Sales Pipeline: Run Your Deals to Close

The Pipeline is your visual deal board — a kanban where every open opportunity is a card that moves left-to-right through stages as it gets closer to a sale. You open it from the CRM sub-navigation at CRM -> Pipeline, and the page header reads *"Track deals to close. Drag a card to move it forward."* Think of it as the answer to one question your contact list can't answer on its own: *"Of everyone interested, who is actually about to buy, and what is that worth?"*

A contact is a person; a deal (also called a lead or opportunity) is a specific potential sale tied to that person. One contact can have several deals over time — a first project, then a repeat order a year later — and each is its own card on the board. This separation is what lets you forecast revenue, not just count people.

Who is this for? Any owner who follows up on enquiries that don't close instantly — quotes, projects, bookings, B2B orders, retainers. If your sales are pure one-tap impulse buys you may live mostly in Contacts and Orders, but the moment a sale takes more than one conversation, the pipeline keeps it from slipping through the cracks. The board ships ready to use: a default Sales pipeline with five stages is created for you automatically the first time you have any lead.

Across the top of the board sit three summary cards that recalculate every time the page loads. They cover only open deals — anything already Won or Lost drops out of these totals, so the numbers always reflect live, in-flight business rather than history.

Open deals is a simple count of how many active opportunities are on the board right now. It's your workload-at-a-glance: 4 open deals is a calm week, 40 means you need to prioritise. It ignores value on purpose so you can see effort separately from money.

Pipeline value adds up the deal value of every open card, shown with your currency (e.g. *45,000 USD*). This is the headline "if everything closed" number — optimistic by nature, because not every open deal will win. Deals you leave blank simply contribute 0 here, which is why filling in a value matters.

Weighted forecast (shown in green, with a small ⓘ) is the realistic number. It multiplies each deal's value by its stage's win-probability and sums the result — the tooltip says it plainly: *"Sum of deal value × stage win-probability."* So a 10,000 USD deal in a stage set to 60% counts as 6,000 toward the forecast. As you drag a deal into later, higher-probability stages, your weighted forecast climbs automatically — this is the figure to quote when someone asks "what's really coming in this month?"

One detail on currency: the board displays a single currency, taken from the first deal you created that has a currency set (falling back to USD if none do). The pipeline does not convert between currencies, so for clean totals keep all your deals in one currency.

Each column is a stage — a step in your sales process. Your default Sales pipeline ships with five: New, Contacted, Qualified, Won, and Lost, in that left-to-right order. New through Qualified are the working stages; Won and Lost are the two closing stages where deals leave the open board.

Each column header carries four pieces of information at a glance: a coloured dot and the stage name, the stage's probability (e.g. *60%*), and a count of cards in that column. Just below, a subtitle shows that column's total value and, in green, its weighted contribution (labelled *wtd*). So you can see not only how many deals sit in "Qualified" but exactly how much money — raw and risk-adjusted — is parked there.

The probability percentage is what powers the weighted forecast for every card in that column. Early stages typically carry low probability and the closing Won stage represents a done deal. If a stage shows *0%*, deals in it contribute value to Pipeline value but nothing to Weighted forecast until you move them onward — a deliberate nudge to keep things flowing.

When a stage has no cards, it doesn't disappear — it shows a faint *"Drop deals here"* placeholder so you always have a target to drag onto. An empty column is a perfectly valid state; it just means nothing has reached that step yet.

Every card is one deal, and it's deliberately compact so you can scan a column fast. The top line is the contact's name (falling back to their email, then the deal title) and it's a link — click it to open that person's full Contact-360 page with their journey, timeline, score and tasks.

Below the name, if you gave the deal a custom title, it appears as a small grey line (e.g. *Landscaping project*). The card hides this line when the title is just the auto-generated default, keeping the card clean. The next row shows the deal value with its currency, or a muted *"No value"* if you haven't set one yet.

