Back up Follow Up Boss leads to Google Sheets or SQL

Your lead history is probably the most valuable data your team owns, and it lives in a system you rent. That is fine until you want a report the CRM cannot build, an agent leaves, you change CRMs, or the vendor changes what its API will give you. A copy of your leads in a place you control turns each of those from a scramble into a query.

This post covers what a useful copy looks like, two ways to build it, and what to do with it once it exists.

Why vendor data access can change under you

CRM vendors change their APIs, and sometimes they take things away. In May 2025, Follow Up Boss stopped returning call recordings and the contents of text messages through its API. HousingWire reported the change: from May 7, 2025, those items were no longer available through the API, while metadata such as call duration, timing and participants stayed available, and the recordings and messages remained visible in the Follow Up Boss apps.

That is a reasonable vendor decision, and it is not a criticism. It is a reminder of the general point: what you can pull out of a CRM through its API is set by the vendor, and it can change. If your reporting, your lead scoring or your handoff process depends on a field, the safest place for that field is a table you own.

What a good copy looks like

A backup that nobody can use is a file, not an asset. Aim for these properties:

• One row per lead, keyed by the CRM id. Updates change the row in place instead of adding duplicates, so the copy always reflects the current state.
• Every field, not a hand-picked few. You will not know which field matters until a report needs it.
• Deletions are visible. When a lead is deleted in the CRM, you want to see that it was, not have it silently vanish or linger as if it were live.
• Your own columns survive. If an analyst adds a "Source quality" column beside the synced fields, a sync should never overwrite it.
• A schedule you can state. "Updated every 30 minutes" is a promise you can plan around.

Option 1: a Google Sheet, no database needed

For a solo agent, a loan officer or a small team, a Google Sheet is the right destination. Everyone can open it, filter it and pivot it without learning SQL.

1. Create a spreadsheet and share it with SyncYak's address as an editor.
2. Connect Follow Up Boss with an API key.
3. Choose what to sync. People sync by default, into a tab of their own, with one row per lead.

Rows are updated in place by CRM id, deleted leads are marked, and columns you add yourself are left alone. A sheet is also a good place to see problems early: sort by last activity, filter for leads with no assigned agent, or count leads by source. If you want to go further with sheets, the Follow Up Boss to Google Sheets page walks through the setup.

One practical limit: Google Sheets has a cell cap per spreadsheet. A brokerage with tens of thousands of leads and wide records should look at the database option below rather than push a sheet to its limit.

Option 2: Postgres or MySQL for teams and platforms

If you have an analyst, a BI tool or a developer, put the leads in a database. SyncYak writes to a Postgres or MySQL database you own, so your connection string, your backups and your access rules apply.

Give SyncYak a connection string for a database where it may create tables. It needs CREATE on the schema, and SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE on the tables it creates:

postgres://syncyak:[email protected]:5432/crm?sslmode=require

Each connection has a name you choose. For a connection called brokerage, you get a table per entity, with the CRM record stored as JSON, and a view with one typed column per field:

-- every lead, newest sync first
select *
from to_syncyak_brokerage_people_flat
order by synced_at desc
limit 20;

From there, ordinary SQL answers the questions a CRM report builder struggles with: leads by source by month, time from creation to first assignment, or which agents have the oldest untouched leads. Point Metabase, Looker Studio or a spreadsheet connector at the _flat view and you have a dashboard without touching the vendor's API again.

Writing enrichment back

A one-way copy is a backup. A two-way copy is a workflow. Once the leads are in your sheet or database, you can compute something and send it back: a lead score, a tag, an assigned agent.

For Follow Up Boss, you map a column of a from_syncyak_ table, or a column header in a sheet tab, to a CRM field. When a row changes, SyncYak writes the value onto the matching lead, creating custom fields that do not exist yet. Write-back is available from the Hobby plan and works with Follow Up Boss, Lofty, HighLevel and Cloze. See Follow Up Boss custom fields for how the mapping works.

Keep write-back narrow. Map the two or three fields your team will actually look at inside the CRM, and leave the rest of the analysis in the sheet or database.

How SyncYak helps

SyncYak CRM keeps a live copy of your leads in a Google Sheet or in Postgres or MySQL you own, and can write mapped fields back onto CRM records. Every lead syncs on every plan; the plan sets the pace. On the Free plan, SyncYak writes up to 100 leads every 60 minutes with one CRM connection. Hobby is $29 a month and syncs up to 1,000 leads every 30 minutes with two connections, real-time webhooks and write-back. Pro is $99 a month for 5,000 leads every 10 minutes and five connections. Current limits are always on the pricing page, and the CRM product page lists the supported CRMs.

Make the copy a habit

Do these three things in the first week:

1. Connect the CRM and let the first sync finish.
2. Add one report you actually need, such as leads by source this month.
3. Decide who owns the sheet or database, and who can read it.

The report matters most. A copy that feeds something people look at gets noticed when it breaks. A copy that nobody uses is a backup you find out is stale on the day you need it.

Ready to try it? Create a free SyncYak account and connect your first CRM in a few minutes.