Plan your database (fields, lists and views)

Decide what your contact records should hold, which stages a lead moves through, and which databases your team needs — before you build any of it. Read this once, sketch your answer on paper, and the build pages take an hour instead of a week of changes. About 20 minutes to read.

Before you start — you do not need any permission to plan. To build what you plan, you will need the Table Settings permission (fields and sections) and the Views permission (databases and columns). Both are set in Settings → Roles; see Roles & permissions.

The six words you need

Raion Hub has fewer moving parts than most CRMs. Learn these and the rest follows.

Word	What it is	Where you set it
Contact	One person. Your workspace has one shared pool of them. A person is stored once, whichever list you see them in	Add a contact, Import your database
Leads	The database every workspace starts with. It holds every contact unless you change its rule	Already there
Database	A saved, named view over the pool — Customers, Landlords, Students. It has its own rule for who belongs, its own columns and its own sections. It is not a second copy of the contacts	Add a database
Field	One piece of information on a contact — a budget, a car model, a next appointment. Defined once for the whole workspace, then shown or hidden per database	Add, edit and remove a field
Section	A group of fields on the contact’s record card — Contact, Qualification, Deal. Sections belong to one database	Group fields into sections
Stage	An option in a Select field that you treat as a step in a journey. Your Kanban board’s columns are the options of one Select field — Status unless you choose another	Set up a dropdown’s options and colours

Two consequences that surprise people:

Fix a phone number once, and it is fixed everywhere. The same person in Leads and in Customers is one record.
Renaming a field renames it in every database. A field called Budget cannot mean one thing in Leads and another in Landlords. If two databases need different things, make two fields.

How Table and Kanban use what you build

Table view shows one row per contact and one column per field you turned on for that database. Sorting and totals work on Number fields, so a budget stored as text cannot be added up. See Work in Table view.
Kanban view shows one column per option of a single-choice Select field, and dragging a card writes that option onto the contact. With nothing chosen under Group by, the board uses your Status field. See Work the board in Kanban view.

So the one decision that shapes your whole workspace is: which Select field is the journey, and what are its options?

Five steps to decide

Write down the journey first

List the steps a stranger goes through to become a paying customer in your business. Keep it to four to seven steps. Each step should be something a salesperson can look at a contact and know — “Viewed the unit”, not “Interested”. Add one or two end states that are not progress: Lost, Not qualified. These become the options of your stage field; the end states become Drop-off stages when you switch Pipeline on.

List what you need to know to move a contact one step

For each step, ask: what must I know about this person before they can move to the next one? Those answers are your fields. A property agent cannot shortlist units without a budget and a preferred area; a tuition centre cannot book a trial without the child’s school year and subject. Everything else — nice to know but not needed to act — can wait.

Give each field a type

Use the smallest type that does the job. A rule of thumb: if you will ever filter, count or sort by it, it must not be free text.

If the answer is…	Use	Example
One of a fixed set of answers	Select	Area, Programme, Car model, Treatment
An amount you will total or compare	Number	Budget, Loan amount, Package price
A date or appointment	Date	Viewing date, Trial class, Next visit
A document or photo the customer gives you	Files	IC copy, Booking form, Before photo
Anything you will only ever read, never filter	Text	Remarks, Unit number, Referrer’s name

Group the fields into sections

Put the fields in the order a salesperson reads them when the phone rings: who they are, what they want, where the deal is, then paperwork. Three to five sections is plenty. A section called Qualification that holds four dropdowns is far faster to scan than twelve fields in one list.

Decide whether you need a second database — and usually you do not yet

Start with Leads alone. Add a database only when you can finish this sentence: “I want a list that always shows only the contacts where ___, with different columns from Leads.” If the blank is “Status is Won”, that is your Customers database. If you cannot fill the blank, a saved filter or the Group by chip will do, and nothing needs building. See Find the contacts you need.

The field types, in one table

Type	Holds	Good for	Not for
Text	One line of text	Remarks, names of things, numbers you never add up	Anything you want to filter or count
Number	A whole number or a decimal, with a thousands separator you can switch off	Money, quantities, scores	Phone numbers and IDs (leading zeros vanish — use Text)
Select	One or several options from a list, as a dropdown or chips	Stages, categories, sources, yes/no answers	Lists that change every week
Date	A date, a date and time, or a time	Appointments, follow-ups, expiry dates	”Sometime next month” — use a Select with rough periods
Files	Attachments on the contact	IC copies, forms, photos, quotations	Anything you need to search inside

Details and every setting: Choose a field type.

