Deals and pipelines

A deal is one opportunity to sell something to one contact. Deals move through the stages of a pipeline that your company names, and the board shows at a glance what is open, what is worth how much, and what needs attention. This guide covers setting up pipelines, adding and moving deals, deal lines, closing deals and the health score.

Before you start

• Every deal belongs to a contact. Add the person or company first in Contacts.
• A company needs at least one pipeline before anyone can add a deal. Only owners and admins can create and change pipelines.

If your company uses custom roles, a role can also hide areas that depend on the plan, such as deal lines or quotes. See Roles and access.

Set up a pipeline

1. In the sidebar, select Deals.
2. Select Sales pipelines.
3. Enter a Pipeline name and select Create pipeline. The new pipeline starts with five common stages: New enquiry, Contacted, Qualified, Proposal sent and Negotiation.
4. To rename a stage, change its Stage name and select Save.
5. To change the order, select Up or Down next to a stage.
6. To add a stage, type a Stage name at the end of the pipeline and select Add stage. New stages go last.
7. To take a stage out of use, select Remove.

Limits and rules:

• A pipeline holds up to 12 stages. A pipeline name can be 120 characters long, a stage name 80.
• A pipeline always keeps at least one stage.
• You cannot remove a stage that still has open deals. Move them to another stage first.
• You cannot remove a stage that a website form, a conversation channel or a store connection sends new enquiries to. Change or turn off that source first. See Website forms.
• Pipelines cannot be renamed or deleted from this page. Removing a stage keeps the closed deals that passed through it.

Add a deal

1. Open the contact the deal is for.
2. In the Deals section of the contact, select Add deal.
3. Fill in the form and select Create deal.

You cannot add a deal to an archived contact. Restore the contact first.

Deals can also be created for you: a store that sends a quote request, a website form or a connected channel can open a deal in the stage you chose for it.

Work the board

The Deals board shows one pipeline at a time, with a column for each stage. Each column shows its count and its total value per currency. Amounts in different currencies are never added together or converted.

At the top, the summary shows Open deals, Need attention, Open value and Median first response, which is the typical time between a deal being created and its first reply, over the latest 200 deals that have one.

To narrow the board:

1. If you have several pipelines, choose one under Pipeline name.
2. Type in Search to match the deal title, the contact name or the company name.
3. Tick Assigned to me or Need attention only.
4. Select Apply.

A column shows the 50 most recently updated deals. When a stage holds more, the column says More deals in this stage. Narrow the search to see them.

To move a deal one stage, use the back and forward arrows on its card. To jump to any stage, open the deal, choose the Stage and select Move.

What "needs attention" means

A deal is flagged when any of these is true:

When you answer the customer, open the deal and select Mark first reply sent. The first reply is recorded once; selecting it again changes nothing.

Deal lines

Available when your plan includes Products and deal lines.

Deal lines list what the customer is buying. Once a deal has a line, its amount is the sum of its lines and can no longer be typed by hand.

1. Open the deal and go to Deal lines.
2. Choose a Product from your catalog, or Enter by hand and type the Item name.
3. Enter the Quantity. For a product, leave Unit price empty to use its catalog price, or type a different price.
4. Select Add line.

Good to know:

• All lines of a deal use one currency. A catalog price keeps its own currency.
• The price is copied into the line, so later changes to the product leave the deal alone.
• Quantity is a whole number from 1 to 1,000,000, and a deal holds up to 200 lines.
• To change a line, select Remove and add it again.

With lines in place, you can create a quote from the deal. See Quotes and invoices. Products are described in Products and orders.

Close or reopen a deal

1. Open the deal.
2. Select Mark as won, or choose a Reason lost and select Mark as lost. The reasons are Price, Chose a competitor, No response, Bad timing, Not a fit and Other.

Closed deals leave the board. Select Closed deals on the board to see them, with their outcome and closing date, 25 to a page. A closed deal cannot be edited. To change it, open it and select Reopen deal: it returns to its last stage and its time in stage starts again.

Marking a deal as won can start an automation, for example a thank-you task. See Automations.

Deal health

Each open deal gets a health score from 0 to 100 and one of four labels: Likely to close, Progressing, At risk or Gone cold. The deal page shows up to three reasons, such as The customer accepted a quote, It has not moved for two weeks or The expected close date has passed. The score comes from fixed rules over what is already recorded: the stage, quotes, messages from the customer, the next step and the close date.

Below the score, owners, admins and members can answer Is this right? with Right or Wrong. Each person has one answer per deal, and a new answer replaces the old one. The answers show how often the score matches your team's judgement; they do not change the score.

The deal page

Besides the actions above, the deal page shows:

• Details: contact, owner, next step, expected close and the first response time.
• Quotes for this deal, when your plan includes quotes.
• Open Tasks for the deal, with Add task and Add appointment. See Tasks and Today.
• Your company's custom fields for deals, when your plan includes them. See Custom fields.
• History: the latest 30 changes, with who made them and when, in UTC. The history names the fields that changed, not their old values.

For goals and a sales forecast built from your pipelines, see Goals and forecast in Reports, available when your plan includes Goals and forecast.

Troubleshooting

• "This deal was changed": someone saved the deal while you were working on it. Nothing was overwritten. Select Open the latest version and make your change again.
• "Amount and currency must be entered together": fill in both, or leave both empty.
• "This deal has lines, so its amount comes from them": change the lines instead of the amount.
• "Reopen this deal before changing it": the deal is closed.
• "No sales pipeline yet": ask an owner or admin to create a pipeline.