reminder fees even if they pay later. For small customers you leave it on.
"Days until due" is the payment term. Standard is 14 days, but for ACME you can set 30 days.
This gives you full control: The right conditions for each customer, without having to manually intervene with every invoice.
There's more: Invoice Texts with macros for personalized invoices and reminders. I won't show this now, but you see: Everything is customizable.
Quick mention: Each organization can have its own helpdesk. You set up an email address, and all emails coming in are automatically turned into tickets in a project. More on this later.
Now we've understood how organizations work. Now let's create one ourselves.
I go to Organizations and click "Add Organization".
Icon: I'm choosing a lightning emoji, fits an energy company.
Short Name: "VOLT". This is important because this name appears in all lists. When you later have 100 projects, you recognize by "VOLT" immediately that it's about Voltago.
Name: "Voltago Energy GmbH".
Color: I'm choosing a bright yellow. Why is this important? Because this color appears everywhere in the system: In projects, in tickets, in the pipeline. You see yellow and know: That's Voltago.
Type: Customer.
Legal Form: GmbH.
Then the Contact Details: Address, email, phone. I'll fill this out quickly.
Tax Number and Registration Number are optional, but good for invoices.
I click "Save" and done. Voltago Energy GmbH is created.
Now I'm adding an employee. I go to the Members tab and click "Add Member".
Name: "Max Schneider", Position: "Project Manager", entering email.
If I want, I can activate "Allow login" and give him guest access. But I won't do that now.
"Save" and done. Max Schneider is created.
Now to the address book. This is the central place for all contacts in your company.
I go to the Main Menu and click on Address Book.
Here you see all contacts: Your own employees and all contacts from the organizations. Everything in one place.
There are different tabs: "All Contacts", "Employees" which is only your own people, "Organization Members" which are external contacts.
This is your Single Source of Truth for contacts. Everything here is current and correct.
Now comes something very practical: CardDAV Sync.
I click on the button "Sync via CardDAV". A dialog opens.
Here you see: CardDAV URL which is https://leadtime.de, Username which is a generated ID, Password which is automatically generated and can be recreated.
What does this give you? You take these login credentials and enter them in your operating system. Apple Contacts on Mac, iOS on iPhone, Thunderbird on Linux.
And then you always have the current contacts of your company on all devices. Someone changes an email address in Leadtime? It automatically updates on your phone.
This is extremely valuable: No more outdated contacts, no manual exports, no Excel lists. Everything in sync.
Alternative: You click on "Download as vCard". This creates a .vcf file with all contacts. You can import this into local address books or CRM systems.
You now understand how organizations work in Leadtime.
You can invite customers as guest users for free so they can track their projects. You can set individual billing rules for each organization. You can generate letters with macros in seconds. And you can sync all contacts with your operating system.
And now comes your task: Create all organizations your company works with. Customers, suppliers, partners. And add their employees.
I know, that's a lot of work. But the good news: There's the data importer. You can upload all organizations and their employees via CSV in just a few minutes.
How exactly this works, we'll show you in a separate video about the data importer. There you'll see step by step how to import internal employees, organizations and their staff.
In the next video we'll look at project structure: How you create internal and external projects, distinguish between ongoing and single projects, and how you quickly import projects.
See you in the next video!
