When working with data in Teamleader Focus, organising your contacts and companies effectively is key to getting the most out of the tool. Two common ways to structure and categorise your data are tags and custom fields. While they may appear similar at first, they serve different purposes. Choosing one over the other has consequences for segmentation, reporting, document display, and integrations. Read more here!
What are tags?
Tags are labels you can apply to contacts and companies to group them based on shared characteristics. Think of them as informal categories or keywords.
Characteristics of tags:
✅ Used only for contacts and companies
✅ Created once and then re-used across both contacts and companies
✅ Clearly visible in the contact or company detail page
✅ You can assign multiple tags to one contact/company
✅ You can bulk add or remove tags
✅ You can create segments based on tags
🔴 Not exportable to Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor
🔴 Not displayable on document layouts like quotations or invoices
When to use tags
Use tags for quick categorisation or temporary grouping — for example, tagging clients that attended an event, marking "VIP" customers, or making a difference between prospects vs. customers vs. suppliers. Tags are flexible and easy to apply in bulk, but less structured.
What are custom fields?
Custom fields allow you to store structured data on different record types such as contacts, companies, deals, invoices, and more.
Characteristics of custom fields:
✅ Can be created for any type of item, not just contacts or companies
🔁 If you want the same field on contacts and companies, you must create it twice
✅ Various field types available: text, dropdown, checkbox, date, etc.
✅ You can create segments based on custom field values
✅ Exportable to Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor
✅ Visible on document layouts like quotations and invoices
✅ Custom fields are usable in insights to filter on
⚠️ Maximum of 25 or 50 custom fields per type
When to use custom fields
Use custom fields when you need structured, reportable data. For example: a dropdown for customer type (partner, reseller, end-user), a date field for contract renewal, or a checkbox for GDPR consent.
Which one should you use?
- Do I need a quick way to categorise and filter contacts/companies without needing structured data? → Use tags
- Do I need to store structured data, include it in documents, or export it to tools like Mailchimp? → Use custom fields
In practice, many users benefit from using both — tags for flexible categorisation, and custom fields for when precision and structure matter.
Still unsure which to use in your workflow? Check out the video on Tags vs. custom fields or read the full articles on: