A lead typed in after a phone call belongs to whoever took the call. That is the one case the old behaviour got right — and it is why nobody noticed the others.

An enquiry pulled in from IndiaMART at 2am belonged to nobody. A spreadsheet of four hundred belonged to whoever pressed Import. Both are how a lead goes cold: not because somebody dropped it, but because it was never anybody’s.

Assignment lives at Settings → Assignment, and it has three tabs. This page is about the first one.

Settings, Assignment. Three tabs read Rules, Thresholds and Overflow. The Rules tab says "Tried in order, top to bottom. The first rule whose conditions match decides the owner", with an All modules filter and a Create assignment rule button above a table of three rules. The table columns are Rule, Module, When it runs, Entries, Created by and On, with a pencil and a bin at the end of each row. — The Rules tab. Every rule across every module in one list — which module a rule governs is asked inside the rule, not from a selector above the page.

The three tabs, in one line each

Tab	The question it answers	Read
Rules	Who should this record go to?	This page.
Thresholds	How much is one person allowed to be given?	Cap how much one person is given
Overflow	What happens to what nobody could take?	When everybody is full

They are in that order because they depend on each other in that order. Rules are useful on their own. Thresholds only mean something once rules are handing work out. Overflow only means something once a threshold has turned something away.

Reading the list

Every rule you are allowed to see is in this one table, whichever module it governs.

Column	What it tells you
Rule	The name you gave it, with its description underneath if you wrote one. This is the column people read, so the name is worth spending ten seconds on.
Module	Which module it governs — Leads, Invoices, Projects. A rule governs exactly one.
When it runs	On create, On edit or Create + edit, with the edit behaviour in small grey type underneath when there is one. Explained here.
Entries	How many entries the rule holds. A rule showing 0 does nothing at all — that is the commonest reason a rule appears not to work.
Created by	Who wrote it. Useful when a rule surprises you and you want to ask somebody before changing it.
On	A switch. Off means the rule is ignored but kept.

The All modules dropdown above the table narrows it to one module. On a business with thirty rules this is how you find the four that govern invoices without reading the other twenty-six.

Turn a rule off rather than deleting it. The switch in the On column takes effect immediately and keeps the rule, its entries and its conditions intact. When a rule is misbehaving and you are not yet sure why, switching it off stops the damage in one click and leaves you something to read afterwards. A deleted rule is gone, and rebuilding four entries from memory is not a pleasant afternoon.

How it decides

Rules for that module are tried in order, top to bottom.
Inside a rule, its entries are tried in order too.
The first entry whose conditions match decides it.
That entry hands the record to the next person in its list, in turn.
Anybody at their threshold is skipped, and it goes to the next candidate.
If everybody it could name is full, it goes to the default owner.

Two words in that list do the heavy lifting. First — once an entry matches, nothing below it is even looked at. And in turn — where an entry names several people, they are not all given the record; they take it one after another, and the product remembers whose turn is next between one record and the next.

When a rule stands aside

A rule decides the owner unless somebody has actually chosen one. The distinction matters, because the New Lead form arrives with the Owner box already filled in as you, and so does a new quotation, sales order, proforma, invoice, bill of supply or credit note.

On the form	What happens
You leave Owner as yourself	The rules decide. That box is a default, not a decision.
You change Owner to a colleague	Your choice stands. No rule overrides it.
You clear Owner entirely	The rules decide.
Created through the API with no owner	The rules decide.
Created through the API naming an owner	That stands.

The one case to know about: deliberately picking yourself on a record a rule would claim. The rule wins, because leaving the default and choosing yourself look identical by the time the record reaches the server. If you want a particular record kept off the rules, give it to somebody by name — or change the owner after it is saved, which nothing touches.

Nothing happens until you write one

With no rules, a new record belongs to whoever created it, exactly as before. Nothing about assignment is on by default, and nothing about it is doing anything quietly in a business that has not set it up.