Common mistakes

A stage for every mood. “Interested”, “Very interested”, “Keen” are opinions, not steps. If two agents would file the same contact differently, merge the stages.
Dates typed as text. 12/3 cannot be sorted and cannot remind anyone. Make it a Date field.
Phone numbers as Number. A Number field drops the leading 0 in 012 345 6789. Phone has its own field already; for a second number use Text.
One field for two meanings. “Budget” meaning rent for tenants and purchase price for buyers makes every report wrong. Two fields, or one Select that says which.
A database per salesperson. Databases are for kinds of contact, not people. Use the Owner chip to see one person’s leads.
Deleting a field to tidy up. Removing a field from a database hides it there; deleting it from the workspace erases the values on every contact. Hide first. See Add, edit and remove a field.
Building before importing. Set up the fields, then import — the importer can only match spreadsheet columns to fields that already exist.

Worked examples

Each example gives you a starting point, not a rule. Rename, add and remove until the stages match how your team actually talks.

Property agency

Databases: Leads (buyers and tenants), Customers (rule: Status is Won), Landlords (rule: Type is Landlord).

Field	Type	Why
Type	Select	Buyer, Tenant, Landlord — drives the Landlords database
Area	Select	Bangsar, Cheras, Puchong… one option per area you serve
Property type	Select	Condo, Landed, Shop lot
Budget (RM)	Number	Totals per stage; filter “under 500k”
Bedrooms	Select	1, 2, 3, 4+ — a Select, because nobody filters “more than 2.5”
Loan status	Select	Not started, Pre-approved, Approved — the step most deals stall on
Viewing date	Date	The next appointment; sync it to Google Calendar if you use it
IC copy	Files	For the booking form

Stage dropdown (Status): New → Contacted → Viewing booked → Viewed → Offer made → Won, with Lost and Not qualified as drop-offs. Group Kanban by Status and the board becomes the week’s viewings at a glance.

Tuition or education centre

Databases: Leads (enquiries), Students (rule: Status is Enrolled).

Field	Type	Why
Student name	Text	The contact is usually the parent; the student is a field
School year	Select	Standard 1–6, Form 1–5 — one option each
Subject	Select	Allow multiple selection on, so a parent can tick Maths and Science
Branch	Select	If you have more than one
Trial class date	Date	The appointment that converts
Monthly fee (RM)	Number	Totals show expected revenue per stage
Report card	Files	What the teacher asks for before placement

Stage dropdown (Status): New enquiry → Contacted → Trial booked → Trial attended → Enrolled, with Not now and Lost as drop-offs. Enrolled students then live in the Students database with the fee and branch columns pinned, and the enquiry fields hidden.

Car dealer or insurance agent

Databases: Leads, Customers (rule: Status is Delivered or Policy issued), Renewals (rule: Renewal date is within the next 60 days — for insurance).

Field	Type	Why
Model or Plan	Select	The thing being sold, one option per model or plan
Variant	Select	Trim or coverage level
Trade-in	Select	Yes / No — a Select, so you can filter and count
Loan amount (RM)	Number	Totals per stage
Test drive date	Date	The appointment
Renewal date	Date	Drives the Renewals database and your follow-ups
Plate number	Text	Never added up, so Text
Documents	Files	IC, licence, previous policy

Stage dropdown (Status): New → Contacted → Test drive booked → Quotation sent → Booking paid → Delivered, with Lost as a drop-off. An insurance agent swaps the middle for Needs analysis → Proposal sent → Policy issued.

Clinic or beauty centre

Databases: Leads (enquiries), Patients or Clients (rule: Status is Active), with a saved list for “Next visit is this week”.

Field	Type	Why
Treatment	Select	Allow multiple selection on — a client often has several
Concern	Select	What they came in about, in your clinic’s own words
Package (RM)	Number	Totals show revenue per treatment when you group by it
Sessions left	Number	Integer — the number that triggers an upsell conversation
Next visit	Date	The appointment
Preferred branch	Select	If you have more than one
Consent form	Files	Signed, scanned, attached once
Before photos	Files	Set to Images so nobody attaches the wrong thing

Stage dropdown (Status): New enquiry → Consultation booked → Consulted → Package bought → Active → Completed, with Not suitable as a drop-off. Private medical details belong in your clinic system, not in a CRM field that every member can read.

Build it

Set up a dropdown’s options and colours — your Status options first, with Pipeline on.
Add, edit and remove a field — the fields from your list, in the order you wrote them.
Group fields into sections — three to five sections on Leads.
Choose and pin your table columns — the five or six columns your team looks at every day.
Import your database — now your spreadsheet columns have somewhere to land.
Add a database — only when you can fill in the blank from step five above.