During our qualification process, when we qualify a lead and we are converting it to a contact, account and opportunity; we are able to search for an existing contact and account but for an opportunity can create new or delete. Is there a way to open this up to search for existing?
The standard relationship between a lead and an Opportunity is One to Many, meaning a single lead can spawn multiple opportunities but not the other way around. There's a logic to this, in that a lead isn't really a lead if you already have an Opportunity for that specific sale existing in your system. If anything, I would typically recommend the lead be closed out as qualified with a status reason of 'Existing Opportunity' or something similar.
With the above being said, I know that companies don't always fit into the preferred or standard definitions of the sales process that is provided to us out of the box. In this case, you can meet the business requirement in a few ways.
You can create a custom relationship between the lead and Opportunity form, and then place a lookup on the lead to the Opportunity table. This would allow users to essentially define an existing Opportunity that the lead is related to prior to closing. This helps preserve reporting based on your situation, but the lead process would remain as-is when you click on qualify or disqualify
With both of the above approaches, the new relationship could then also allow you to place a subgrid on the Opportunity table to show all of the related leads to the Opportunity.
At the end of the day, something like this is doable but it requires straying outside of the standard processes. I might recommend making sure you have a strong business case and understanding of what a lead truly is in your organization, and if it makes sense to have and work a lead that is in actuality further down the sales funnel already.
Hope this helped, and good luck on the requirement!
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