You can either read through this article step by step, or click here to go to the bottom to watch the full recorded video and follow along.
Custom fields play a critical role in how your CRM data is structured. They directly affect importing, automations, filtering, and reporting. Taking the time to set them up correctly early on will save significant rework later.
Important Notes Before You Start
Only admin-level users can create, edit, or manage custom fields
Custom fields apply account-wide, meaning all users share the same fields
Sub-users can view and use custom fields, but cannot modify them
Standard Fields vs Custom Fields
Timestamp: 00:36
Not every account needs custom fields.
The system includes many standard fields out of the box. These typically cover information you would expect to see on a business card, such as:
Name
Email
Phone number
Company
Job title
Custom fields are used for any data that goes beyond those basics and reflects how your business uniquely tracks information.
Before creating a custom field, it’s a good idea to review the existing standard fields to make sure one doesn’t already meet your needs.
How to Access Custom Fields
Timestamp: 01:08
There are multiple ways to get to custom field settings:
From the Get Started page
Use the quick link to Custom Fields
From Settings
Click the gear icon in the bottom-left navigation
Select Customize under the Account section
From the CRM navigation
Click CRM
Select Customize
All paths lead to the Customize Your CRM Setup page.
Navigating the Fields Page
Timestamp: 02:07
On the Customize page, you’ll see a Fields card with options for:
Contacts
Accounts
Opportunities
Tasks - you can edit the standard fields for Tasks here, not create custom fields for Tasks
Each object type can have its own custom fields. In this walkthrough, contacts are used as the example, but account and opportunity fields work the same way.
Viewing and Managing Standard Fields
Timestamp: 03:06
Within the Contacts section, you’ll see two tabs:
Custom Fields
Standard Fields
Standard fields:
Cannot be deleted or newly created
Can be reordered using drag and drop
Can be edited using the pencil icon
Editable options for standard fields include:
Required
Unique
Hidden
Create card placement
Renaming the field label
Creating a Custom Field
Timestamp: 04:11
To create a new custom field:
Click Create Custom Field
Choose a field type that determines how the data behaves
Field type selection is about data structure, not the purpose of the field itself.
Custom Field Types Explained
Timestamp: 04:29
Available field types include:
Currency - Strictly formatted numeric values for dollar amounts
Checkbox - Yes / No values
Date - Calendar-based date selection
Dropdown - Single-select predefined options
Picklist - Multi-select predefined options
Number - Numeric values only
Percent - Percentage values
Text - Single-line free-form text
Text Area - Multi-line text for notes or comments
Link - Clickable URL
Text vs Structured Fields
Timestamp: 06:19
Text fields are the most flexible and accept any data format. They are especially useful when:
Parsing leads
Accepting data from sources with inconsistent formatting
However, unstructured data can limit accurate filtering and reporting due to variations like:
NYC vs New York City
Structured fields like dropdowns and picklists are better for consistency when possible.
Required Fields
Timestamp: 08:40
Required fields prevent a contact from being created or imported unless a value is provided.
Best practices:
Avoid using required fields unless absolutely necessary
Required fields can block imports if data is missing
More commonly useful in team environments with enforcement needs
Unique Fields
Timestamp: 09:55
Unique fields ensure that no two contacts can share the same value.
Common use cases:
Account numbers
External IDs
Order Number (for Opportunities)
Standard fields like Email and Mobile Phone are already unique by default.
Unique fields are especially powerful for importing because they can be used to prevent duplicates, similar to how email matching works.
Field Categories (Overview)
Timestamp: 10:51
Field categories allow you to group related custom fields together on the contact record.
They are especially helpful when:
You have many custom fields
Fields belong to specific workflows, such as sign-up forms or CQ forms
Create Cards (Field Prominence)
Timestamp: 11:18
Create cards control where fields appear when creating a new contact.
Basic create card
Highly visible
Best for fields used most often when creating Contacts.
Additional fields
Less prominent
Used for lower-priority data
This helps reduce clutter while keeping important fields front and center.
Mapped Fields
Timestamp: 11:41
Mapped fields automatically copy data from contacts to related opportunities and or accounts.
How it works:
Mapping is configured only at field creation
When a mapped field is created, a matching field will be created for Opportunities and/or Accounts (you can't map to an existing field)
Data copies over only if the destination field is empty
Best practice:
If you think the data might be useful on opportunities or accounts, map it
Drop-downs and Picklists - Bulk Options
Timestamp: 13:14
For dropdown and picklist fields, you must define selectable options.
You can:
Add options one at a time
Quickly add numeric ranges (1–5, 1–10)
Paste options in bulk from a CSV or list
Tip: use AI to generate data to paste in bulk
Viewing Custom Fields in Practice
Timestamp: 15:38
When creating a contact:
Basic create card fields appear at the top
Additional custom fields are available in the dropdown
On the contact record:
Standard fields appear in the Details section
Custom fields appear in a dedicated section
Field categories visually group related fields
Custom Fields vs Tags
Timestamp: Not explicitly demonstrated
Custom fields and tags serve different purposes:
Custom Fields
Apply account-wide
Shared by all users
Structured and consistent
Best for reporting, filtering, and automations
Tags
User-specific
Only visible to the user who created them
Useful for personal workflows or temporary organization
Not shared across the account
If you want a tag-like experience that is structured and shared by everyone, use a Picklist custom field instead.
Best Practices Before Importing
Timestamp: 18:27
Custom fields should ideally be created before major imports.
Recommendations:
Define data structure first
Create necessary custom fields ahead of time
Think through how data should flow across contacts, opportunities, and accounts
Taking a “measure twice, cut once” approach will save time and cleanup later.
Watch the Full Video
Scroll below to watch the full recorded training and see each feature demonstrated live.
Transcript
Transcript
00:00 Hello everybody, my name is Drew and today we're going to talk about custom fields. And so, custom fields matter because they are critical to how your data is structured in the CRM.
00:17 And they directly impact importing, automations, and reporting. and as you're setting up your account you'll definitely want to give this some attention to detail and get and make sure you get it right to save you some rework later.
00:36 Now of course not every account needs custom fields. Our system has a ton of standard fields that come right out of the box.
00:47 And so I'll also help you to see what your standard fields are so you can help, so you can figure out if a custom field is necessary to begin with.
00:57 But the punchline is, um, the, the, the standard fields are basically the stuff that you would see on somebody's business card and then the custom fields go beyond that.
01:08 So, there are two ways, let me just move this camera, okay, there are two ways that you can get to your custom fields, actually, really three, so if you're on the Get Started page, you'll see that there's a quick link to your custom fields right there in that, in that box.
01:30 But beyond that, you're able to get to your custom fields by clicking on the gear icon for settings in the bottom left of the navigation and then from there you'll click in that sidebar, you'll click on customize under account.
01:49 Also the CRM section of the navigation, when you click on that icon in the bottom of the sidebar, you'll see a customize option, uh, that also will take you to where your custom fields are.
02:07 So we're going to click on this and in this, on this page it says customize your CRM setup. You'll see a fields card that says contact, account, opportunity, and tasks.
02:23 This lets to work with the fields that come in the system. So your contact, account, and opportunity custom fields can all be configured from here.
02:35 But in this case, we're going to be just focusing on contacts, but account and opportunity. fields operate in, uh, in the same way.
02:47 So we're going to click on contact. Now, first of all, you'll see, uh, on this page, there are two options for custom, uh, custom fields, which is what is selected by default and standard fields as well.
03:06 Like basically these two tabs. And so when you click on standard fields, this will show you a list of all of the standard fields that come in the system for contacts, since that's what we're looking at.
03:20 And you can, um, you can't create new standard fields, but you can reorder them because they're drag and drop. And then also you'll see that there's a pencil icon to edit them.
03:36 So in this case, you can mark them as required, unique. You can hide them. We're going to cover, um, when we go through the custom fields, we're going to cover, um, some of these options.
03:48 So I'm just going to, I'm not going to go into the details right now, but the most common things that people are going to do is maybe rename them, they might hide them, and they also might change the create card that these are on.
04:02 And again, I'm going to cover that in more details, uh, in a minute. So I'm just going to do this.
04:11 There we go. Um, so let's go over to custom fields. So to create a new custom field, you hit that create custom field button, and this gives you the different field types that can be created.
04:29 Not to be mistaken for like the actual custom field itself, like an industry field, you know, because you don't see that as an unknown.
04:40 There's an here, um, because this, this lets you determine like how that field works, whether it's a text field, whether it's a, uh, numbers, so on and so forth.
04:51 So let's just really quickly go over these. Uh, currency fields are for currency, like dollar amounts. Now, note that these are going to be really strict, so you need to make sure that these are going to be numbers, structured in the way that currency typically is.
