Pipelines & Stages

Pipelines define your sales process as a series of stages that deals move through.

9.1 Viewing Pipelines

1. Go to Settings > Pipelines
2. Select a pipeline from the left panel
3. Review its open deals, total value, weighted value, stale deals, stage count, and readiness
4. Click View Pipeline Board when you are ready to work with live deals

9.2 Creating a Pipeline

1. Click New Pipeline
2. Enter a clear pipeline name
3. Choose a starting point:
   • Standard Sales Pipeline creates New Lead, Qualified, Proposal Sent, Negotiation, Won, and Lost
   • Copy Existing Pipeline copies stages and their policies, but never copies deals or history
   • Blank Pipeline starts without stages
4. Optionally make the pipeline the default
5. Click Create Pipeline

A pipeline must be active and contain at least one Open, one Won, and one Lost stage before SikaBooks offers it for new deals.

9.3 Reordering Stages

1. Go to the pipeline settings
2. Drag a stage to its new position, or use the stage's move-left and move-right buttons
3. SikaBooks saves the complete stage order and rejects incomplete or cross-pipeline requests

Pipeline order can also be adjusted with the move-up and move-down buttons in the pipeline selector. Click Save pipeline order when finished.

9.4 Stage Policies

Select a stage to open its focused editor. Configure:

1. Basics — name, color, Open/Won/Lost outcome, probability, and stale-after days
2. Entry requirements — required deal fields and checklist items
3. Follow-up — next-activity requirement, SLA, and optional automatic activity
4. Escalation — optional manager follow-up for unattended deals

Won stages always use 100% probability and Lost stages use 0%. If you designate a different Won or Lost stage, SikaBooks clearly warns that the previous terminal stage will return to Open.

The summary at the bottom explains in plain language what SikaBooks will do when a deal enters the stage.

Deals cannot enter a controlled stage until required checklist items are satisfied. Additional SLA and follow-up automation keeps the pipeline disciplined after entry.

9.5 Default Pipeline

1. Go to CRM Settings
2. Set the Default Pipeline — new deals will use this pipeline unless specified otherwise