For a buyer who isn't in the system yet, create the contact and the sales applicant in one go. Under Sales, open Applicants and select Add new. This opens the Create sales applicant wizard, which has three steps. The steps along the top show where you are, and you can select a step you've already completed to go back to it.

You can also open the wizard from global search: type the buyer's name and select Create sales applicant, the last row of its Contacts group. If you had typed the buyer's name, step 1 opens with the name fields filled in from it. A single word, such as a surname, fills just Last name, so add the first name before you continue - see Universal search.

If the buyer is already a contact, use + Assign new role on their record instead - see Opening the form below.

Every field from Create contact except Notes: Title, First name and Last name (both required), Mobile phone, Home / work phone and Email address, Address, Office and Negotiator (both required), Permission to contact and Marketing consent (required, and set to Not asked until you change it). The same rules apply as when creating a contact: at least one phone number or an email address is needed. See How do I create a new contact?.

The negotiator you pick also becomes the applicant's primary owner, and the office is used for the applicant too, so neither is asked for again. Select Next. If anything is missing or invalid, the step shows what to fix and you can't move on until you do.

The same requirements form described below, with these differences:

Property type and Budget are required before you can select Next.

Review shows one section for each step, Contact details and Property requirements, with everything you entered. A field you left empty reads Not provided or None added. Select Edit on a section to change it; once you've saved that step you come straight back to Review.

Select Create sales applicant to save. The contact is created first, then the sales applicant linked to it. You're taken to the new applicant's page and a confirmation appears.

If the contact is created but the applicant can't be, the reason appears at the top of Review and the contact is kept. Select Create sales applicant again to retry: it only creates the applicant, so the contact is never added twice. Because the contact already exists, its details can no longer be edited from the wizard - open it from Contacts to change it. Select Cancel on step 1 to leave without saving anything.

From a contact's record, select + Assign new role on the Roles & linked records card. This opens the Sales applicant form as its own page, reached from the contact via the breadcrumb at the top.

This is the only role the button opens today - assigning a vendor, landlord, tenant or buyer role from a contact record is not built yet. The same form also appears when creating a sales applicant persona for a graduated lead - see How do I create a persona for a graduated lead?.

Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required. Chip and dropdown options (for example Type, Style, Parking or Situation) come from what your organisation has configured in Settings for the department the applicant is being registered under. A requirement with nothing configured doesn't appear at all.

Every sales applicant needs a Primary owner (required): the negotiator accountable for the record. It starts on the contact's own negotiator, so you normally don't need to change it. If the contact has no negotiator on file, pick one before saving - the form won't save without an owner.

You can also add one or more Secondary owners: negotiators who can cover when the primary owner is away. They're optional. Type a name to search, and select a chip's x to remove someone. The primary owner isn't offered here, and if you make a secondary owner the primary one, they're taken off the secondary list.

The form opens with only what agents capture on almost every call, so you can fill it in while talking to the buyer:

Anything else the buyer mentions goes in the sections below, one topic each. Every section is always there, folded down to a single line that says what it holds, so the form stays short until you need one. Select a section's row to open it, and select it again to fold it away - the arrow at the end of the row points down while it is folded and up while it is open. Folding a section only hides it: anything entered in it is kept and saved.

A section that already holds a value, for example when editing an applicant, opens from the start so nothing recorded is out of sight. If you submit with a problem inside a folded section, every section opens so you can see it.

Last comes Notes, a free-text box for anything that doesn't fit a field, for example "must be walkable to school". Notes are visible to other users but are not used by automated property matching - only the structured fields are.

Select Create sales applicant to save the requirements against the contact, linked to their existing office and owned by the primary owner you chose. If the contact has no office on file, the form says so above the buttons, and nothing is saved until that's fixed elsewhere on the contact. Select Cancel to return to the contact record without saving anything.

On success you're taken back to the contact record, where the new Applicant role now appears on the Roles & linked records card - see How do I see a contact's details and every role they hold?.

Once a sales applicant exists, select Edit on their row of the contact's Roles & linked records card. This opens an Edit property requirements panel over the page, holding the same form as above, filled in with what is currently recorded.

Change what you need and select Save changes. A confirmation appears and the panel closes. Clearing a field, for example removing a bedroom minimum, clears it on the record too. You can add or remove Secondary owners here too. The primary owner can't be changed from this panel, and the applicant's office is left as it is. An applicant with no primary owner on file doesn't show the secondary owners field. Select Cancel to close the panel without saving. Clicking outside the panel does not close it, so changes you have typed are not lost by accident.

Edit only appears for a sales applicant. A lettings applicant's requirements cannot be edited here yet.