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CRM and Sales Automation for a Global Events Group

Contract, pipeline and invoicing automation across Pipedrive, SmartDocs and Xero

A fast-growing international events group ran sales in Pipedrive, contracts in SmartDocs and invoicing in Xero — but every handover between them was manual. CodeLeap built the integration layer that ties the three together, moving each deal from close to signed contract to Xero invoice without anyone needing to touch it.

CRM and Sales Automation for a Global Events Group — Integration case study

Deal to invoice, on its own.

Our client is a fast-growing international events group operating a portfolio of more than twenty consumer exhibitions and B2B trade shows across the UK, mainland Europe, the Middle East and a number of major US cities. Built up over the past decade through a combination of new launches and acquisitions, the group brings together large specialist audiences and the brands that serve them, with a commercial team selling exhibition space, sponsorship and partnership packages across the full calendar of events. CodeLeap partnered with them to automate the operational spine of that sales function, connecting their CRM, contract management and accounting systems so that contracts, pipelines and invoices move through the business without manual intervention.

Product features

Contract Status Detection

The system monitors contracts from the moment they are issued and automatically detects when each one has been signed, updating the corresponding record in the CRM as it happens. The sales team no longer needs to chase or manually check the status of outstanding paperwork, and management gains an accurate, real-time view of which agreements are still open across the whole portfolio.
Multi-Event Deal Splitting

Clients frequently buy space or sponsorship across several events under a single overarching agreement, which previously left the commercial team reconstructing the detail by hand. The system now automatically splits these agreements into separate deals within the CRM, so that every event carries its own record, its own values and its own progression through the pipeline while remaining traceable back to the original contract.
Automatic Invoice Creation

Once a contract is confirmed as signed, the corresponding invoice is generated automatically in the accounting platform using the deal data already held in the CRM. This removes the re-keying of information between systems, closes the gap between a deal being won and the client being billed, and eliminates the transcription errors that manual invoice creation inevitably produces.
Sales Workflow Automation

A set of automations fires the appropriate CRM actions as contracts and deals change state, moving records between stages, updating fields and prompting the next step in the process at the right moment. The effect is that the operational choreography of a sale looks after itself, leaving the commercial team to spend their time on client relationships and closing rather than on administration.
Cross-System Data Integrity

The integrations were built with careful field mapping between the CRM, the document platform and the accounting system, so that deal, client and contract data stays consistent wherever it is read. The CRM remains the single source of truth for the commercial pipeline, with finance and contract records reflecting it accurately rather than diverging over time.
Phased, Low-Disruption Delivery

The work was delivered in three phases, each releasing a working set of automations into live use before the next began. This gave the client value early, allowed the team to adapt to each change in turn, and meant that the sales operation continued uninterrupted throughout a busy event calendar.

Challenge

The group runs a demanding calendar of events across multiple territories, and the commercial team manages a substantial volume of deals and contracts at any given time. The systems they used were capable and well established, but the steps between them were being bridged by people rather than by software. Someone had to keep track of which contracts had been sent and watch for the signed copies coming back. Multi-event agreements had to be unpicked manually into individual deals so that each show could be tracked properly. Invoices had to be raised by hand once agreements were finalised, with the relevant details copied across from the CRM. Each of these steps was straightforward in isolation, but multiplied across a growing portfolio they consumed a significant share of the team's week, introduced delay between closing a deal and billing for it, and created exactly the kind of manual dependency that becomes a constraint on growth. The client needed the connective tissue between their systems automated without disturbing the systems themselves.

Solution

Rather than proposing a new platform, CodeLeap worked within the client's existing environment and built the automation layer that was missing from it. We integrated their CRM, contract management and accounting tools into a single connected workflow, so that a contract being signed sets off the sequence of events that should follow it: the CRM record updates, multi-event agreements resolve into their individual deals, and the invoice is raised without anyone needing to touch it. The work was scoped and delivered across three phases, prioritising the automations with the greatest immediate impact on the team's workload and expanding coverage from there. The result is a sales operation that carries a growing volume of deals and events with materially less manual effort, faster movement from closed deal to issued invoice, and a commercial team whose attention sits with clients rather than with process.

Tech stack

The work was delivered as a set of integrations and automations within the client's existing systems, chosen to extend what they already used rather than replace it.

Integrations: Pipedrive API, SmartDocs, Xero API
Approach: Custom automation services with event-driven triggers and comprehensive cross-system field mapping