Work an opportunity pipeline

Personas: Sales rep (owns the deal; works from My Opportunities or the CRM group) · Modules: Leads & Opportunities, Quotations You have a real deal in play. You track its value and win chance, walk it through the pipeline stages with one button per step, and when it is time to make an offer, one click creates the quotation and moves the deal to the proposal stage.

Before you start: for My Opportunities, an Employee record whose Username equals your username. A deal that will get a quotation needs a Customer — convert the lead first if it came from one (see Capture and qualify a lead).

1. Open the deal — Sales rep

1. Open Opportunities (CRM group) or My Opportunities (Personal shell — your deals only, owner set automatically). Deals converted from leads are already here, linked back to their lead.
2. Click New Opportunity (or open an existing one). Fill in the Date, a Name (what the deal is), the Customer (once there is one), the Expected Value and Currency, the win Probability (%, starts at 10) and the Expected Close Date.
3. Save. The deal gets an OPP… number and starts in stage PROSPECTING. The Weighted Value is computed for you: expected value × probability / 100, rounded to 2 decimals — it is read-only and recalculates on every save. This is the forecast number the pipeline reports add up.

2. Walk the pipeline — Sales rep

The stage pill is advanced only by the per-record buttons — each is available only in the stages listed, and refuses with the reason elsewhere.

1. Qualify (from PROSPECTING) → QUALIFICATION.
2. Propose (from QUALIFICATION) → PROPOSAL.
3. Negotiate (from PROPOSAL) → NEGOTIATION.
4. At any open stage (PROSPECTING, QUALIFICATION, PROPOSAL, NEGOTIATION): Mark Won → WON, or Mark Lost → LOST. A closed deal offers no further stage buttons.
5. Along the way, keep the activity trail: dated entries with a Type (Call, Meeting, Email, Task), Subject, Note, Done — next steps and follow-ups, author and timestamp recorded automatically. Update the Probability as your confidence changes; the weighted value follows.

3. Make the offer — Sales rep

1. Click Create Quotation on the deal. A new Quotation is created with the deal's Customer, Currency, Owner and company carried over, dated today, numbered QT…, starting DRAFT — and linked back to this opportunity.
2. The opportunity's stage flips to PROPOSAL automatically — that is the system's write, not yours. Price the offer and send it from the quotation itself.

What happened behind the scenes

• Number series Opportunity (OPP); the quotation drew from Quotation (QT).
• Stage path: PROSPECTING → QUALIFICATION → PROPOSAL → NEGOTIATION, closing at WON or LOST from any open stage. Create Quotation set PROPOSAL the same way a button would.
• Weighted value is server-computed on create and on every update — never typed in.
• Reports that moved: Pipeline By Stage (count, expected and weighted value per stage), Open Opportunities (the dashboard counter), Opportunities By Owner, Won Lost Split.

Variations and refusals

• Create Quotation needs the deal to carry a Customer — a quotation cannot be saved without one. If the deal came from an unconverted lead, run Convert to Customer on the lead and set the customer here first.
• Stage buttons pressed out of order refuse (e.g. Negotiate on a QUALIFICATION deal) — the pipeline walk is strictly one stage at a time; only Won/Lost jump.
• You can win or lose a deal at any open stage — no need to walk it to NEGOTIATION first.
• Creating a second quotation for the same deal is allowed (a re-offer); each is linked back to the opportunity.

See also

• Leads & Opportunities — the module reference
• Prepare and send a quotation — the offer's own lifecycle