Sales Pipeline: Track Leads From First Contact to Closed Deal

Sales Pipeline: Track Leads From First Contact to Closed Deal

The Pipeline is where inquiries live before they become sales. Every quote request, walk-in who wants to think about it, or company asking for bulk pricing becomes a deal card that you drag across stages as the conversation progresses. At a glance the board shows what is in play, how much it is worth, and who needs a follow-up today.

Opening the Board

Go to Sales & CRM → Pipeline. The first visit creates a default pipeline with seven stages: New Lead, Contacted, Qualified, Proposal Sent, Negotiation, Won, and Lost. Each column shows its deal count and total value; the cards inside show the deal title, the person or company, the value, the owner's initials, and a follow-up badge when one is due.

The stat cards along the top summarise the pipeline:

• Open deals / Open value — everything not yet won or lost.
• Weighted forecast — each open deal's value multiplied by its probability. A ₱100,000 deal at 40% counts as ₱40,000.
• Won this month — value and count of deals marked won since the 1st.
• Win rate (90 days) — won ÷ (won + lost) over the last three months.
• Overdue follow-ups — open deals whose next action date has passed.

Adding a Deal

1. Click New Deal and give it a title that says what is being sold, e.g. "Catering for Dela Cruz wedding, 150 pax".
2. Search for an existing customer by name, phone, or email — or, if this is someone new, leave the search empty and type their name, phone, email, and company in the contact fields. You do not need a customer record to start a deal.
3. Fill in the value, an expected close date, the owner (the staff member responsible), and where the lead came from (source).
4. Optionally set the first follow-up: what to do and when. It appears on the card and in the Follow-ups list.

Moving Deals

Drag a card to another column to change its stage. Dropping it into a Won column closes the deal as won; dropping it into Lost asks for a reason (price, competitor, stopped responding, timing, budget, not a fit, or your own note) and closes it as lost. Dragging a closed deal back into an open column reopens it. Closed deals stay visible in their Won/Lost column for 30 days and are always available in the List view with the status filter.

On the deal page the same stages appear as a row of pills — click one to move the deal there without dragging.

The Deal Page: Timeline and Follow-ups

Click a card to open the deal. The left side is the timeline: every stage move, win/loss, edit, and the activities your team logs. Use Log activity to record a note, call, meeting, email, message, or task, and set the next follow-up in the same stroke — "Called, no answer, try again Thursday" is one entry.

When a follow-up is due, a banner appears at the top of the deal with a Mark done button, which logs the task as done and clears the reminder. The Follow-ups page (button on the board) lists every open deal with a scheduled action, split into overdue, due today, and the next two weeks, with tap-to-call phone numbers and a per-owner filter.

The right side holds the deal's details — value, probability (leave blank to use the stage's default), expected close, owner, source, notes — and the contact card.

From Lead to Customer to Quotation

• Link an existing customer at any time from the contact card's search box.
• Create customer record (in the ⋯ menu) turns the deal's contact fields into a customer in your Customers list and links the deal to it. Do this when the lead is real enough to invoice, check in, or earn loyalty points.
• Create quotation (once a customer is linked) opens the quotation form with that customer pre-selected. The finished quote is attached to the deal and shown on the deal page, and the deal's timeline records it. See Sales Quotations.

Customising Stages

Open Pipeline → ⚙ Settings to rename stages, reorder them, change their colours, and set each stage's probability. Mark a stage's type as Won or Lost to make it a closing column; every pipeline needs at least one open stage. A stage that still has deals in it cannot be removed until they are moved. You can also add a second pipeline (for example one for walk-in retail and another for corporate accounts) and switch between them from the dropdown next to the board title.

Who Can Use It

The Pipeline needs the Manage Sales Pipeline capability (Roles & Permissions → Customers). Roles that already had Edit Customers received it automatically; store owners always have access.

Multiple Pipelines, Each With Its Own Stages

The board you see on your first visit is a starter, not a fixed layout. Rename it, change its stages, or run several pipelines side by side — one for walk-in retail, another for corporate accounts, another for event bookings or memberships. Every pipeline has its own stages, probabilities, and colours, and its own board.

Creating a Pipeline

1. On the board, click New Pipeline (or pick ＋ New pipeline… from the pipeline dropdown next to the title).
2. Name it, then choose what to start from:
   • Sales (starter) — New Lead → Contacted → Qualified → Proposal Sent → Negotiation → Won / Lost.
   • Simple — Inquiry → Follow-up → Won / Lost.
   • Blank — one open stage plus Won and Lost, for building your own from scratch.
   • Copy an existing pipeline — the same stages as one you already have.
3. Leave Open the stage editor right after creating ticked and you land on the editor for the new pipeline, where you can rename, reorder, recolour, and re-weight its stages before the first deal goes in.

Switching and Editing

The pipeline dropdown beside the board title switches between your pipelines; the Stages button next to it opens that pipeline's editor. Tick Default on the pipeline the board should open with. A pipeline can be removed once it has no deals, and you always keep at least one.

Deals and Pipelines

New Deal asks which pipeline the deal belongs to and lists that pipeline's stages. To move an existing deal to a different pipeline, change the Pipeline field on its details card; it lands in the stage you pick, or the new pipeline's first open stage if you leave the stage untouched. The move is recorded on the deal's timeline.