Method CRM - is it a CRM? | HowToUseACRM.com

Every verdict, with its evidence

Core objects

In full

Method holds four separate tables and links them to one another. Customer is the organization or lead, Contacts is the person, described by the vendor as an individual associated with a customer or lead with an unlimited number of contacts per customer, Opportunity is the sale being pursued, and Activity is the work. An opportunity is created against a customer and a contact - the vendor's own Zapier action requires Contact RecordID, and the import template requires Customer - and an activity carries a contact, an assigned user, a start and end date and time, and a Related Opportunity, with the vendor stating that relating an activity to an opportunity makes it appear in the opportunity's app ribbons. Method's REST API documentation confirms Customer and Contacts are distinct tables rather than two types of one, noting that a lead is a Customer with IsLeadStatusOnly set true and that posting a lead to Contacts stores it where Customers and Leads will not show it.

Source: https://help.method.me/en/articles/1494971-about-the-contacts-app, https://help.method.me/en/articles/1495255-create-a-customer, https://help.method.me/en/articles/1496425-create-an-activity, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2611482-importing-opportunities, https://help.method.me/en/articles/3505279-method-zapier-list-of-create-actions, https://developer.method.me/

Verification: Verified

Pipeline stages

No verdict

An opportunity carries an Opportunity Stage, and the stages are records in their own right that the account defines. Each stage holds a name, a Stage category, a Stage Order and a Stage Probability Percent, and ten stages ship, from Prospecting at 10 percent through to Closed Won at 100 percent and Closed Lost at 0 percent. The order is held on the stage record rather than on a view. Vendor documentation is inconsistent about what that order drives: the current help center describes Stage Order as "Although not used, this can be utilized in a customization if you wish to order the stages", while the older knowledge base says the numerical values "can help you filter and order your Opportunities grid". Moving an opportunity is a matter of changing its stage, which also resets the probability. Ruled 30 Aug 2026: the vendor's own pages contradict each other, so this is unresolved rather than established either way.

Verification: Pending vendor verification

Status

Not at all

Whether an opportunity is still live is a property of the stage it sits in, not of the opportunity. Each opportunity stage carries a Stage category the administrator sets to open, closed won or closed lost, which the vendor says drives reporting and charts, and closing an opportunity is documented as changing the Stage dropdown to Closed Won or Closed Lost. No open-or-settled attribute appears in any of the four field lists the vendor publishes for the opportunity: the import template names Name, AssignedTo, CloseDate, Customer, OpportunityStage, LeadSource, Amount, ContactName, Contacts, CreatedBy, Description, ProbabilityPercent, ExpectedRevenue, NextStep and OpportunityType; the Zapier Add Opportunity action takes Contact RecordID, Opportunity Name, Assigned To, Close Date, Opportunity Stage, Opportunity Type, Amount and custom fields; the Edit Opportunity screen shows assigned to, name, contact details, close date, stage, amount, probability and pipeline; and the opportunities grid columns are Opp number, Close date, Assigned to, Opp name, Stage, Contact, Name, Company, Description, Probability, Amount, Pipeline, Last activity and Next activity. Renaming or recategorizing a stage therefore changes what past opportunities mean. Ruled 30 Aug 2026: status and stage must be completely separate values, so an outcome read from which stage the record occupies is not a status attribute at all.

Source: https://help.method.me/en/articles/2474719-create-edit-an-opportunity-stage, https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?article=Opportunity-stage&folder=methodcrm&id=318, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2463580-close-a-sales-opportunity, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2611482-importing-opportunities, https://help.method.me/en/articles/3505279-method-zapier-list-of-create-actions, https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?folder=methodcrm&article=Edit-opportunity&id=319, https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?article=Opportunities-list&folder=methodcrm&id=315

Verification: Verified

Resolution

In part

Won and lost are likewise carried by the stage. The Stage category separates closed won from closed lost, and the vendor defines closed won as an opportunity closed because the customer decided to go with your product or service and closed lost as one closed because it did not pan out. Closing is done by picking the Closed Won or Closed Lost stage, after which probability moves to 100 or 0 and the record drops into the matching closed view. The outcome is readable from the stage's own metadata rather than from an attribute on the opportunity.

