Odoo Website Form Not Creating Leads: Causes & Solutions
The #1 cause: the website form's Action is "Send Email" instead of "Create an Opportunity" — submissions go to an inbox (or nowhere) and CRM never sees them. Second: leads are being created, but land in an unassigned or unwatched sales team. Both are five-minute fixes.
First, confirm the symptom
- Visitors say they submitted the form, but CRM shows nothing
- Submissions arrive as emails but never appear in the pipeline
- Leads exist somewhere (you find them by searching) but nobody was notified
- The form spins or errors on submit for some visitors
- Leads from one of your websites go missing; the other works
1. The form's action is "Send Email", not "Create an Opportunity"
Odoo's form block defaults to sending an email. If nobody changed the action — or a redesign replaced the form and reset it — enquiries bypass CRM entirely. If that inbox is unmonitored (or the outgoing mail server is broken), they effectively vanish.
- Edit the page, click the form, and in the website editor panel set Action → Create an Opportunity.
- Map the fields (contact name, phone, email, company, description) and set the target Sales Team right there.
- Submit a test enquiry and watch it land in CRM → My Pipeline before you close the ticket.
2. The Leads stage is disabled in CRM settings
Odoo has two intake modes: straight to Opportunities, or via a Leads inbox that gets qualified first. If your team expects to triage "Leads" but the feature is off (or vice versa), submissions appear in a place nobody is looking at.
- Check CRM → Configuration → Settings → Leads and align the toggle with your team's actual workflow.
- If Leads is on, someone must own the CRM → Leads queue daily — otherwise switch it off and let forms create opportunities directly.
3. Leads created, but no team or salesperson notified
A lead without a sales team lands in a default bucket with no notification. Days later a customer calls asking "did you get my enquiry?" — it was there all along, unassigned and unloved.
- Set a default Sales Team on the form (cause #1, step 2) and configure CRM → Configuration → Sales Teams membership.
- Use assignment rules (round-robin by team) so every lead gets an owner within minutes, with an activity scheduled automatically.
4. reCAPTCHA or spam filtering blocking silently
Misconfigured reCAPTCHA keys (site key from one domain, secret from another, or a moved website) make submissions fail for real visitors — often with no visible error. Result: "customers say they enquired, we see nothing."
- Verify the keys in Website → Configuration → Settings → reCAPTCHA match the live domain exactly (www and non-www both registered).
- Test from an incognito browser and a mobile network — not just your office IP.
5. Email-based lead intake misrouted
If enquiries also come via an email alias (sales@yourdomain), a broken catchall or alias domain means those mails never become leads — independent of the website form. Teams often conflate the two channels when debugging.
- Check the alias on the sales team (CRM → Configuration → Sales Teams → Email Alias) and the alias domain in General Settings.
- Send a test email to the alias and confirm a lead appears; if not, the incoming mail server configuration is the real problem.
6. Multi-website and multi-company mix-ups
Running two websites (or companies) on one database? A form on website B can create records against company A's team — visible only when someone switches company context. The leads are not missing; they are filed under the wrong flag.
- Search leads with the company/website filter removed — find where they actually land.
- Set the correct team (and its company) per website form, and restrict sales teams to their company.
We test your entire enquiry funnel — forms, aliases, assignment, notifications — and fix it end-to-end, usually in a day. Sanjeev Autoparts runs their whole RFQ intake on a CRM we customized.
Frequently asked questions
Where do Odoo website form submissions actually go?
Wherever the form's Action says: an email address, a CRM opportunity, a helpdesk ticket, or a custom model. Click the form in edit mode and read the Action — that answers 80% of "missing enquiry" mysteries.
Can leads be auto-assigned to salespeople?
Yes — team-based assignment distributes leads round-robin (with rules in Enterprise), and each new lead can trigger an automatic activity so it is followed up the same day.
Do you also fix duplicate leads?
Yes — deduplication by email/phone, merge rules and blocking duplicate creation at the form are part of our CRM clean-up service.