On the right of that row is an age badge like *"3d"* — the number of days since the deal last moved or was edited. It turns red once a deal goes stale (more on that next). At the bottom of each card sit two small controls, Edit and Delete, which are kept out of the drag gesture so you can tap them without accidentally moving the card.

Click the blue New deal button in the top-right of the page. A modal opens with five fields. You can also add a deal directly from a contact's page — both routes land in the same place on the board.

Contact (required): choose who the deal is for from the dropdown, which lists your most recently active contacts. This is the only mandatory field — a deal must belong to a person. If the contact you want isn't there yet, create them first (any form submission, booking, or newsletter signup creates a contact automatically) and they'll appear in the list.

Deal title (optional): a short label like *"Landscaping project"* so you can tell two deals for the same person apart. Leave it blank and the system names it *"[Name] — opportunity"* for you; that auto-title is hidden on the card to avoid clutter. The field accepts up to 191 characters.

Value (optional): the deal's expected revenue as a number — e.g. *1500*. It feeds both Pipeline value and (via the stage probability) the Weighted forecast. You can leave it blank and add it later once you've scoped the work; the card will just read *"No value"* until then. Negative numbers aren't allowed.

Stage (optional): pick where the deal starts. The dropdown only offers the working stages (New, Contacted, Qualified) — never Won or Lost, since you don't *start* a deal as closed. If you skip this, the deal lands in your first stage (New) by default.

Expected close (optional): a target date for closing the deal. It doesn't change the forecast maths, but it's a useful planning anchor and you can review it when you edit the deal later. Click Add deal to save; the new card appears in your chosen stage immediately.

To advance a deal, grab its card and drag it into another stage column, then drop it. The cursor turns to a grab hand over a card, and the move saves the instant you drop — you'll see a green *"Deal moved."* toast confirm it. The forecast row and column totals update on your next page load to reflect the new stage's probability.

If the move can't be saved (a rare network hiccup, or the page was open while something changed), the card snaps back to where it started and you'll see a red *"Could not move the deal — please try again."* message. Nothing is left in a half-moved state — the board never silently desyncs from the server.

Dropping a deal into the Won stage is special: it marks the deal won, stamps its close date, and promotes the contact to a Customer in your CRM (their lifecycle stage changes from Lead to Customer). It also logs a *"Moved to Won"* activity on their timeline and can fire any won automation you've set up — for example a *Won — thank you* recipe that creates a follow-up task and tags them *Customer*.

Dropping into Lost marks the deal lost and closes it out of your open totals. This isn't a failure to hide — recording a loss keeps your forecast honest and your win-rate meaningful. A lost deal stays attached to the contact's history, so if they come back later you still have the full context and can open a fresh deal.

Click Edit on any card to open the edit modal. You can change the Deal title, Value, Currency (a 3-letter code like USD or AED, auto-uppercased), and the Expected close date. Note you change the *stage* by dragging, not from this form — editing is for the deal's details, dragging is for its position.

When you hit Save changes, the page reloads briefly so all the forecast totals and per-column sums recompute on the server — that's why you'll see your edited value reflected in the top KPI cards right away. Value accepts up to a billion and rejects negatives, so a typo can't quietly poison your forecast.

Delete removes the deal permanently. You'll get a confirmation first — *"Delete this deal? This cannot be undone."* — with the deal's name shown so you don't remove the wrong one. Deleting a deal does not delete the contact or their history; it only removes that one opportunity from the board. Prefer dragging to Lost over deleting when a deal simply didn't close, so your win/loss record stays complete — reserve delete for genuine mistakes and duplicates.

A deal goes stale (the code calls it "rotting") when it hasn't moved or been edited for 14 days or more. The board flags these so a promising deal never quietly dies from neglect — stalled deals are the single biggest source of lost revenue in any pipeline.

You'll spot a stale deal two ways. On the card itself, a small red dot appears next to the name and the age badge turns red — hover it and the tooltip reads *"Idle X days — needs attention."* At the column level, the header shows a red "N stalling" pill counting how many deals in that stage have gone stale. Healthy columns show no pill at all, so any red you see is a real to-do.

