Your pipeline stages

Pipeline stages, under Settings, is where an admin or the owner names, orders, adds and archives the stages of your sales pipeline, gives a stage a default win probability, and keeps your list of lost reasons. Every member can read both lists. No change here rewrites a deal.

Where do I find the pipeline stages?

Open Settings and choose Manage → on the Pipeline stages card. An admin or the owner also sees an Edit stages link on the Pipeline board. The page holds two cards: Pipeline stages and Lost reasons.

Each stage row shows the stage’s name, its default win probability, and how many of your deals are in it, such as No deals, 1 deal or 4 deals. A stage you have archived carries an Archived badge. Won and lost carry a Closes the deal badge.

Who can change the stages and lost reasons?

An admin or the owner. Everyone else sees both cards with the fields disabled and no buttons, and the server refuses their changes as well, so hiding the buttons is not the only check.

The Pipeline stages card then says “Only an admin or the owner can change the stages.” and the Lost reasons card “Only an admin or the owner can change the lost reasons.”

Action	Approver	Admin or owner	Read-only member
See the stages, their deal counts and the lost reasons	✅	✅	✅
Rename, reorder, add or archive a stage; set its default win probability	❌	✅	❌
Add, rename, reorder or archive a lost reason	❌	✅	❌
Put a deal in a stage and give it a lost reason	✅	✅	❌

Every change applies straight away and is written to the audit trail. There is no approval step.

Which stages does a workspace start with?

Six: lead, qualified, proposal, negotiation, won and lost, in that order. A workspace that already had deals also kept their stages. Any other stage its deals in the built-in CRM were using became a stage of its own, after the six.

Those extra stages are spelled exactly as the deals stored them, and they come in the order of the oldest deal in each. Stage labels on deals synced from Dynamics were not added to the list, because every sync overwrites them. The board still shows each one as a column, so no deal is hidden.

An extra stage that your deals stored as “Won” or “Lost”, with capitals, also closes a deal, so it carries the Closes the deal badge too. Unlike won and lost, it has an Archive button, so you can retire it in favour of won and lost.

How do I rename, reorder or add a stage?

On the stage’s own row, or with the field at the bottom of the card. Each change is saved when you click its button:

• Rename. Change the stage’s name and click Save, which appears once something has changed. A name can be up to 60 characters and cannot be empty. You see Stage saved.
• Reorder. Click ↑ (Move up) or ↓ (Move down). Each click moves the stage one place and shows Order saved.
• Add. Type a name in New stage name and click Add stage. You see Stage added. The new stage goes at the end of the list, so move it up into place.

The order you set is the order of the board’s columns, of the stage pickers and of the funnel on Sales analytics. Your names are what those places show.

No deal changes. A deal stores its stage’s key, which is set when the stage is created and never changes afterwards. A rename edits only the name and a reorder only the position. Renaming won or lost changes only what they are called: they still close a deal.

Can I archive a stage?

Yes, any stage except won and lost. Click Archive on the stage’s row so the stage pickers stop offering it, and Bring back to offer it again at its place in your order. Won and lost close a deal, so they have no Archive button.

Holding the pointer over their Closes the deal badge shows “Won and lost close a deal. You can rename them, but not archive them.” Archiving changes no deal: it only marks the stage, and its deals keep their stage.

What happens to the deals in an archived stage?

They stay in it, and nothing is moved for you. As the card says: “Archived stages are no longer offered for a deal. Deals already in one stay on the board.”

• The stage’s column stays on the Pipeline board while it holds deals, after your active stages. Once it is empty, the column is gone. The funnel on Sales analytics works the same way.
• The stage pickers leave it out: the Move to… control on a deal card, the Stage field of the deal form, and the stage you choose when converting a lead.
• The column takes no drop, so you cannot drag a card into it. A card already in it can still be dragged out or moved with Move to….

The server refuses every deal put into an archived stage, whichever way it comes: moved there, switched to it in an edit, or created in it. A spreadsheet import line whose Deal stage is the key of one gets no deal, and is listed as partly imported (the company is there, the rest is not), with the reason its stage is archived.

Only choosing the stage for a deal is refused. A deal already in it keeps it when you edit the deal, and a deal created without a stage, such as one from an import line with no stage, still goes to lead, even when lead is archived.

What does a stage’s default win probability do?

It fills in the deal form’s Probability (%) when someone picks that stage and the field is still empty. The number appears in the field before you save, so you can change it or clear it. It never changes a deal on its own.

Set it in the small field beside the stage’s name, which shows % while it is empty. Its screen-reader label is Default win probability (%), and holding the pointer over it shows “Filled into an empty probability when somebody picks this stage for a deal. Never changes a deal on its own.” Enter a whole number from 0 to 100, or leave it empty for none, and click Save. Anything else shows “A whole number from 0 to 100, or empty”, and Save does not appear. A 0 counts as a value and fills in 0.

What it does in the deal form:

• ”+ New deal” on the Pipeline board, or “Create your first deal” on an empty board, opens in your first stage that is not archived, with that stage’s default, if it has one, already filled in.
• ”+ New deal” on a company page’s Deals tab fills in nothing when it opens, only when you pick a stage.
• Picking a stage under Stage fills the default in only while Probability (%) is empty. A number already in the field, typed or filled in, is never replaced.
• Opening an existing deal with Edit fills in nothing. An empty probability means it is not known, and only a stage you pick in the form, or a number you type, changes that.

Changing a default rewrites no deal. Moving a deal with the Move to… control or by dragging its card leaves its probability as it was. The six starting stages have no default until you set one. The probability matters because the weighted forecast on Sales analytics counts a deal with no probability as nothing. See The sales pipeline.

How do lost reasons work?

They are a list your workspace keeps on the same page, under Lost reasons. When you set a deal’s Stage to lost in the deal form, Why was it lost? offers your active reasons in your order, plus Other (type it) for a reason of your own.

A workspace starts with no reasons, and the card says “No lost reasons yet. Until you add some, a lost deal gets a reason typed by hand.” Until there is at least one active reason, the deal form shows only the text field.

To manage the list, an admin or the owner can:

• add a reason with New lost reason and Add reason, which puts it at the end;
• rename one by changing its Reason field and clicking Save;
• reorder with ↑ and ↓;
• archive one with Archive so the form stops offering it, and Bring back to offer it again.

A label can be up to 80 characters and must be unique in the workspace. A duplicate label is refused, and you see “Could not save the lost reason”.

The reason is optional, and Choose a reason leaves it empty. Only the deal form asks for it. Moving a deal to lost with the Move to… control or by dragging it does not ask, so open Edit afterwards to add the reason. The form recognises the lost stage by its key, so this works whatever you have renamed lost to.

What happens to a deal’s reason when I change the list?

Nothing. A deal stores its reason as text, not as a link to the list, so renaming or archiving a reason never rewrites a deal. The deal keeps the words it was given.

When you edit a deal whose reason no longer matches an active reason, the form shows Other (type it) with the stored text in the field, while your list has at least one active reason; with none, the text field alone holds it. That covers a reason that was renamed or archived since, and one typed by hand. The text stays unless you change it. Moving a deal out of lost clears its reason, as described in Create and manage deals.

Where do I see the stages at work?

On the Pipeline board, where the stages are the columns, and on Sales analytics, in the funnel. Both are described in The sales pipeline. Creating, moving and archiving deals is covered in Create and manage deals.