- Overview
- Prerequisites
- How do custom properties work?
- Creating custom properties
- Configuring user assignment rules for custom properties
- Showing or hiding lead tabs and fields
- Automatically filling in lead fields
- Triggering emails with custom properties
- Nesting the custom properties
- Setting up custom property permissions
- Searching and reporting with custom properties
- Importing custom properties
- Use case: Boarding merchants to multiple processors
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Video tutorial
Overview
Merchant Central empowers your ISO to accelerate the sales process with customizable lead and merchant properties tailored to your unique business needs.
With custom properties, you can:
- Automate Routine Tasks: Minimize manual work and human errors by setting property-based triggers and automated workflows. For example, automatically send emails or update lead fields when predefined custom properties are selected.
- Simplify User Experience: Improve usability by automatically hiding irrelevant fields and tabs, displaying only the most relevant information based on the selected custom properties. This makes the CRM more intuitive and easier for your team to navigate.
- Pre-Fill Common Data: Save time by auto-filling frequently used information and providing contextual insights to help users make informed decisions quickly.
- Centralize Business Insights: Access and filter custom property data across leads, merchant profiles, helpdesk tickets, and residuals—all in one unified platform.
- Maintain Data Accuracy: Easily update existing records to keep CRM information accurate and up to date with minimal effort.
While the concept of custom properties is straightforward, the feature offers a variety of options and advanced settings that may require some time to master.
To help you quickly understand the feature’s capabilities, a recorded demo is provided at the end of the article. It demonstrates how to create and apply custom properties with practical use cases.
Prerequisites
Before you can being creating custom lead properties, ensure that the 'Manage Custom Properties' permission on your user class has been enabled:
How do custom properties work?
Custom properties appear as dropdown menus on the Details tab of a lead:
When a custom property is selected on a lead, one or more of the following actions can be triggered:
- The lead is automatically assigned to a specific user or user group
- Relevant lead tabs and fields are shown or hidden based on the selection
- Certain lead fields are auto-filled with predefined values
- Outgoing emails are triggered, with support for dynamic branding options
Creating custom properties
You can create custom properties in the admin area by navigating to Manage → Leads → Custom Properties. Each custom property consists of:
- A property name (the label for your dropdown).
- One or more reference fields (extra fields that store details about each dropdown option — like a contact name, phone number, or email).
- A list of dropdown values your team can pick from when updating a lead.
Setting them up is quick — just name the property, add any fields you want to track for each option, and create the options your team will select.
To learn more, see our step-by-step guide on creating a custom property.
Configuring user assignment rules for custom properties
Custom properties can be set up to automatically assign a lead to a specific user or user class, based on which dropdown value is selected. This helps ensure leads are routed to the right person or team without manual steps, saving time and maintaining consistency.
To update auto-assign rules for a custom property, go to Manage → Leads → Custom Properties, and click Add/Remove Values for the property you want to edit. For each dropdown option, you can adjust the assignment rules as needed, then save your changes.
For setup instructions, refer to our guide on configuring user auto-assignment rules.
Showing or hiding lead tabs and fields
Custom properties can be set up to automatically show or hide specific lead fields or tabs based on the selected dropdown value. This ensures agents see only the information relevant to their workflow, helping reduce clutter and streamline lead management.
To configure these visibility rules, go to Manage → Leads → Custom Properties, click Add/Remove Values for the relevant property, and select the eye icon next to the desired value to adjust its visibility settings.
For more configuration details, see our guide on configuring lead field and tab visibility.
Automatically filling in lead fields
Custom properties can be configured to automatically populate lead fields with predefined information based on the selected dropdown value. This setup ensures consistent, accurate data entry and saves time by eliminating the need to manually fill in commonly used details.
Each dropdown option can carry reference data—such as partner names, pricing details, equipment information, or any other data relevant to your workflow—which is then automatically inserted into the corresponding lead fields when selected.
This is especially useful for standardizing information tied to processors, partners, or internal teams across multiple leads.
To learn how to configure this, check out our guide on auto-populating lead fields.
Triggering emails with custom properties
Your CRM makes email automation simple and highly personalized by combining status triggers, custom properties, and email templates. Together, these tools let you automatically send tailored emails based on a lead’s status and specific attributes, saving time and ensuring consistent communication.
Status triggers allow you to send emails when a lead enters or remains in a certain status — for example, welcoming a new partner when they move into a “New Partner Deal” stage.
You can take this further by using custom properties to dynamically choose which email template to send. For instance, you might send a different welcome email depending on the partner’s country or other key details.
You can also set up automatic follow-up emails, scheduling them to send after the initial message, and customize the branding for each email so the sender’s name, email address, and logo match the lead’s details.