And a rule only runs when you have said it may. Every rule is set to When a record is created unless you change it, so writing one never reaches back and reshuffles the records you already have. If you want a rule to act on records as they change, you say so on the rule itself — see when a rule runs.

Which modules it governs

Every module where a person answers for the record — thirty-nine of them — each with its own rules, chosen inside the rule itself.

Group	Modules	Typically used for
CRM	Leads, Customers, Companies, Deals, Tasks, Visits	Distributing enquiries, and who owns the relationship afterwards.
Sales documents	Quotations, Sales orders, Proforma invoices, Invoices, Bills of supply, Retainer invoices, Credit notes, Delivery challans	Who is accountable for a document. Each type has its own rules, so quotations can route by region while invoices stay with whoever raises them.
Purchase	Vendors, Purchase orders, Purchase bills, Debit notes, Payments made	Which buyer looks after which supplier, and who is answerable for each order raised against them.
Inventory	Items, Stock transfers, Stock adjustments, Assemblies, Packages, Bills of materials	Who is answerable for a movement, a build or a pack.
Making things	Manufacturing orders, Quality inspections	Which supervisor answers for a run, and who signs for the check.
Delivery	Projects, Project tasks, Subscriptions, Documents, Files	Who runs the job, who does each task, and who owns the renewal.
Money	Expenses, Payments received, Manual journals, Fixed assets	Whose expense it is, and which accountant answers for an entry.
After the sale	Warranties	Who handles a claim.
People	Circles, Project groups	Who leads a team.

Every module has its own page saying what routing means there, which of its fields are worth routing on, and whether a cap is worth setting up at all.

A project task is the odd one out, and worth knowing about. A task is given to somebody rather than owned by them, so its owner is the Assigned to field rather than an Owner field. Rules for project tasks set that instead, and everything else works the same. A manufacturing order is the other one: its field reads Answerable.

Some modules are deliberately left out, and it is worth saying which. A warehouse, a work centre, an operation, a job card, an item category, a price list, a chart-of-accounts line and the billing catalogue are places, steps and rows you define once — not work a person answers for. “Only mine” has no meaning on them, so they are not offered.

The list is read from the modules themselves rather than written down, so a module added later appears here automatically and one you rename in Settings is renamed here too.

Where it applies

Every way a record is created goes through the same rules:

Typed in by hand, on the New form.
Brought in by import from a spreadsheet.
Pulled in from IndiaMART overnight.
Created through the API.

That is worth stating because it is the opposite of how some products do it — several restrict assignment rules to imports and web forms, which leaves the manually created records, and most records are manually created.

A rule can also be set to act when a record is edited — when a lead you logged as a walk-in turns out to have come from an ad, for instance. That is off unless you switch it on: see when a rule runs.

The one exception is a record created with an owner already named. Then whoever created it has made the decision and no rule overrides them.

On a phone

The same three tabs, the same rules, the same switches. The table becomes a card each, and what the columns said becomes small pills under the name.

What goes wrong, and what it looks like

What you see	What is usually behind it	What to do
New records still belong to whoever created them	The rule has no entries, or its On switch is off. A rule is only a name; the entries are the work.	Check the Entries column reads at least 1.
Only the first entry ever fires	An entry set to Every record is sitting above the specific ones. It matches everything, so nothing below it is reached.	Move the catch-all to the bottom.
Nothing happens when you edit a record	The rule is set to When a record is created, which is where every rule starts.	Change when it runs.
Everything lands on one person	Either the entry names one person, or the others are at their cap and are being skipped.	Check the Thresholds tab.
A rule somebody mentioned is not in your list	It governs people outside your part of the organisation, so it is not yours to see. Or the All modules filter is set to one module.	Who can see which rules.
A record went somewhere unexpected	Something matched that you did not expect to match.	Open the record and read why it came to you — it names the rule and the entry.

Where to go next

Next in assignment Invoices → Packages →

Something missing or wrong here? Tell us. A question that needed asking usually means a page that needed writing.

Decide who a new lead goes to