Every business, vendor, park, mural, trail, parking lot, and vacant storefront in your district, in one database you own. Internal notes and public details on the same record. Bulk edits in a spreadsheet view. Whatever custom fields you actually need.
Every time you make something new, you start by rebuilding a list you already had. The Main Street director does it because the last director's spreadsheet walked out the door with them, and roughly one in five executive directors turns over every year. The creator does it because last summer's guide lives in a Google Doc and this one is starting from a blank page, with half the places changed hands since. The economic development office does it because the vacancy data is sitting in somebody's inbox and the council wants a number by Thursday. A Places CRM is the part that stays. Every place you have ever looked up, with everything you learned about it, held once and reused by every map, guide, directory, and report you build after it. Look it up once, use it for years.
One record per place, and everything you know about it in the same spot.
Shops and restaurants, obviously. Also parks, murals, trails, public restrooms, parking lots, and the vacant storefront you are trying to fill. If it matters to your district, it belongs in here.
Mark any field internal or external. The landlord's cell number and your notes from last Tuesday stay private. Hours and photos go out to every map. Internal fields are what make real reporting possible.
Edit hundreds of listings at once in a grid that behaves the way a spreadsheet does, then drop into a single place when you need the detail.
Categories, tags, and whatever custom fields you need. Track lease expirations, member tiers, facade grant status, or whatever your board actually asks about in March.
Every message you have sent them, the events they have coming up, the maps and activations they appear on, and their permanent QR code. All on one screen instead of four.
Bring in the spreadsheet you already keep, pull details from a Google Business Profile, and take the whole thing back out whenever you want. The data stays yours.
Every listing can have a contact attached, the person who claims it and keeps the details current. The contact belongs to the place, not the other way around. This is a database of places first, with the people who look after them attached to the records they manage.
Publish a form that lets anybody add a place, and choose exactly what it asks for, including fields that stay internal. Submissions land straight in the database instead of a spreadsheet you have to reconcile later. This is the part that replaces your Google Form and your Typeform.
Three steps, and the first one is usually a file you already have.
1
Import a spreadsheet or pull from info from Google Business Profiles. Most districts start with a member list they are already keeping somewhere.
2
Add tags, categories, and custom fields. Decide which fields the public sees and which ones stay internal to your team.
3
Your maps, directory, and calendar all pull from the same records, so whatever you fix in the CRM is fixed everywhere at once.
Six groups, all keeping track of different things about the same kind of thing.
The businesses, sure, but also which storefronts are empty, who owns them, when the leases turn over, and which owners you have already talked to twice. That is the district, and it does not fit in a directory.
Member tier, renewal date, who came to the last mixer, and what they get listed on. Internal fields hold the membership side, external fields feed the public directory, and both live on one record.
Vacancy tracking is the whole job some quarters. Square footage, asking rent, property owner, how long it has sat empty, and which prospects have walked it. None of that is public, and all of it belongs next to the places that are.
Trails, playgrounds, restrooms, benches, murals, and trailhead signs. Places that will never be businesses but still need a record, a location, and something a visitor can pull up on a phone.
Everything a visitor might want, across a region rather than a block. One database behind every itinerary, trail, and seasonal map you publish, instead of a new spreadsheet per campaign.
Your city guide, your restaurant roundup, your best-of list for the year. Each one starts from a blank page even though most of the places are the same every time. Keep them in one database and the next guide is an afternoon instead of a week, built from places you already vetted, with your own private notes on each one that nobody else ever sees.
[ PLACEHOLDER: bind this grid to the Built with Proxi collection, filtered to directories. ]
[ CMS: Organization and framing question ]
[ CMS: Organization and framing question ]
[ CMS: Organization and framing question ]
The Places CRM is your side. It is where you manage the database, keep internal notes, edit in bulk, and decide what goes public. Every listing can also have a contact attached, and the business portal is their side: the place owner claims their listing and keeps their own hours, photos, and links current. Same records, two doors, and neither of you has to email the other a spreadsheet.
It is a database built around physical places instead of people. A regular CRM tracks contacts and deals. A Places CRM tracks the businesses, parks, trails, murals, and vacant buildings that make up a district, along with everything you know about each one. Every place can have a contact attached, the person who claims it and keeps it current, but the record is the place. In Proxi those places are called listings, and every map, directory, and calendar you publish pulls from them.
A spreadsheet holds data. A Places CRM holds it and publishes it. The same record that stores a shop's hours also feeds your directory, your maps, your event calendar, and that shop's permanent QR code, so you update once instead of in four places. It also keeps internal fields the public never sees, and lets the business owner maintain their own half of the record.
Yes. Every field can be marked internal or external. Internal fields never appear on a map, a directory listing, or a QR code page. Most organizations use them for landlord contacts, lease dates, grant status, and the notes that make quarterly reporting possible.
Yes, and this is where a Places CRM differs most from a business directory. Parks, trails, murals, public art, parking lots, restrooms, historic markers, and vacant storefronts all live in the same database as your shops and restaurants.
Yes. A place owner can claim their listing and maintain their own hours, photos, links, and contact details from their business portal. You keep the internal fields and the bulk tools, they keep their own details current, and nobody emails anybody a spreadsheet. There is more on their side of it on the business listing management page.
Yes to both. You can build and publish a form that lets anybody add a place, and you choose exactly what it collects, including fields that stay internal. Submissions land straight in your database rather than in a spreadsheet you have to reconcile by hand later, which is what makes it a replacement rather than another tool to check. This is a different form from a signup form, which collects people onto an email or text list rather than places into your database.
Yes, and you can export any time. Import what you keep today, add tags and custom fields on top of it, and pull the whole thing back out whenever you want. The data stays yours.
The Places CRM is part of Proxi Pro, and Proxi Premium includes everything in Pro.
[ PLACEHOLDER: one real customer quote about getting off spreadsheets. ]
[ Name, Title, Organization ]
Start by importing the list you already keep. You will see the whole district on one screen before you finish your coffee.
