A Lead is basically just a Project that hasn't been booked yet. Leads and Projects are similar in that:

Both are referred to by their 'event' name:

For example: Allison & Ryan's Wedding, Glenn's 60th Birthday, Acme Holiday Party.

Both can have Contacts:

Suppose a bride-to-be named Allison Hill is filling out a lead contact form on your website. Because it's a wedding, she's required to enter the names of the couple. When she submits the form, Planpage will automatically create new records in your account: a Lead and two Contacts.

Projects work the same way...

A Lead is in a "Not Booked" Pipeline Step

As mentioned, the main difference between a Lead and Project is that a Lead hasn't booked yet, and a Project is considered booked. The booking status of a Lead is determined by the Pipeline Step it's currently in.

If a Lead is in any step other than Won, it's considered not booked.

If a Lead is in the Won step, it's considered booked and will now be referred to as a Project.

Your Planpage account has a top-level section named Contact List. Every person and vendor company that was ever added to your account is listed here. It's a global list, so even if you created a person or vendor from within a specific Lead or Project, you'll still see them in the Contact List.

You can add people and vendors to Leads/Projects as needed. It's important to mention, adding a person or vendor to a Lead/Project doesn't make a copy of their record! You're simply linking their record to a Lead/Project. There should only ever be one record for a person or vendor in your Planpage account (duplicate records are never fun to manage).

It may help to visualize this. Let's look at Vendors...

1) Contact List. Every vendor that was ever added to your Planpage account. Not specific to a particular Project.

2) Vendor Record. In this case, Bright Event Rentals. The Vendor Record also contains People (the people who work at Bright Event Rentals).

3 & 4) Vendor Jobs. Bright Event Rentals has been linked to two Projects. It's a link, not a copy. If you updated a phone number or address for Bright Event Rentals, that update would apply to every Project they're linked to.

Okay... I love that my vendor records and projects stay synced. But what about things that are specific to a Project?

While a Vendor Job always links back to a Vendor Record, you can add items to the Vendor Job that are specific to the Project.

In the diagram above, we can see that Contract ABC and Invoice 123 were attached to the first Project, and Contract XYZ and Invoice 456 were attached to the second Project. Also, we have different points of contact for each Project.