Each pipeline has its own settings, reached from the settings icon in the Deals toolbar. There are five tabs, and you do not need to configure all of them for a pipeline to work.
General
Identity and movement rules.
- 1Five tabs - General, Stages, Fields, Governance, Automation
- 2Hub drives invoice seller, commission and currency
- 3Default Pipeline - the one that loads first
- 4Movement rules: skipping stages, and going backwards
- Five tabs - General, Stages, Fields, Governance, Automation
- Hub drives invoice seller, commission and currency
- Default Pipeline - the one that loads first
- Movement rules: skipping stages, and going backwards
Pipeline name, pipeline type, department and pipeline owner identify it and say who is accountable for it.
Hub does more than it looks. Deals created in this pipeline inherit it, and it drives the invoice seller, commission attribution and currency defaults. A UAE hub pipeline defaults to AED, an India hub pipeline to INR. Setting this correctly at the start saves correcting currency, and commission, on every deal after.
Then four switches:
- Default Pipeline - this one loads first when Sales opens. Only one can hold it, so give it to wherever most of the work happens.
- Allow Skipping Stages - off means deals can only move to adjacent stages.
- Allow Backward Movement - off means deals can only move forward.
- Show Stage Totals - displays the weighted and total values beneath each column.
The two movement switches are the quiet ones. Turning both off makes the pipeline a strict sequence, which suits a process with real gates and frustrates one without them.
Archive Pipeline sits at the bottom, for retiring a pipeline without deleting its history.
Stages
Where you build your sales process. Each stage has three settings.
Stage name - the label on the Kanban column and the deal cards.
Type - open, meaning the deal is still in progress, or closed, meaning it has reached a final outcome. Type is what analytics uses to separate live pipeline from won and lost business, so it matters more than the name does.
Reordering And Deleting
Drag stages to reorder them. Before deleting a stage, move any deals out of it first - a stage with deals in it should not be removed.
Rot After, And What It Does
Each stage also carries Probability - the likelihood a deal here closes, which is what turns a gross column total into a weighted forecast - and a rot rule.
Rot after is a number of days plus an action:
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Warn (visual) | The deal is flagged where people can see it. The default. |
| Notify Manager | The manager is told, rather than hoping someone notices. |
| Auto-move to Lost | The deal leaves the pipeline automatically. |
Leave the days blank and the stage has no rot rule at all.
Different stages deserve different limits and different actions. A deal can sit in Qualification for three weeks and Warn is enough. A deal sitting in Contract Sent for three weeks is a problem, and Notify Manager is the honest response. Reserve Auto-move to Lost for stages where a silent deal genuinely is a dead one - it is the only option that changes a deal without a person deciding.
This is separate from the stale badge on the Board card, which runs on its own fixed timer. See Pipeline Views.
Fields
What each deal captures. Two kinds.
Pipeline custom fields appear only on deals in this pipeline. Use them where one pipeline needs to track something the others do not - a renewals pipeline caring about contract end dates that new business has no use for.
Global fields appear on every deal in every pipeline: Billing Frequency, Industry, Original Source, Mailing Address, Deployment Needed. Defined once, shared everywhere.
Field types available are text, dropdown, number, date, and yes/no.
Once a field exists it appears on the deal record and as a column in Table view, which means you can filter and report on it. A field nobody fills in is worse than no field, so add them when you know what question they answer.
Governance
Conditions that must be met before a deal can move between stages. They exist to keep your forecast honest.
Without them, deals move forward with key information missing, and your pipeline review becomes a discussion about whose numbers are real.
Rules worth considering:
- A deal cannot reach Contract Sent unless a contact is linked to it
- Deals above a certain value need a second approver before Closed Won
- A deal must have a close date before it passes Proposal
What Governance Does And Does Not Do
It applies when a deal is dragged between stages on the Board, or moved by a bulk action in Table view.
Keep in mind
Governance does not stop someone editing a field directly on the deal record. It enforces the shape of your process, not the accuracy of every keystroke, so pair it with team habits rather than treating it as a lock.
Automation
Actions that fire when a deal meets a condition, instead of relying on someone remembering:
- A deal reaches a stage, so its owner is notified
- A deal has been stale for a set number of days, so a follow-up task is created
- A deal reaches a closed stage, so an invoice is generated
Start with one. An automation that fires reliably and everyone understands is worth more than six nobody can explain.
Common Questions
Can I rename a stage that has deals in it? Yes. The name updates everywhere and no deal data is lost. Deleting a stage is the operation to be careful with.
Do settings on one pipeline affect another? No, except global fields, which are shared by design. Stages, governance and automation are per pipeline.
What happens to governance rules when I bulk-move deals? They apply. Bulk actions are not a way around them.
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