05:11 Checkbox, so that's just what it sounds like, a little yes-no checkbox. Date, pretty self-explanatory, it's going to be $1. The, uh, a date on the calendar, uh, dropdown, uh, actually I'm going to cover dropdowns and picklists at the same time because they're very related and these are also some of the
05:30 most common fields that people use. So, um, these are the field types that have, um, like a select, uh, bunch of variables that are preset that you configure that can be selected by the user.
05:45 So, drop-downs are a single select, and then picklists are multi-select. And in our example, I'm going to make a drop-down field, or actually in one of the examples, I'm going to be making a drop-down field, so that'll give you a really good visual, uh, for that.
06:04 Numbers, it just has to be a digit. Percent, self-explanatory. Um, now text and text area, um, these are some of the, these are also very commonly used custom fields.
06:19 So, text and text area, very related, except text is going to be like a sort of single, um, like a single row of, of text that can go into it and text area is for multiple lines of text.
06:35 So, text is the most versatile field type. It'll accept anything that you throw at it basically, um, and so text fields are really good for scenarios where you can't control the data structure, uh, like if you're parsing and if you're going to be getting leads and you're going to be parsing the, the
06:56 leads and you need to be able to accept whatever data structure that, that lead source is giving you for that field.
07:06 Text is going to be the go-to field for that type, but the limitation to having it be unstructured is that that can limit your ability to accurately get results.
07:20 If you're on it, because if there's some variety between, uh, like, like you get two different ways of saying the same thing, basically, um, like, like NYC versus New York City, that kind of thing, um, that's going to, uh, just be something worth keeping in mind, but it might be a necessary evil in some
07:40 cases and then text area, like notes, comments, things like that, um, text area is great for that. and then link self-explanatory.
07:50 It's going to be a URL and it'll be clickable on the contact record when you are using it. All right.
07:59 So. Let's create an example field. So we're going to start with a text field. And this is going to be actually kind of like, um, that scenario that I laid out, where maybe this would be a, uh, a field that you're getting, um, that's going to be filled with parsed data from leads that you're, um, that
08:24 you're receiving. So I'm going to say, uh, I'm going to say like a lead source is going to be the name that's going to be like, you know, it's going to show like a lead source on the contact record and then you're going to have values that can be added.
08:40 To this, um, going through this, we're going to see required as an option. Now required is an option that I encourage people to refrain from using unless they really, really have a good reason to.
09:01 The reason for that is when a field is required, you literally can't create a contact without a value being in there.
09:08 And so, uh, you know, you're like, not, you're, you're going to, if you don't have something you can put in there, um, you're not gonna be able to create a contact, um, you're not going to be able to import contacts that don't exist.
09:20 You don't have data that goes in there. Um, so if, especially if you're a solo user, there's really no reason to force your own hand to never be able to create a contact that doesn't have something in, in, in that field.
09:35 Um, it's typically going to be good for teams where you really want to force the hand of your team. But even in that case, you might want to wait until there is a problem and then fix it with this rather than just assuming that there's going to be a problem.
09:55 And then unique. This is also a powerful option. Most fields are going to be fields where there can't be two contacts, um, with the same value in it.
10:08 So there's only a few cases where people commonly use this. Like it might be for an account number or something that's basically going to be a unique identifier for that contact.
10:20 Um, examples of unique fields in our system for the standard fields would be email and mobile phone number. and that's because in most cases there's not going to be two contacts with the same email or mobile phone number.
10:38 This is also really useful for importing because it can behave just like email where you can make sure that there aren't duplicates, uh, across contacts with a unique field.
10:51 Categories. Um, we're going to see what this looks like on contact records, but, um, it's best visualized rather than described here, but basically it lets you group, uh, custom fields together.
11:02 Really useful for contacts that, or for, for users that have lots of custom fields. and we have a separate help article that talks about this so if you're interested in learning more you can just learn more there.
11:18 Create card this is also best illustrated rather than described and so I'll be showing you what the create cards look like, but these are, uh, the long and the short of it is if you put a card, if you put a field in the basic create card it'll be more prominent when you're creating contacts.
11:41 And then map to, um, what this will do is it'll map fields to, like in this case, you know, we're doing contacts, it'll map them to opportunities or accounts.
