Within Nutshell CRM, sales are tracked as leads throughout the pipeline; Nutshell CRM does not separate leads from opportunities. Within a lead, you can include multiple accounts, contacts, products, competitors, sources, and assignees. To create a new lead within your
Nutshell CRM account, click “Create New” and add all the information you currently have available about that lead. Keyboard shortcuts allow you to open forms and create new leads in less time, which is especially useful in busy office environments.

Automating sales workflows ensures that a company’s leads are kept on the path toward success. At its core, an effective sales workflow should tell a business’ sales representatives how to handle leads and when to take certain actions, like following up on emails or phone calls.
You can build your own sales processes within Nutshell CRM. Although the platform comes with a pre-configured sales process, most businesses will want to create their own processes based on their unique schedules and directives. Add new milestones and customize the individual steps within a larger process. With Nutshell CRM, you can also add prerequisites (steps that must be marked as complete before future steps are workable) and delays.
Businesses that use Nutshell CRM can forward and BCC emails to a specific account address (bcc@nutshell.com). Doing so attaches those emails to the correct contacts or accounts automatically. Sales representatives can then open leads with their messages.
To email a colleague about an internal lead, include a keyword related to the lead (for example: Lead XYZ) in the subject line. Nutshell CRM will recognize the lead and include the email in that lead’s timeline. You can also track any incoming messages that you receive from your contacts and send messages from additional addresses.
It’s also possible to automatically sync emails from Gmail to Nutshell CRM. Contacts will be created for any email addresses that aren’t already in your Nutshell database.
Nutshell CRM features a Google Apps widget that allows you to instantly add your emails from Gmail to the Nutshell timeline of your contact, account, or lead. If you’re conversing with someone who is not yet in your Nutshell contacts, you can use the widget to quickly add them as an account or contact.
Microsoft Exchange and Outlook sync is also supported by Nutshell CRM. Activities you create can be set to synchronize automatically, and when you add teammates to an activity this will be automatically added to their calendars.

Being able to generate data reports is an incredibly important feature in a CRM platform. At a glance, business owners can quickly review their company’s’ overall sales health based on leads and activities from the past 30 days, quarter, year, or a rolling period.
Filter the sales reports you generate by user, team, product, or source. You can also select your most common sources or products, and then track these metrics throughout the pipeline. Using Nutshell CRM’s analytics tools, you can track which leads are overdue based on estimated close dates.
Most popular features of all Customer Management apps
Requires iOS 11.0 or later. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
25 reviewers had the following to say about Nutshell's features:
Tracking customer data.
Pros
Easy to search data. relatively easy to add custom columns (still figuring out how best to use this feature).
Cons
Custom reports are a bit cumbersome; need to get support to work out a few custom reports.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Hey Brian,
Thanks a bunch for your feedback. Our support team can help you with your custom reports. Please do reach out when you have a few minutes. We appreciate you being part of the Nutshell community.
Amanda
Integration with MailChimp was easy as well as tracking all gmail.
Pros
Ease of use and customer support/tutorials. Importing data was also very easy and understandable.
Cons
Reporting can always be improved in every product.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Overall Nutshell has really helped us with our initial sales/setup processes and is very user-friendly while still being customizable. The customer service support is top notch and it has helped us have a smaller learning curve implementing software into the company.
Pros
There are a ton of features like contact management, task management, forecasting/reporting modules, etc.
Cons
When I don't make the call by that time, it will go into unlogged activities which can feel stressful/hectic.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Free Trial
Frequency of use: Weekly
Likelihood to recommend
Pros
Love the customization of the sales process as well.
Cons
Exporting reports is not ideal for importing into email marketing solutions and email marketing integrations like MailChimp are fairly weak.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Weekly
Hi Liz,
Thanks for your feedback. I am currently overhauling our integrations so that our users get more functionality. I hope to have these available in the next few weeks.
Amanda
Workflows are customizable, and tracking prospect information is a breeze.
Pros
Nutshell is very similar to us in age, culture, feature philosophy, etc. so I always enjoy interacting with the team.
Cons
Importing can sometimes result in a lot of duplicate leads, so data cleanliness becomes a bit of an issue as you grow.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
We continue to modify to our needs as Testimonial Tree's SaaS based customer survey, testimonial marketing, online review and reputation management business grows.
Pros
We use it for our sales, new customer on-boarding and retention activities. We've been on the platform for over 3 years and highly recommend them.
Cons
We'd like to see them expand their App integrations & Zaps (Zapier) with best of breed solutions.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
We also used to keep a bunch of Excel spreadsheets for sales tracking, pipeline management, and customer details, all of which have now been replaced by Nutshell's standard functionality.
Pros
Easy migration from old CRM via CSV import. Activity management and to do lists keep users organized and on task.
Cons
I would love to see Nutshell offer integrations to more third-party apps.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Best bang for your buck.
Pros
How customizable it is , the email series, click to call.
Cons
if you get leads from third party companies you have to manually enter them in the system.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Good customisation through API and integration with other products
Pros
users perspective: Great interface, users are empowered to crunch their data and produce viable results admin perspective: very comprehensive API
Cons
from an admin perspective, there are certain items which are missing. 1. logical custom fields 2. better user permissions
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Nutshell has taken place of my company communication which has replaced email and texting.
Pros
Love the integration with 3rd party programs like mail chimp and any other automation systems.
