Adding deals and moving them through stages

Every opportunity in Pipento is a deal. A deal holds who you're talking to, what it's worth, where it's up to and what happens next. Getting these right is what makes the rest of Pipento useful.

Adding a deal

Click New Deal at the top of Tracker, or use Add deal under any stage to drop it straight into that group. Give it a name you'll recognise at a glance, such as the company or the piece of work.

On the left of the deal window you set the stage and, on the Team plan, the owner. Below that are the contact's name, company, email and phone. Once these are filled in, the Email and Call buttons let you get in touch straight from the deal, and the contact is added to Contacts for you.

Next action is a short note of what happens next, such as "Send proposal" or "Discovery call Thursday". Follow-up is the date you'll do it, and Last contacted is when you last spoke. These three fields drive your calendar, your follow-ups and Pulse, so fill them in every time.

Value and financials

The Financials tab is where the money goes. Recurring value is what the deal is worth over 12 months, and monthly recurring is the monthly figure. You can also add what it costs you to deliver each month, a close date, and a one-off project fee with its own cost if the work isn't recurring. Source records where the deal came from, such as a referral.

Stages

Tracker groups your deals into stages. Pre-Qualified is for early leads you haven't qualified yet. Qualified is for leads you're actively working, and Discovery deals sit in this group too. Proposed means a proposal is out and you're waiting for a decision. Committed means signed and live.

The other stages keep the main pipeline clean. Stalled is for deals that are still active but waiting on something. Future Pipeline is for deals that aren't ready yet or have gone cold, so you can come back to them later. Ghosted is for prospects who went silent after discovery and were never proposed. Lost is for deals you've lost or that didn't show.

To move a deal, open it, change the stage and click Save Deal. It moves to the right group on Tracker straight away. If a deal is lost, record why, because loss reasons show up in Reports.

Turning stages off

If you don't use some stages, you can turn them off from Customise pipeline statuses. A switched-off stage is hidden from Tracker and from the stage list in each deal, but any stage that still has deals in it stays visible, so nothing gets lost.

Keeping Tracker tidy

Each group shows its total value, and you can collapse a group with the arrow next to its name. Use the search box at the top to find a deal by name. The Updates column shows how many activity entries each deal has, so a deal with none stands out.