Verification: Verified

Value

In full

The opportunity ships an Amount, which the vendor describes as the projected dollar value to the business and as the actual revenue the opportunity is worth if won. A separate Pipeline figure is calculated from Amount and the probability attached to the current stage.

Source: https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?article=Opportunities-list&folder=methodcrm&id=315, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2463509-what-is-an-opportunity, https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?folder=methodcrm&article=Edit-opportunity&id=319

Verification: Verified

Scope of work

In part

The general facility is a Description field on the opportunity, listed as an importable field and shown as a column on the opportunities grid, plus a Next Step text field. What is being sold in priced detail lives on the related transaction rather than on the opportunity: the opportunity screen carries grids of related estimates and invoices, and a won opportunity is turned into an estimate, sales order or invoice that carries the line items. The one documented case of items sitting on an opportunity is the customer portal reorder request, where the opportunity Method creates holds a grid of the requested items.

Source: https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?article=Opportunities-list&folder=methodcrm&id=315, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2611482-importing-opportunities, https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?folder=methodcrm&article=Edit-opportunity&id=319, https://help.method.me/en/articles/8238486-reorder-previously-purchased-items, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2463580-close-a-sales-opportunity

Verification: Verified

Expected close date

In full

Close date ships on the opportunity and is required. The vendor describes it as the deadline for the opportunity to be won or lost, and the import template lists CloseDate as the estimated closure date.

Verification: Verified

Actual close date

In full

The same close date field records the date the opportunity actually settled. The vendor states that when an opportunity is closed as won or lost "the close date will automatically update to the current date", so Method stamps the field at close. The consequence is that the date originally forecast is overwritten, and the vendor documents no second field holding the expected date.

Source: https://help.method.me/en/articles/2463580-close-a-sales-opportunity, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2611482-importing-opportunities

Verification: Verified

Opportunity owner

In full

Assigned To ships on the opportunity and is required, holding the Method user responsible for it. It can be changed on the Edit Opportunity screen, and it is separate from the CreatedBy and last modified stamps that sit alongside it. Opportunities can be reported and charted by assigned user.

Source: https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?folder=methodcrm&article=Edit-opportunity&id=319, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2611482-importing-opportunities, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2239072-opportunities-charts

Verification: Verified

Linked buyer

In full

The opportunity links to a person. The Edit Opportunity screen carries a Contact dropdown that selects an existing contact and pulls through that contact's phone and email, the vendor's Zapier Add Opportunity action makes Contact RecordID a required input, and the import template takes Contacts as the contact's record ID. The customer link is held separately.

Source: https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?folder=methodcrm&article=Edit-opportunity&id=319, https://help.method.me/en/articles/3505279-method-zapier-list-of-create-actions, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2611482-importing-opportunities

Verification: Verified

Record preservation

In full

Closing an opportunity moves it out of the active list and into the Closed Opportunities view and either the Closed Won or Closed Lost view, and the record stays in the account. Closed opportunities remain the subject of native reporting: the Won and Lost charts work only on closed opportunities, giving the share won, closed won by lead source with the revenue from each, and average deal size by user, and the opportunity print reports list opportunities by stage, by assigned user, by contact and by type.

Source: https://help.method.me/en/articles/2463580-close-a-sales-opportunity, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2239336-opportunities-won-lost-charts, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2239378-opportunity-print-reports, https://www.methodintegration.com/method/kb.aspx?article=Opportunities-list&folder=methodcrm&id=315

Verification: Verified

Structured lost reasons

In part

Method ships no lost reason. The documented closing procedure is to set the stage to Closed Lost and save, and no reason is captured or prompted for. The buyer can arrange it: a custom dropdown field is added by creating a table of values and adding a dropdown field to an existing table, and the vendor's own worked example adds that field to Opportunities. Reporting can then count it, because reports in the Report Designer are built on a base table with its fields available in the field list, and a pivot grid sorts, counts totals and averages over that data, grouped by a chosen field.