Cons
iOS app needs some more tweaking with being able to have the little blue bubble on activities when viewing activities from the activity menu or when viewing activities on the account info page.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering Nutshell
Have youtube videos demonstrating updates you make on the software (desktop and mobile) so we can see how the updates work and can review them as many times or distribute them as needed.
Focus attention and feedback on the last time I connected with someone
Pros
Integrates well with Gmail, easy to set up, nice integration with Mail Chimp.
Cons
Not set up for a commercial real estate business so I had to do a lot of work arounds.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Weekly
Likelihood to recommend
JoAnna,
Thanks for writing in. I'm sorry to hear that you've had trouble with Nutshell reports but I have some great news - we've completely revamped our reporting features! The upgrade will be released on May 11th, you should be getting a notification from us shortly. Should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to our support team!
Cheers,
Asya
Low cost way to manage my customer base info.
Pros
There's a lot of customization available and marketing to my customers is easy with templates.
Cons
Lack of integration to pull in address data.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Hi Dave,
Thanks for your feedback! We appreciate you sharing your pro's and con's. I understand your desire to integrate with LinkedIn. We did at one time, but that ability has been removed. We are constantly trying to figure out better ways to pull in information. Thanks for being part of the Nutshell family.
Amanda
Sales process follow up
Pros
Could it possible to download Customers information from a local Data Base (for example Excel), in order to have an automatic upload or update.
Cons
Would be easy if you can assign a person to all activities as a default and manage excepción with other names.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Weekly
Likelihood to recommend
Pros
I also really like the activity tracking, todo list tasks, and last contact.
Cons
Another change that would be nice for larger databases would be last viewed columns, say you didn't email them etc it would be nice to know the last time called or time the account was reviewed by a particular user.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Hey Chris,
Thanks so much for your feedback. We really appreciate your suggestions and will add them to our list. Thanks for using Nutshell.
Amanda
Pros
Nutshell has great integrations with third parties. It also offers good level of tutorials and responsive customer service
Cons
It would be really useful to be able to customize the layout of the dashboard
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Weekly
Likelihood to recommend
Pros
easy to use contact management and integrates with cell phone pretty well.
Cons
does not have easy to read reports for opportunity.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Weekly
Hey Jim,
Thanks for taking the time to share your feedback with us! We are interested in understanding what you'd like to see in your opportunity reports. We appreciate you being a part of the Nutshell community.
Amanda
Pros
- Straightforward interface; easy to train new people - The ability to import emails via "bcc@nutshell.com" to keep track of conversations and relationships across many offices - Easy to bulk upload or update contacts or companies with tags - Thoughtful reports - Generally responsive customer support team - The 'merge duplicates' feature is very helpful
Cons
built in reports, I am still having to export all the data and do the conversion myself and create the reports again in Excel.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
ease of use visibility of tasks/activities,
Pros
ease of use, simple to navigate and watch the progress of the pipeline, integrates well with other apps (Gmail)
Cons
feature poor, the email feature cannot handle attachments, the system can create false data by allowing task/activities to be deleted, changed etc etc - it can be tricked.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 6-12 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Hi Tom!
Thanks for your feedback. We will be coming out with email attachments in the next week or so. We appreciate you being part of the Nutshell family.
Amanda
Ability to track and organize all aspects of our member company portfolio including activities, contact via email, in person and follow up.
Pros
Ease of use Reporting abilities Tracking and ability to customize what we need for our business model The ability to manage and update our member company portfolio in one place
Cons
Only con is the inability to remove someone (a contact) from a specific company they are linked to without entirely deleting them.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Hi Tina!
Thank you so much for your feedback.
Good news, you can remove a contact from a specific company without deleting the contact. You can either go to the person page and remove the company or go to the company page and remove the person from the company. In both cases, the contact still exists but is no longer linked to the company. Please feel free to call our customer support team and they can walk you through the steps.
Frank
The user interface is much more intuitive and the integration with tons of cloud-base applications like Xero and Quote Roller is just wonderful.
Pros
Easy to use and the reporting section is just amazing and very easy to customize your own reports and save them to reuse. The social aspect of mentioning team members and accounts is great.
Cons
I would like to see more updates, especially in the mobile app
Pros
Tracking of history and activity. Logging of leads and tracking pipeline.
Cons
Missing some reporting criteria that would be useful.
Rating breakdown
Time used: Less than 6 months
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Hi Matthew,
We really appreciate your feedback! Thanks for being part of the Nutshell community. Please let our customer support team know what you'd like to see in reporting, or please respond back to my email.
Thank you!
Amanda
We are a small business and Nutshell works perfectly for tracking our sales processes.
Pros
It's easy, self explanatory, good interface. The customer service is that nutshell provides is remarkable.
Cons
The reporting can be somewhat limited for custom reports, but all of the basic reporting is great.
Rating breakdown
Time used: 1-2 years
Frequency of use: Weekly
Likelihood to recommend
Recommendations to others considering Nutshell
I highly recommend this for any small business!
Keep our contacts in one place
Pros
Very straight forward to set up users and get them using the basic functionality for tracking contact details
Cons
Poor reporting, configured mainly for US, need for more paid expensive integrations to achieve booking confirmations (i.e. quote roller)
Rating breakdown
Time used: 2+ years
Frequency of use: Daily
Likelihood to recommend
Hey Patrick,
Thanks for your feedback. Happy you find Nutshell easy to use. Would love to get some insight from you on how we can make the reports better for you and your team/location.
Amanda