Deals and the pipeline

Flowtly Editorial Team5 min

A deal is a sale you are working on: a customer, an amount, and the stage it has reached. The pipeline is those deals arranged by stage, so what is in play and what needs attention are visible at a glance.

Creating one

New deal asks for a deal name, a customer, an amount and a stage. Two of those are enforced:

  • A deal needs a customer. You either pick an existing one or create a new one inline. A new customer needs a name and a country, and takes the currency you chose on the deal.
  • The stage defaults to the first open stage, so it is never blank.

Owner, expected close date, contact and probability are optional and can be filled in later from the deal's own panel.

Working the board

The Pipeline tab is one column per stage. Drag a card to another column as the sale progresses; the move is announced as you drag, and releasing outside any column cancels it rather than dropping the deal somewhere unintended.

Each column shows how many open deals it holds. Above the board sit two numbers:

  • Open pipeline — the total amount of everything still open.
  • Weighted pipeline — each deal's amount multiplied by its stage's probability.

Weighted pipeline is not a forecast. There is no time horizon in that arithmetic, so a deal expected to close next year counts exactly as much as one closing this week. Read it as a snapshot of the pipeline's quality, not as revenue you can plan around.

Currencies are never mixed. If your open deals span more than one currency, totals are shown per currency rather than summed into a single misleading number.

Two flags worth acting on

A card is flagged when either is true:

  • Past due date — the expected close date has gone by.
  • Stalled — nothing has happened on the deal for 30 days. Any edit counts as activity, not only a stage move, so a deal you are genuinely working never goes stale by accident.

The To follow up count above the board is those two together — the shortest useful list on the page.

The board hides closed deals; the list does not

The Pipeline board shows open deals only. The List tab is the same deals as a table, and it also includes everything won or lost. When a deal you closed disappears from the board, that is where it went.

Search the list by deal name — press / to jump straight to the box — and narrow with the status filter (open, won, lost), the stage filter, owner, customer, or date (this month, next month, no date). My deals limits it to yours.

What a deal holds

Opening a card shows its details, its notes, and its history — every stage move, recorded as from → to. A deal converted from a prospect shows an Origin of Prospect, so you can tell where it came from without asking.

Example use cases

  • See what is genuinely in play right now, without closed deals inflating the total.
  • Spot the deals nobody has touched in a month, before they go quiet for good.
  • Check the weighted pipeline for a sense of quality — while remembering it is not a forecast.
  • Find a deal you closed last quarter by switching to the list and filtering by status.
  • Work a board in two currencies without the totals lying to you.

Connection map

Part ofDerived fromRefers to
Documented hereDocumented elsewhere
lead-list contains lead. lead-activity logged against lead. lead converts to deal. lead becomes counterparty. deal sold to counterparty. deal sits in pipeline-stage. deal closed with lost-reason.containslogged againstconverts tobecomessold tosits inclosed withPProspect list — A finite group of companies to work through. It tracks how many are done against the total, so the work has an end.Prospect listPProspect — A company you are working but that is not a customer yet. It sits at New, Contacted or Qualified, and everything done to it is logged against it.ProspectAActivity — One recorded contact with a prospect — a call, a message, a reply, a bounce, a meeting — attributed to a channel.ActivityDDeal — A sale in progress: a customer, an amount, and the stage it has reached. It cannot exist without a customer, and its stage is never blank.DealCCounterparty — The other side of a financial document — a client billed, or a supplier owed.CounterpartySStage — A step in the pipeline, carrying a probability. That probability is what weights the pipeline total — which is a measure of quality, not a forecast.StageLLost reason — Why a deal was lost, chosen from a fixed list so the answer can be counted later rather than re-read.Lost reason