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How is Pipedrive data organized?

Breandan Flood, March 11, 2025

Note: Some features require a specific subscription to access. You can find a breakdown of our features by plan in this article.

Organizing your leads, deals, contact people, projects, organizations, activities, products and emails is essential to your sales process. Pipedrive helps you organize all your items and link them together for better visibility.

To help you become familiar with Pipedrive, we offer sample data for you to try and test. Learn more about sample data in this article.

If you’re just getting started with Pipedrive, you can check out our “Get started with the basics” Pipedrive Academy course.

Leads

At the beginning of your sales process, you may have potential deals in your account that you’re not ready to start working on.

Pipedrive's Leads Inbox is a separate inbox to keep your prequalified leads in before they become deals. Once you decide which leads are ready, you can convert them to deals and add them directly to your pipeline. You can read more about our Leads Inbox in this article.

You can use the “Add lead” button to add leads individually or by spreadsheet import, or use LeadBooster
When adding a lead through the add lead dialog, all fields are optional except either the organization name or the person name
When you’ve qualified a lead and are ready to pursue it as a deal in your pipeline, you can click “Convert to deal”. This will open a new dialog where you can define the pipeline, visibility and value of your new deal.

Deals

Ongoing transactions you’re pursuing with people or organizations in Pipedrive are tracked as deals, which are processed through the stages of your pipeline until they’re either won or lost.

Deals contain all of the actions taken while closing a sale. Deals will also pull all the information from the person or organization they’re associated with, which you can find in the detail view of that deal. In this article, you can read more about deals in Pipedrive.

Deals can be linked to a person, organization or project. They can also have products added to them
Deals track all events and movements that take place throughout your sales process
Since a deal is connected to a contact, any actions you perform on the deal will also be reflected in the person/organization linked to it
Deals can be imported from a previous CRM or a CSV or XLS file
The progress of the deals in your account is tracked as progress in your account

People (contacts)

People contacts are the specific customers you’re selling to, and any information relating to each contact such as scheduled activities or emails will be tracked in the detail view of that person.

People contacts can be linked to one organization
They can have multiple deals open for them at the same time
They can be synced with your contact provider, imported from a previous CRM, or imported from a CSV or XLS file

Organizations (contacts)

Organizations are the companies where contact people work. All people related to an organization will be listed in its detail view, along with any notes or activities linked to any people, leads, deals or projects related to the organization.

Organizations contain information like a mailing address or industry information
You can link multiple people, deals or projects to your organizations
Organizations can be synced with your contact provider, imported from a previous CRM, or imported from a CSV or XLS file

Activities

An activity represents any action taken toward closing a sale. It can be a phone call, a lunch meeting, or any other event you schedule with a contact. You can schedule activities in relation to a person, organization, project, lead or deal. You can read this article for more information on activities in Pipedrive.

Your activities can be synced with several calendar providers
Activities can be linked to a person, organization, lead, deal or project
Associating an activity with a deal, lead or project will also associate the activity with the linked person and/or organization
Activities can be imported from a previous CRM or a CSV or XLS file

Projects

A project represents one or more deals under the umbrella of a larger goal. This can include both won and open deals, although projects are commonly created after a deal has been won.

Projects can be linked to deals, people and organizations
You can create tasks, subtasks and activities for your projects. Activities created for projects will be reflected in any linked people, organizations or deals
Progress in a project is reflected in two ways:
- The progress bar, located in the detail view of a project, is based on completed tasks, subtasks and activities
- The kanban board, which shows the progression of the project through your company’s workflow

Products

Note: For more information about price variations, check out this article.

Products are items you sell or trade, and are often linked to ongoing deals. Products have specific fields like product code, price and tax.

Mail

Note: Email sync is available for Advanced, Professional or Enterprise plans. For more information on email sync, check out this article.

The mail tab holds all emails you decide to keep a record of in Pipedrive. Emails can be brought into your account using either the email sync tool or the Smart Bcc based on your plan.

Emails can be linked to people, deals, leads or projects
If the person you’ve emailed exists in Pipedrive, the email will be associated with them. If not, the email will create a new person and link that email thread to them
Replies from your contacts are forwarded to your Pipedrive mailbox, and Pipedrive will document them in the same email thread as the original email
Attachments in emails are available everywhere the email is linked and in the files tab of any detail page
If the recipient contact is linked to a deal, the email will also be reflected there

Note: If multiple deals are open for a person who sent an email, Pipedrive will provide a list of all open deals for that person, and you can choose which deal to associate it with.

Data relationships

Here’s a basic rundown of how the different data types relate.

Leads	Deals	Leads represent potential deals that have not been fully vetted. Once a lead is vetted, it can be converted into a deal and added to your deals pipeline.
Contacts	Leads/deals/activities/mail	Contacts are those with whom you conduct deals, schedule activities, and send emails. They can be represented as individual people (e.g., Steve Johnson) or collective organizations (e.g., The Steve Factory).
Activities	Leads/deals/contacts	Activities can be linked to a lead, deal, or contact, but it’s not required as they can also be created without being linked to other data.
Mail	Leads/deals/contacts	Emails can be sent from or linked to leads, deals, or contacts if email sync is enabled. An email sent to an address already linked to a contact will automatically be saved there if the email address is only linked to one contact. If you don’t have email sync, you can still link emails to your leads, deals, and contacts using the Smart BCC link.

Note: Learn more about Pipedrive terms and relationships in our glossary.

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