You can use Neoserra not only to manage your relationship with your clients; you can also use Neoserra to manage your relationship with companies and/or individuals who are not yet clients of your program. These may be companies that have expressed an interest in your services but they have not yet completed the necessary steps of becoming a client. Nonetheless, you can log your calls with companies/individuals as they progress to becoming clients.

You can also track your communications with Resource Partners who are not, and will never be, clients. Although, resource partners could be entered into Neoserra as pre-clients we strongly recommend that you create a stakeholder center and track these partners as stakeholders.

In both cases, pre-clients and stakeholders are not considered to be clients for reporting purposes

In this FAQ, we will discuss:

• How are pre-clients different from clients?
• How to convert a pre-client to a client?
• Can I change a client back to pre-client status?

How are pre-clients different from clients?

Any sessions entered into Neoserra for pre-clients will automatically be marked as non-reportable, meaning these sessions will not show up on your scorecards or in your SBA exports. Non-reportable counseling sessions are identified in the Neoserra data stream with a strike through the funding source, and the funding source identifier is also shown in red:

Non-administrators will not be able to change this non-reportable designation as long as the client record has a status of pre-client. You can easily identify pre-clients because they have a system assigned ID that always starts with an "at" symbol (@). Pre-clients can be either active or inactive. Only active pre-clients that sought counseling assistance are included in the Open Pre-Clients link on the Neoserra home page data stream.

The pre-client designation is usually used to track communications with a company or individual who has not yet completed the necessary steps to formalize their relationship with your program but who is interested in obtaining your services. These entities can be considered marketing leads for your organization and they should also be entered as pre-clients in Neoserra.

You can also use Neoserra to track your relationship with local banks and lenders; congressional members; or other resource organizations such as your local chamber of commerce or Lion's Club. These organizations are not clients and probably will never be clients, but you can use Neoserra to track your professional communications with them as pre-clients, or better yet as stakeholders.

How to convert a pre-client to a client?

When one of your pre-clients completes the steps to become a client, then you can convert them to client status. Navigate to the pre-client record and select More|Make Client:

The signature start date will be automatically filled in with today's date. Any other mandatory client fields will need to be completed before the record can be saved. Your Neoserra system administrator can determine which client fields are mandatory.

Note: Changing a pre-client to client status does not automatically convert those activity records previously assigned to the pre-client to a reportable status. If you need to make any of these activity records reportable, you must edit each session individually.

Can I change a client back to pre-client status?

The answer to this question depends upon your account type. Only administrators, in administrator-mode, can convert an existing client to pre-client status assuming that the client has not yet been exported. The reason this is an administrator function is because the administrator will additionally need to review each counseling session logged prior to the conversion. By default, all counseling sessions with clients will have been logged as reportable, if you are now converting the client back to pre-client status, then perhaps also the counseling sessions will need to be converted to non-reportable. Converting sessions will be a manual task that the administrator will need to do. Neoserra will not convert prior sessions from reportable status to non-reportable status.

To convert an existing client to pre-client status, you can click on the More|Revert to Pre-client menu option, but only if you are in administrator mode:

And again, keep in mind that clients accepted by Nexus cannot be changed to pre-client status.

Want more? Browse our extensive list of Neoserra FAQs.