Core Concepts

This page explains the key concepts in LeanGrid and how they relate to each other.

Organizations

An organization is your team's isolated workspace. All data — contacts, deals, tasks, and projects — belongs to one organization.

Each user can belong to multiple organizations.
Data is completely isolated between organizations — switching orgs gives you a completely fresh view.
You switch between organizations from the selector in the sidebar.
The person who creates the organization becomes its Owner.

Contacts

Contacts represent the companies and people you work with. There are two types:

Company — A business entity (e.g., "Acme Corp").
Person — An individual (e.g., "Jane Smith"). Can be linked to a company as an employee.

Contacts can have notes, linked deals, linked tasks, and a full activity timeline.

Deals

A deal represents a sales opportunity or business transaction. Every deal:

Belongs to a deal type (e.g., "Software License", "Consulting Project").
Has a status: Open, Won, or Lost.
Can be linked to a contact and a project.
Supports custom fields defined on its deal type.

Deal Types

Deal types are templates that define the custom fields for a category of deals. For example:

A "Software License" deal type might have custom fields for license tier and number of seats.
A "Consulting" deal type might have fields for hourly rate and project duration.

You configure deal types in Settings → Deal Types.

Tasks

Tasks help your team stay on top of follow-ups and action items. A task can be:

Standalone — Not linked to anything.
Linked to a contact — Follow-up calls, emails, relationship actions.
Linked to a deal — Next steps in the sales process.
Linked to a project — Part of a larger initiative.

Tasks have a due date, an assigned owner (team member), and a status: Open, In Progress, or Completed.

Projects

Projects group related deals and tasks together. Use them for:

Large client engagements with multiple deals and tasks.
Cross-functional initiatives that span several contacts.
Any work that needs a higher-level view of related items.

Notes can be attached to contacts, deals, tasks, or projects. They support file attachments and are visible to all team members. Every entity also shows an activity timeline — a history of all notes and changes in reverse chronological order.

Real-Time Sync

LeanGrid syncs data in real time across all team members. When one person creates or updates a contact, deal, or task, it appears instantly for everyone else without a page refresh. The app also works offline — changes made without a connection are queued and synced when connectivity is restored.

How Everything Connects

Organization
├── Contacts (Company / Person)
│   ├── Person → Company (employee relationship)
│   ├── Deals
│   ├── Tasks
│   └── Notes & Activity
├── Deal Types (custom field schemas)
│   └── Deals
│       ├── Tasks
│       └── Notes & Activity
├── Projects
│   ├── Deals
│   ├── Tasks
│   └── Notes & Activity
└── Team Members (Owner / Admin / User)