Pipeline Stages
Where: Sales → Pipeline Stages (also reachable from the breadcrumb on the CRM Pipeline).
The columns on your CRM board are yours. If your business runs a site survey between qualifying a customer and quoting them, add that column and stop pretending the survey is part of "Qualified".
Every company starts with the eight standard stages — New Lead, Contacted, Qualified, Quotation Sent, Negotiation, Won, Lost, Dropped — and every existing deal is already placed on them. Nothing breaks if you never open this page.
What each stage carries
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | The column heading on the board. |
| Counts as | Which of the eight built-in statuses this stage behaves like. See below — this is the important one. |
| Default win chance (%) | Pre-filled probability when a deal lands here, which drives the weighted forecast. Locked on Won and Lost stages. |
| Flag as stuck after (days) | Deals sitting here longer than this are flagged as stalled. Blank = no limit. |
| Colour | The stripe on the board column and the stage row. |
"Counts as" — read this before adding a stage
Your dashboard, your forecast, the Follow-up Agent and the sales-order conversion were all written against the eight original statuses. So every custom stage must declare which one it behaves like.
| Counts as | Meaning |
|---|---|
| New | Just arrived, nobody has worked it yet |
| Contacted | We have reached them |
| Qualified | A real requirement worth pursuing |
| Proposal sent | A quotation has gone out |
| Negotiation | Discussing terms or price |
| Won | Closed — counts towards revenue |
| Lost | Closed — went elsewhere |
| Dropped | Closed — went quiet |
A "Site survey" stage that counts as Qualified appears as its own column on the board, but reports as qualified pipeline everywhere else — so your forecast stays honest and the follow-up agent still knows the deal is live. Get this wrong and a whole column vanishes from your numbers.
Every stage move writes both the stage and its "counts as" status onto the lead. That's why adding stages doesn't break the dozen screens and agents that were reading the old field.
Adding, editing, reordering
- Add stage appends to the end of the board; move it afterwards.
- Edit on any row opens name, win chance, stuck-after and colour inline. "Counts as" is set when the stage is created.
- ▲ / ▼ reorder the board immediately, for everyone.
Changing stages changes the board for the whole company. Deals already on the board keep their position — a rename is just a rename.
Removing a stage
You're asked where the deals in it should go. That's not a confirmation dialog being polite; a stage with deals in it cannot simply be deleted, because those deals have to live somewhere. Pick the destination stage and they're all moved.
Practical advice
- Fewer stages, honestly used, beat more stages. Every column you add is a column somebody has to drag cards into.
- Give each stage an exit criterion you can say out loud — "they've confirmed a budget", "the quote is delivered". A stage you can't define is a stage that fills up with deals nobody moves.
- Set "flag as stuck after" on the middle stages, where deals actually rot. Negotiation and Quotation Sent are the usual suspects.
- Don't create a "Won — awaiting PO" stage that counts as Won. Won means a sales order exists. Anything else is Negotiation wearing a hat.