To clear a stale flag, just move the deal forward, or edit it after you've actually taken an action (logged a call, sent a quote). Either resets its "last moved" clock and the red disappears. The flag is about *activity*, not age — a 60-day deal you nudge weekly never goes red, while a 15-day deal you've ignored does.

Filter by card or store (scope). If you run more than one vCard or store, a scope selector appears so you can view the pipeline for just one of them — useful when different cards represent different lines of business. The whole board, including the forecast numbers, recalculates for the scope you pick.

A simple daily loop: open the board each morning, scan left for any red flags first, then work the rightmost (closest-to-close) deals before the newer ones. Drag winners into Won, honest losses into Lost, and add a quick value to any deal still showing *"No value"*. Five minutes here keeps your forecast trustworthy.

Let the rest of the CRM do the heavy lifting. A deal won't create itself — but the contact behind it often does, automatically, the moment someone submits a form or books. Pair the pipeline with Automations (e.g. auto-create a follow-up task for every new lead, or alert you when a lead turns Hot) so deals don't depend on you remembering. The pipeline is where you *decide*; automations make sure you never *forget*.

Always set a value, even a rough one. A blank value contributes nothing to your forecast, so a board full of *"No value"* cards under-reports your real opportunity. An estimate you refine later beats a zero — you can always edit it when the scope firms up.

Move deals as reality changes, not in batches. The weighted forecast is only as honest as your stage placement. Drag a deal forward the day the customer says "send me a quote," not at month-end — that's how the green number stays a figure you can actually rely on.

Treat any red as today's work. Stale flags exist precisely so nothing slips. A two-minute pass clearing red dots each morning is the highest-leverage habit on this page — most "lost" deals were never lost on price, they were lost to silence.

Record losses honestly. Dragging dead deals to Lost instead of deleting them keeps your win-rate real and teaches you where deals die. A pipeline that only ever shows wins is a pipeline you can't learn from.

Use deal titles when a contact has more than one opportunity. "Ahmed Ali" tells you who; *"Ahmed — Q3 retainer"* vs *"Ahmed — website rebuild"* tells you which. Clear titles turn a crowded column into something you can actually triage at a glance.

Do I have to set up the pipeline before I can use it? No. A default Sales pipeline with five stages — New, Contacted, Qualified, Won, Lost — is created for you automatically the first time you have any lead, so you can start dragging deals on day one without configuring anything.

What's the difference between a contact and a deal? A contact is a person in your CRM; a deal is one specific potential sale tied to that person. The same contact can have several deals over time, and each is its own card — that's how the pipeline forecasts money rather than just counting people.

Why is my weighted forecast lower than my pipeline value? Because it should be. Pipeline value is the "if everything closes" total; weighted forecast discounts each deal by its stage's win-probability, so an early-stage deal counts only partially. As deals advance toward Won the two numbers converge — the gap between them is your risk.

What happens to the contact when I win a deal? Winning (dragging into the Won stage) automatically promotes them from a Lead to a Customer in your CRM, records the win on their timeline, and can trigger any "won" automation you've enabled — such as a thank-you task and a *Customer* tag.

A deal turned red — what does that mean? It's the stale flag: the deal hasn't moved or been edited for 14 days or more. It's a nudge, not a penalty. Take an action and move or edit the card, and the red dot and red age badge clear themselves.

Should I delete a deal that didn't work out, or mark it Lost? Mark it Lost by dragging it into the Lost stage. That keeps your win-rate accurate and preserves the history on the contact in case they return. Reserve Delete for genuine mistakes or duplicate cards — it's permanent and asks you to confirm first.

Why does my board only show one currency? The pipeline displays a single currency — the one on your first deal that has a currency set, or USD as a fallback — and it does not convert between currencies. For clean, comparable totals, keep all your deals in the same currency.

Can I move a deal back to an earlier stage? Yes — drag works in both directions. If a "Qualified" deal cools off, drag it back to "Contacted"; the forecast simply re-weights to the new stage's probability. The board reflects reality, and reality isn't always forward.