Referrals
Referrals helps your office track who sent work your way, who you sent work to, and which kickbacks still need to be settled.
When to use this
Use Referrals when your business trades leads with customers, subcontractors, trade partners, property managers, real estate agents, or neighboring service companies.
Referrals supports two common workflows:
- Inbound referrals — someone sends a customer or job opportunity to you.
- Outbound referrals — your team sends work to another trusted company.
For either direction, your office can record the partner name, trade, contact details, related customer when known, promised kickback amount, notes, and current status.
Before you start
- Confirm Referrals is included in your ToolbagCRM plan.
- Open Settings → Features and enable Referrals.
- Decide who is allowed to create, convert, mark paid, edit, or delete referral records.
- Create or import customers first if you want referrals to point at an existing customer; otherwise use Not yet and update the referral later.
- Agree on a simple policy for when kickbacks are owed, such as after the referred job is paid.
Log a referral
- Open Referrals.
- Choose New Referral.
- Select Inbound or Outbound.
- Enter the referrer or receiver name.
- Add the trade, phone/email, linked customer if known, and kickback amount.
- Use Notes to capture what was promised and when it should pay out.
- Save the referral.
The Add Referral or Save Changes button stays disabled until the referrer or receiver name is filled in. If the customer is not known yet, leave Customer set to Not yet and update the referral later.
Track conversion and kickbacks
The Referrals page summarizes inbound referrals, outbound referrals, unpaid kickbacks, and the total amount owed.
Use the tabs to focus the list:
- All — every referral record.
- Inbound — work sent to your company.
- Outbound — work your company sent to someone else.
- Unpaid Kickbacks — referrals with a kickback amount that has not been marked paid.
- Paid — settled kickbacks.
When a referral becomes real work, use Convert to move it out of pending status. Convert only appears on pending referrals. When the promised payout has been handled, use Mark Paid so the unpaid total stays current. Mark Paid only appears when a referral has a kickback amount and is not already paid or lost.
Editing a referral updates the direction, party details, customer, kickback, and notes. Status changes stay on the explicit Convert and Mark Paid actions so an ordinary edit does not accidentally settle a referral.
Tips
- Use consistent partner names so repeat referrals are easy to find.
- Put payout terms in Notes instead of relying on memory.
- Review Unpaid Kickbacks weekly before closing the books.
- Avoid deleting referrals unless they were created by mistake; status changes preserve a cleaner audit trail.
Troubleshooting
Add Referral or Save Changes is disabled
Enter a referrer name for inbound referrals or a receiver name for outbound referrals. ToolbagCRM requires that party name before it can save the referral.
A referral is missing from a tab
Check the referral direction and status. For example, a paid referral will no longer appear under Unpaid Kickbacks, and a lost referral will not count as an unpaid kickback even if an amount was entered.
Kickback totals look wrong
Review referrals with amounts entered and confirm their statuses. The unpaid total only counts referrals with a kickback amount that are not marked Paid or Lost.