11:57 And so this is really useful if you want whatever information is available. Is collected here to also go to the opportunities or accounts that this contact is, uh, associated with.
12:09 Uh, this is a really powerful thing and, um, there does have to be, but first of all, you can only create this setting when you are first creating the, uh, the, the, the custom field.
12:23 So you can't edit it to map later, and also there has to not be any existing information in that opportunity or account field for the data here to map over there.
12:38 But in this example, like for a lead source, um, that would certainly be something that you would want to map to an opportunity.
12:46 Uh, and then also, it might also be helpful for accounts as well, so I'll be mapping these. When in doubt, basically, if this is information you think would be helpful to see on opportunities and accounts, um, you'll, uh, it'll probably be best just mapping them.
13:06 Okay, so we're going to create this text field, and then I'm going to quickly create a drop down as well.
13:14 And so we're going to see here that for this type of, let me move this. Thank you. For this type of, of, uhm, custom field, it's going to be a little bit different because we have to define the options for this, uh, for this field.
13:33 So we're going to make an industry field. Uh, required is an option here, uh, like for the text field.
13:49 And then also, you can add like numbers through 1 through 5, 1 through 10 really quickly if that's something that you're going to be doing.
14:00 Needing for this particular field. But in this case, you can either add an option, um, like, like hospitality and hit the, hit the plus button, or you can paste options in.
14:20 So as you can see right here, if you have a CSV with the options or a chat GPT, where you've asked it for options, you can simply paste in all of them rather than having to create them one by one, which is what I'm gonna do.
14:38 So I'm gonna hit paste option. I'm going to select, you won't see this, like this is on a different screen, but I've got a chat GPT, um, window that's open, pasting in a bunch of different industry options.
14:54 It doesn't even matter that there is a space between these options. I paste them in, hit add options, and there we go.
15:01 We're able to just mass update the options for this industry field. and I'm going to give this the create card of basic so I can show you what that looks like and I'm not going to worry about that too.
15:22 So we're gonna hit save. And there we go. We have made two custom fields just like that. And so let's take a look at, um, at, at what they, what they look like in practice.
15:38 So first of all, I'm going to show you what the, what the create cards look like in practice. So we're going to hit the plus add item and create a contact.
15:48 And so you'll see first of all when we're creating a contact you have your basic fields at the very top.
15:55 Now in this demo account I have a whole bunch of custom fields that are elements elevated to this, uhm, to this basic field card.
16:06 So you'll see that they're really highlighted right here. If you're in a new account, uh, or in one where you haven't used this, you'll see very, you'll, you'll see many fewer fields right up here in this basic field card.
16:19 And the idea for this is these are going to be the custom fields that are going to be elevated that you're probably going to want to be using every single time or most of the time that you're creating a contact.
16:31 So here is our industry field with the options that we that we just configured. And then under at the very bottom here, you'll see that custom field drop down for the other custom fields.
16:49 And so these, like these are going to be good for the custom fields that are, uh, that you still want to track, but maybe they're a little bit less, uh, mission critical, especially when you're creating a contact.
17:05 So let's go to a contact and just take a look at at some of the things that we're configuring here.
17:16 And so under the details section you're going to see a lot of the, um, a lot of the standard fields.
17:27 And then we've got our custom fields section right here that organizes things very nicely. And you'll see those, um, those custom field categories in action right here.
17:40 So we've got our core fields, but that's basically just like the default category for custom fields that are created. Uh, you can change that if you want to.
17:51 And then we've got our other sections right here, like in this case, we've got a sign up form, we've got a CQ.
17:58 And so this just lets you, you know, if you are using a, using lots of different custom fields, maybe, especially you can see in this example, sign up form, we've got, uh, maybe custom fields that are very particular to a sign up form that we are sending people.
18:13 And maybe it's helpful then to keep those custom fields segregated so that they, um, so that it's just easy to digest this information.
18:27 All right, yeah, and then I think it's just like one last thing that I just want to reiterate is that custom fields do need to be, or it's ideal to create these before you do any kind of like major implementation.
18:41 Import, especially where you're going to be importing data that is, um, going to be using some, some of like the stuff that you would be tracking in these custom fields.
18:52 Um, and also, it's just good to take a zoomed out, big picture look at what these data structures are that you're going to be looking to create, um, and so, uh, basically measure twice, cut once, you'll thank yourself later.
19:13 But yeah, I think that just about does it. Reach out to us if we can help. Thank you so much.