Building and Working Your Sales Pipeline

Deals are how StretchCRM tracks revenue opportunities. Each deal flows through your Sales Pipeline — an ordered set of stages, each with a win probability — so you always know what you're working and what it's worth.

The default Sales Pipeline

StretchCRM ships with a ready‑to‑use Sales Pipeline whose stages carry a built‑in win probability:

These probabilities are what turn a raw list of deals into a weighted forecast: a $20,000 deal in Proposal Sent (65%) represents about $13,000 of expected value, while the same deal in Discovery (40%) represents about $8,000.

Deal fields

When you create or edit a deal you can set:

• Title (required) — a short description of the opportunity.
• Company and Contact — who the deal is with.
• Amount — the deal value (type a plain number; currency defaults to CAD).
• Close date — when you expect it to close.
• Deal type — for example new business or retainer.
• Priority — normal, high, etc.
• Stage — where it sits in the pipeline.
• Owner — the responsible rep.
• Status — open by default; a deal is done when it reaches Closed Won or Closed Lost.

If you don't pick a stage when creating a deal, it starts in the first stage, New Lead.

Creating a deal

1. Open Deals and choose New.
2. Enter a title — e.g. "Northstar brand system and launch CRM."
3. Attach the company and contact.
4. Enter the amount — e.g. 18500.
5. Set the close date, deal type, priority, and owner.
6. Save. The deal appears on your pipeline board in its stage.

Moving a deal through stages

As an opportunity progresses, move it forward:

1. Open the pipeline board (or the deal's detail view).
2. Move the deal to its new stage — for example from Discovery to Proposal Sent.
3. StretchCRM records the change automatically as a stage‑change activity on the deal's timeline, so you have a full history of how the opportunity advanced.

Moving a deal to Closed Won marks it won; Closed Lost marks it lost. Both remove it from your open‑pipeline totals.

Reading your pipeline

Your pipeline board shows each stage with:

• The number of deals in that stage.
• The total open value in that stage.

Combine stage value with the stage's win probability to gauge expected revenue. The dashboard's open pipeline value is the raw sum of open deals; applying stage probabilities gives you a more realistic, weighted forecast.

A worked example

You're managing two opportunities:

• Northstar brand system — $18,500, Proposal Sent (65%) → ~$12,025 weighted.
• Prairie managed growth retainer — $32,000, Discovery (40%) → ~$12,800 weighted.

Raw open pipeline: $50,500. Weighted expected value: ~$24,825. When Prairie's discovery call goes well and you move it to Proposal Sent, its weighted value jumps to ~$20,800 — instantly showing the impact of that progression.

Tips

• Keep stages current. A weighted forecast is only as honest as your stages. Move deals promptly.
• Set a realistic close date. It drives your period forecasts and highlights deals that are slipping.
• Use priority to triage. When you have more deals than hours, sort by priority and expected value.
• Let stage changes tell the story. Because every move is logged as an activity, you can look back and see exactly when and how a deal advanced — useful for coaching and deal reviews.

Troubleshooting

"Deal title is required." Every deal needs a title. Add a short description and save.

"No deal pipeline is available" / "No deal stage is available." Your organization's Sales Pipeline or its stages haven't been set up. Contact your workspace administrator — deals require an active Sales Pipeline with at least one stage.

A stage change didn't stick. Confirm you moved the deal to a valid stage in the Sales Pipeline (deals can only use deal stages, not support stages). If it still fails, the deal may belong to a different org scope than the one you're viewing.

My weighted forecast looks off. Weighted value depends on the stage probability. Double‑check that deals are in the stage that truly reflects reality — an over‑optimistic stage inflates the forecast.