Source: https://help.method.me/en/articles/2463580-close-a-sales-opportunity, https://help.method.me/en/articles/4195962-create-a-custom-dropdown, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2243549-add-custom-field-to-existing-table, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2626475-pivot-grids, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2622712-generating-reports-in-method

Verification: Verified

Email sync

In part

Mail goes out from inside Method and is recorded, but nothing brings received mail back. Sending from a Method record uses Method's own mail servers by default, or the account's own mail server once configured, with vendor setup articles for Gmail, Microsoft, Yahoo, GoDaddy and SendGrid, and the vendor states that mail sent through a connected Gmail server shows up in that Gmail sent box. Each send creates an activity against the contact of type Email Outgoing with status Completed, carrying the body and any attachments. Inbound is the gap. The Gmail sidebar is an add-on inside Gmail, and the vendor states plainly that it cannot save mail automatically: "Although you can manually create an activity with the email content embedded in that activity, the Gmail Add-on architecture restricts us from automatically saving emails to Method." The Outlook gadget is the same shape of tool. No mailbox connection for received mail is documented anywhere in the vendor's email setup collection.

Source: https://help.method.me/en/articles/1498682-send-an-email, https://help.method.me/en/articles/1506842-gmail-server-settings, https://help.method.me/en/collections/96951-email-setup, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2247665-method-sidebar-faq, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2250357-using-and-configuring-the-outlook-email-gadget

Verification: Verified

Calendar sync

In full

Google Calendar sync runs both ways on the activity object. Activities created in Method appear as Google Calendar events, with the activity type, contact and phone forming the title, the address the location, the comments the description and the due dates the start and end, and events created in Google Calendar come back into Method as activities with their dates and description. A sync runs automatically every twenty minutes and can be triggered by hand. Two constraints are documented: only activities whose type has IsOnCalendar set to yes and which fall inside a window from a week ago to six months ahead take part, and an activity created on the Google side arrives as a Meeting with no customer or contact and a status Method guesses from whether the date is past or future. Coverage is Google only; no Outlook or Microsoft 365 calendar sync is documented, the Outlook integration being a mail gadget.

Source: https://help.method.me/en/articles/1510010-how-google-calendar-sync-works, https://help.method.me/en/collections/96876-integrations

Verification: Verified

Schedulable activity types

In full

An activity is scheduled with a type, a status, an assigned user, start and end date and time, a contact, a related opportunity or case, comments and attachments, and can be made recurring or given a follow-up. Nine types ship - Email Incoming, Email Incoming and Outgoing, Email Outgoing, Meeting, Other, Phone Call Incoming, Phone Call Outgoing, To-do and Web Comment - and the account can create its own, each carrying a name, a category, a description, whether it shows on the calendar, whether it sends a reminder, which apps it appears in and an automatic follow-up rule. No limit on the number of types is documented.

Source: https://help.method.me/en/articles/1496425-create-an-activity, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2453394-create-edit-an-activity-type, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2452773-about-the-activities-app

Verification: Verified

Opportunity reporting

In part

Two of the three are native, the third is not. Win and loss rate ships as the Conversion Ratio chart, which the vendor describes as the percentage of closed opportunities that were won in the date range, with the lost share beside it and the counts on hover. A forecast is available from the pipeline figure, which weights the opportunity amount by the probability on its current stage: the Opportunity By Assigned To and Opportunity By Stage charts total that weighted value for open opportunities over a chosen date range, and the Report Designer can total amounts over the opportunity table grouped by close date, with pivot grids offering month, quarter and year grouping intervals. Stage to stage conversion is the gap. The charts give value by stage, which is a distribution, the print reports list opportunities grouped by stage, and no vendor documentation describes a stage change history on the opportunity that a stage conversion rate could be computed from.

Source: https://help.method.me/en/articles/2239336-opportunities-won-lost-charts, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2239072-opportunities-charts, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2239396-intro-to-opportunities-charts-reports, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2239378-opportunity-print-reports, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2626475-pivot-grids, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2622712-generating-reports-in-method, https://help.method.me/en/articles/2463509-what-is-an-opportunity

Verification: Verified