When set up correctly, this automated flow ensures every lead gets the right message at the right time, fully branded and personalized — all with minimal manual effort from your team.
For a full walkthrough, see our detailed guide on custom property email triggers & email branding.
Nesting the custom properties
Custom properties can be nested to show a clear hierarchy within a lead, making dropdown selections more intuitive and structured. This nesting ensures users pick valid combinations — for example, selecting a specific processor will limit the next dropdown to only show pricing models related to that processor.
To set up nesting, simply choose a parent property when editing a custom property or its values. This creates a connected, organized dropdown flow that helps teams make accurate selections every time.
For a full walkthrough on custom property nesting, see our guide on custom property nesting.
Setting up custom property permissions
You can control who can see or edit custom properties on the lead page by setting permissions for specific user groups or classes. From Manage → Leads → Custom Properties, click the Permissions button to adjust whether a property is hidden, read-only, editable, or required.
Default permissions can also be set for any new groups or classes created later. Additionally, you can restrict access at the individual value level to ensure only the right users can view or update certain dropdown options. This keeps sensitive or specialized lead data secure and properly managed.
For a full walkthrough on custom property permissions, see our Guide on custom property permissions.
Searching and reporting with custom properties
Custom properties can be searched and used as filters throughout the CRM, making it easy to find and segment leads, tickets, residuals, and merchants based on specific property values.
These filters appear on pages like My Leads, Helpdesk, Residuals, and My Merchants, helping teams quickly narrow down data and work more efficiently.
Below is an example of the custom property filters found on the Helpdesk page.
Custom properties can also be used in advanced reporting and displayed in residuals exports.
Importing custom properties
Once custom properties are created, their values can be applied to existing leads in bulk using the Custom Property Importer.
This tool allows you to upload a CSV file containing lead IDs and the corresponding property values to be updated. The import process includes a field mapping step, validation to check for conflicts, and options to save mappings for reuse.
While importing the custom properties, you can also apply user auto-assignment rules and enable automatic updates of lead fields based on imported property values. Completed imports can be tracked, reviewed, or reverted if necessary.
For more information please see our article on the custom property importer.
Use case: Boarding to multiple processors
Independent Sales Organizations (ISOs) often use CRM systems to board merchants to various payment processors such as Fiserv, TSYS, and others. To support this, the lead page in the CRM typically contains multiple tabs like:
- Business Information
- Owner Details
- Financial Profile
- Processor-specific tabs (Pricing, Equipment, etc.)
As ISOs onboard merchants across many processors, the lead page becomes increasingly cluttered with a growing number of tabs and fields. This leads to a confusing user experience for sales reps, making it hard to identify which fields are relevant for a given processor.
Requirements
ISOs working with multiple payment processors have specific operational needs:
- Streamlined Lead Entry: Sales reps should only see the tabs and fields required for the selected processor to reduce confusion and improve speed.
- Dynamic Field Display: Unnecessary or irrelevant fields for unselected processors should be hidden to minimize user error and screen clutter.
- Configurable Pricing Plans: Different processors require different pricing models such as Tiered, Flat Rate, or Interchange, and each plan includes predefined fields.
- Automation and Consistency: Pricing fields should auto-populate based on the chosen pricing plan to reduce manual entry and ensure accuracy.
Solution Overview: Custom Properties
The Custom Properties feature in the CRM addresses all these requirements with a flexible and intuitive configuration:
- Processor Dropdown: Adds a dropdown to the lead page allowing sales reps to select the merchant’s payment processor.
- Conditional Tabs and Fields: Once a processor is selected, only the relevant tabs and fields are displayed. All unrelated UI components are automatically hidden.
- Pricing Plan Dropdown: For each processor, a second dropdown enables selection of pricing plans like Flat Rate, Tiered, or Interchange.
- Auto-Fill Functionality: Selecting a pricing plan triggers automatic population of related fields with the appropriate rates and fee structures — reducing human error and speeding up data entry.
Example Scenario
A sales rep is boarding a new merchant who will be processed through TSYS using a Flat Rate pricing plan:
- The rep opens the merchant lead page and selects 'TSYS' from the Processor dropdown.
- Instantly, only the TSYS-specific tabs and fields are shown — all others are hidden.
- The rep then selects Flat Rate from the Pricing Plan dropdown.
- The CRM automatically fills in the Flat Rate pricing fields with pre-configured values.
- The rep completes the lead quickly and accurately without worrying about irrelevant sections or data entry errors.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Can I set a default value for a custom property? Currently, setting default values for custom properties isn’t supported.
- Can I update a custom property via the Open API? At the moment, updating custom properties through the Open API is not supported.
Video Tutorial
For a video overview, watch the recorded webinar on custom properties: