Leads & sales pipeline

Leads is your sales pipeline — every prospect from the first enquiry through to a won customer, on a drag-and-drop board or a table. Use it to track deals you're chasing, attach quotes to them, and convert a won deal into a paying customer in one click. Once a deal is won — converted to a customer, or its quote accepted — it leaves the pipeline for the archive on its own, so the pipeline only ever shows work still to do.

Open Sales from the sidebar (CRM group) and pick Leads in the slim Overview | Leads | Quotes | Onboarding switcher above the header — that lands directly on the pipeline, board and list together, with no separate tab of its own. The pipeline updates in real time — new leads (including public web-form submissions), stage changes, and a quote accepted elsewhere winning its deal all appear without refreshing the page.

Overview

The pipeline's dashboard now lives one step over, on the shared Sales overview — pick Overview in the same switcher (or land there directly from the sidebar) for a one-glance read of the pipeline where every number is a shortcut. Click any tile, bar, or row and it opens the Leads pipeline pre-filtered to exactly those deals (board or list, matching what you clicked).

• Pipeline KPIs — Open pipeline value (every deal not yet won or lost), New this week, Web enquiries waiting, Unassigned, In quoting, and Won this month.
• Value by stage — a bar per stage (New → Quoted) showing the deal count and the money sitting there; click a bar to open that stage in the list.
• Won vs lost — an 8-week trend of closed deals. Leads carry no dedicated won/lost date, so this buckets by each deal's last-updated time — read it as a momentum signal, not an exact ledger.
• By source — where your deals come from, so you can see which channels are working.
• Needs attention — open deals whose next step is due today or already late, plus deals nobody has booked a next step on that have gone quiet for 14+ days. Soonest-due first; click one to open it. (This used to read "Going stale" and count days since the deal record was last edited, which meant correcting a phone number made a deal look worked.)
• Open leads by rep — current open workload per salesperson.

Board and List views

A Board / List switch sits in the page header. Board is the drag-and-drop kanban; List is the pipeline as a table — the same table the Service Ops Jobs list uses, with filters as chips, saved views, and columns you choose. Your choice is remembered per browser, so the page reopens in the view you last used.

Both views sit under the same three rows, and everything on them narrows both views:

1. Toolbar — search, the Views menu (saved views), and on List the table's own Group, Columns and row-density controls, plus Export CSV.
2. At a glance — one count chip per bucket (Due now, Gone quiet, Web enquiries, Unassigned, New this week, Won this month). Each is a one-click filter.
3. Filter rail — the filters in force, as chips, with Add filter and Clear all.

The pipeline board

The board is a kanban with one column per stage. Drag a deal card between columns to move it through the pipeline (this requires the manage sales permission — without it the board is read-only).

Stage	Meaning
New	A fresh enquiry, not yet worked
Contacted	You've made first contact
Qualified	A real opportunity worth quoting
Quoted	A quote has gone out
Won	The deal closed. A converted deal, or one whose quote was accepted, moves to the archive by itself — so a card still in Won is waiting for Convert to customer
Lost	The deal didn't close (with a reason)

Each column header shows its count and, when the deals carry estimated values, a value total so you can see where the money is sitting. Each card shows the deal name, its estimated value, the source, and — once linked to a customer — a Customer chip; a card from the archive (when the filters let the archive in) carries an Archived chip. Click a card to open the deal workspace.

The filter rail applies to the board too: the Stage chip decides which columns exist, and every other chip decides which cards show. When the Won column is empty on the live pipeline it says so — Converted deals and accepted quotes move to the archive — rather than looking like nothing was ever won. Dragging a deal that is already converted into Won files it in the archive straight away, and the toast says so.

The table

Switch to List for the table — one row per deal, built for scanning a large pipeline or working down a filtered set. Click a row to open the deal workspace.

Columns

Column	Shows
Deal	The deal name; hover for its summary. Always shown, pinned to the left.
Stage	A colour-coded stage badge, matching the board columns.
Value	The estimated value.
Next step	When the booked next step is due — Today, Tomorrow, in 4d, 3d overdue, or a date — coloured red overdue, amber today, blue this week; hover for the note. A live deal with nothing booked reads Not set, or an amber Gone quiet once nobody has touched it for 14 days.
Sales rep	The rep who owns the deal, or Unassigned.
Company, Source, Created	The company, where the deal came from (Web for your public web form), and when it was captured.
Contact, Phone, Email, Branch, Customer, Quote, Onboarding, Last activity, Won, Archived, Lost reason, Deal #	Off by default — switch them on in Columns. Branch only exists when your control room has named regions, and Onboarding only with the Onboarding module. Customer links to the customer the deal belongs to or became; Quote says where the deal's quotes stand (Accepted, Quote out, or Declined, with a count when there is more than one); Won is the date the deal was won.

The last column holds the row's actions, revealed on hover: Quote (a live deal), Convert (any deal not yet converted and not lost) and Restore (a deal in the archive). Archiving is not a row action — it lives on the deal's Details tab.

Sorting, grouping and your layout

Click a header to sort by it; click again to flip. Shift-click a second header to add it as a secondary sort — a small 2 marks it. Every header also has a ▾ menu: sort ascending / descending, add as secondary sort, pin, group by this column (Stage, Sales rep, Source, Branch, Customer), hide. Deals with nothing on the sorted column — no next step, no value — always sort last, whichever direction you choose.

Group (in the toolbar) splits the rows into sections by Stage (the default, so the table reads as the board unrolled), Sales rep, Source, Branch, Customer, or None. Each group row carries a count, can be collapsed, and stays pinned under the header while you scroll.

Text columns size themselves to what is on the page, and the table fills the height of the window from where it starts. The Columns menu turns columns on and off, drags to reorder them and pins a column to the left edge; drag a header's right edge to set a width of your own. Reset to default layout puts everything back, and the row-density toggle switches between comfortable and compact rows. The table shows 50 rows a page; the search and the filters run over every deal, so one on page 3 is still found.

Export

Export CSV downloads the deals in view — after the filters and the search — in the table's order, with the columns you have showing (Deal always first; Next step exports as its due date and its note).

Leads from a customer's Refer a friend link land here automatically, sourced referral.

Filters, views and search

The filter rail

The rail shows every filter in force as a chip — Archived is No — the live pipeline, Sales rep is Thandi Mokoena, Stage is not Lost — and applies to the board and the table alike.

• Add filter opens a picker: choose a field, then tick the values you want. Every value shows how many deals (within the other chips) carry it, an is / is not switch inverts the match, and Apply lands the whole choice at once.
• Click a chip's value to re-open the picker; the × removes the chip.
• Clear all removes every chip — the archive included.
• Show the archive (N) appears on the live pipeline when there are archived deals; Back to the pipeline (or Hide the archive) puts the Archived chip back.

The fields on offer:

• Stage — the six stages.
• Archived — No is the live pipeline, Yes is the archive.
• Next step — Overdue, Due today, In the next 7 days, Later, None booked, Gone quiet (none booked and untouched for 14+ days), or Won or lost.
• Sales rep — a rep, Unassigned, or My deals (when you are on the staff list yourself).
• Source — Web form, any source written on your deals, or No source.
• Branch — a named region or No branch (only when your control room has named regions).
• Customer — Converted to a customer, Existing customer (upsell), or No customer yet.
• Quote — Draft or sent, Accepted, Declined or expired, or No quote (superseded revisions don't count).
• Onboarding — Journey running or No journey (Onboarding module only).
• Created — This week, This month, Last 30 days, More than 90 days ago.
• Won — This week, This month, Last month, This year, or Not won — measured from the day the deal was won.
• Value — Has a value or No value.

At a glance

The row of chips above the rail names the pipeline's buckets, each with a live count:

Chip	Deals
Due now	Live deals whose next step is due today or already late
Gone quiet	Live deals with no next step booked that nobody has touched for 14 days
Web enquiries	New deals from your public web form
Unassigned	Live deals with no sales rep
New this week	Deals created since Monday
Won this month	Deals won since the 1st, with their value — this one looks in the archive too, because that is where won deals go

Every chip is a filter. Click one and its condition lands on the rail; click it again to lift it (and anything it lifted, such as the Archived chip, goes back). A chip's count is measured within the other filters you already have on — with a Sales rep chip in place, Due now 3 means three of that rep's deals. A chip with nothing behind it hides itself.

Saved views

The Views menu bundles a filter set with a table layout under a name. Seven come built in — Live pipeline (the default), My deals, Next steps due, Won this month, Lost deals, Archive, and Everything, archive included — and you can save your own: change anything and the button reads · edited; Save as new view… names it, Save changes overwrites one of yours, Discard changes goes back, Delete removes it. Built-in views cannot be overwritten or deleted.

The filters, the table's layout and the view you are on are saved against you, not the browser, so the desk machine and the laptop show the same Leads page. A link into the page from the Sales overview (a tile or a funnel bar) is an instruction, not a preference: it lands on exactly the deals it counted, for that visit, and is only written back once you change something yourself.

Search

Search matches the deal name, company, contact name, email, phone, source, and sales rep. A search looks in the archive too — the chips are a view of the pipeline, the search box is how you find one deal, won ones included — so while you search, the Archived chip is greyed out and every other chip still applies. Clear the box and the page returns to your filters.

The deal workspace

Opening a deal — from a card, a list row, or a ?lead= link — fills the screen with the same workspace layout the onboarding journey gets, instead of the old edit-form popup:

The hero. The deal's name in large type with its value, a Web enquiry chip when it came from your public web form, the source, a Customer chip once linked, and an Archived chip when it is in the archive. Under them runs the pipeline rail — New → Contacted → Qualified → Quoted → Won — with the deal's current stage highlighted. Click a stage to move the deal (with the manage-sales permission); it's the same move as dragging the card on the board. Losing a deal is deliberately not on the rail: the Mark lost button beside the calls-to-action prompts for a reason first, exactly like dragging to Lost. A lost deal shows a banner with its reason — pick any stage on the rail to revive it, and the reason clears automatically. A deal in the archive shows a banner saying why it is there — Won 3 Sep · in the archive for a won deal (with no customer exists for it yet — Convert to customer creates one when it was won by an accepted quote and has no customer), In the archive since … for one archived by hand — and a Restore to pipeline button.

The stage-appropriate calls to action sit on the hero's right edge: Create quote, the onboarding action, Convert to customer, and Mark lost — each appearing only when it applies. The onboarding action is honest about whether a journey already exists: it reads Start onboarding while the deal has none, and Open onboarding journey once one is running — after a quote is accepted the journey has usually started itself, so the button's job is to take you to it, not to start a second one. Without the Onboarding module the button shows disabled with a note saying the module is required (CleverCam enables modules per control room), rather than silently missing. A deal with a running journey also carries an Onboarding — stage chip in the hero (amber awaiting approval when the Open onboarding on quote accept gate is holding it); click the chip to open the journey on the Onboarding board.

The context rail (left, always visible), led by the Next step card — see Booking the next step — followed by a Contact card with the person, company, tap-to-call phone and tap-to-email address, and a The deal card with the estimated value, owner, source, and created / last-activity times.

The working tabs:

• Activity (the default) — the deal's running history; see Activity & notes.
• Quotes — the linked-quotes list with a Create quote button; see Linked quotes.
• Details — the edit form (name, company, contact, source, value, rep, linked customer, summary) with Save changes, plus Archive. Stage isn't here — the pipeline rail owns it.

Booking the next step

Every deal can carry one next step — a date, and a line saying what it is. It is the first card on the workspace rail, because "what happens next and when" is the only question a deal really asks.

• Presets — Tomorrow, In 3 days, Next week each book the step for 09:00 on that day in one click, and save immediately.
• Or pick a date — the date and time fields for anything else.
• What's the step? — a short line (call back after the site visit). It shows on the deal's board card and in the Next step column's tooltip.
• Clear removes the booked step.

The step drives the board and the list: the card's chip and the list column both turn amber on the day and red once late, the Due now filter reads it, and Next step is a sortable column. It is also what the Needs attention tile counts — so a deal that has been worked but has nothing booked next still surfaces, and a deal you merely edited does not stop looking overdue.

You can also book one from the Activity tab: a note's Follow up row writes the deal's next step directly, so logging the call and booking the callback is a single action.

Add a lead

Click New lead on the board to create a deal in a quick capture form (creating stays fast; the workspace is for working the deal) — capture its name, estimated value, source, stage, the sales rep who owns it (picked from the sales-role members on People), and the customer it belongs to (new prospect or existing account). The Summary field is a short description of the deal that carries over to the customer when you convert; the running, dated history of what's happened goes in Activity & notes instead. You can also start a lead from a customer's Overview tab with New deal, which opens the Leads board.

Activity & notes

The workspace's Activity tab — its default — is the running story of the deal. It does two jobs at once:

• Notes — type a note (a call you made, an email, the next step) and click Add note; each is stamped with your name and the time. Press ⌘/Ctrl + Enter to post quickly. Type @ to mention a colleague — they are emailed a link to the note and asked to acknowledge it, and the note shows when they have. Two optional rows sit under the box:
  • How did it go? — Reached, No answer, Left message, or Emailed. The outcome shows as a small badge on the logged note, so "have we actually got hold of this prospect?" is answerable without reading every note.
  • Follow up — Tomorrow, In 3 days, or Next week. On a deal this books the deal's next step (not a separate reminder), using the first line of your note as the label. The button changes to Add note + follow-up so you can see it will do both.
• Audit trail — the same timeline records what happens to the deal by itself: when the lead was created (and whether it came in through the website form), every stage move (e.g. New → Qualified), when it was archived or restored, and when it was converted to a customer — each stamped with who did it. When an accepted quote wins the deal, a line names the quote: Quote Q-00012 accepted — the deal is won and moved to the archive. It also records the owner changing, the estimated value (Value: R 12 000.00 (was R 8 000.00)), the next step being booked or cleared, the customer the deal is linked to, edits to its details (naming the fields), a first-response time passing without contact, every quote created for the deal, and the onboarding journey it opened — a line that names a quote or journey links straight to it. Use the All · Notes · Updates chips to read only the notes or only what happened.

The log is append-only: entries can be added but never edited or deleted, so the deal's history stays trustworthy. It's the same universal activity timeline used on tickets.

Lost reason on drag

When you drag a card into the Lost column, CleverOps asks why before moving it:

A short prompt — Why was this deal lost? (optional) — lets you record a reason (for example price, competitor, no response). The reason is optional, but it's captured against the lead for win/loss reporting. Cancelling the prompt leaves the deal where it was. (Moving a card into any other stage doesn't prompt.)

The reason isn't buried once captured: the card in the Lost column shows it inline (Lost — price), and the stage change in the lead's activity timeline records it too, so win/loss context survives in the audit trail.

Quoting a deal

Send a proposal without leaving the pipeline. Every open deal (any stage except Won or Lost) shows a Create quote action — on the card itself, on the workspace hero, and next to Linked quotes on its Quotes tab. It opens the quote builder with everything pulled through from the deal:

• The quote is pre-linked to the deal and its heading is prefilled from the deal name.
• The deal's contact details flow through: while there's no customer yet, the lead's contact name, email, and phone stand in as the quote's Prepared for details — on the PDF, on the public share page, and as the default recipients when you Send to customer.
• A deal already tied to an existing customer quotes that customer directly instead.

After the first save the quote stays open in edit mode, so Preview PDF, Send to customer, and Convert to job are available immediately — build, save, and send in one sitting. Creating the first quote against a deal in New, Contacted, or Qualified automatically moves it to the Quoted column. (Quotes can also be attached to a deal from the quote form's Sales deal / lead field.)

When the quote is accepted

A deal's quote being accepted wins the deal. The moment a live sales quote linked to it becomes Accepted — the customer accepting from the share link, you recording it as approved internally, or the quote being converted to a job — the deal is marked Won (from whatever stage it was in, Lost included), linked to the customer the deal or the quote already names, and moved to the archive. Its activity log names the quote that did it.

No customer is created at that point. If neither the deal nor the quote had one, the archived deal keeps its Convert to customer button — and when the deal has an onboarding journey running, the journey creates the prospect customer as it opens onboarding and links it to the deal. A superseded revision, or a technical (internal) quote, never wins a deal.

Linked quotes

A deal and its quotes stay connected. The deal workspace's Quotes tab lists them — one row per quote with its number/heading, status, once-off total, and any recurring amount (e.g. + R 550,00/mo). Click a row to open that quote in the editor right there — preview, email, or convert it without leaving the pipeline. Linking a quote to a deal keeps the quote attached all the way through lead → customer conversion, so the proposal history isn't lost when the prospect becomes an account. Deals with no quotes yet show No quotes linked to this deal yet.

Convert a won deal to a customer

When a deal is won, turn it into a customer without re-keying anything. A Convert to customer button appears on the card and on the workspace hero (for any deal that isn't already converted and isn't Lost):

What happens next depends on whether the deal is already tied to an existing customer:

• New prospect — CleverOps creates a customer from the lead, marks the lead Won, and links the two. The confirmation reads Create a customer from this lead?
• Existing customer — no duplicate is created; the deal is simply marked Won against the linked account. The confirmation reads Win deal for existing customer.

Either way the deal then moves to the archive — it is done, and the customer record carries the relationship from here — and you're taken straight to the resulting customer detail page so you can carry on setting them up. The same happens whichever way a deal ends up both won and converted: the Convert & win step in CleverSales, a converted deal dragged or bulk-moved to Won, or an onboarding journey minting the customer.

Working several deals at once

The List view carries a checkbox on every row and one in the header that selects everything currently listed. Tick some and a bar appears at the foot of the screen with N deals selected:

• Sales rep… — reassign the owner of all of them (or Unassign).
• Move to stage… — move them together. Lost is deliberately absent: losing a deal wants a reason, and a reason is per-deal, so those still go one at a time.
• Export CSV — just the selected deals, in the table's columns and order.
• Restore — appears when any selected deal is in the archive, and puts them back on the pipeline.
• Archive — appears when any selected deal is not archived; asks first, then archives the lot.

The selection follows what you can see: change a filter and any deal that scrolls out of the list is dropped from the selection, so you can never act on rows you are no longer looking at. Bulk actions need the manage sales permission, and the board has no checkboxes on purpose — a checkbox on a draggable card fights the drag.

The archive

Leads are never permanently deleted — the database itself blocks it. Instead, deals that no longer belong on the pipeline move to the archive, where they are kept for reporting and can always be brought back.

Won deals go there by themselves. A deal moves to the archive the moment it is both won and converted to a customer (Convert to customer, or CleverSales' Convert & win), and the moment its quote is accepted. A deal dragged to Won without a customer stays on the board until it is converted.

Archive a dead or duplicate deal by hand from its workspace: Archive on the Details tab (it asks first), or Archive in the bulk bar. Every archive — automatic or by hand — and every restore is recorded in the deal's activity log with when it happened and, where a person did it, who.

Archived deals are left out by the Archived is No chip every view starts on. To see them, click Show the archive (N) on the filter rail, pick the Archive saved view, or search — search always looks in the archive. Restore to pipeline (the workspace banner), Restore (the row action) or Restore in the bulk bar puts a deal back; restoring a won deal does not archive it again.

Onboarding journeys. Archiving a deal that is not won closes its running onboarding journey — a dropped deal stops raising tickets. Archiving a won deal never does: its journey is the delivery of the win.

Archived deals do not appear in global search — search for the customer they became, or use the search box on this page.

Permissions

Viewing the pipeline is open to any team member with VCR access. Dragging cards, converting deals, archiving and restoring, and editing leads require the manage sales permission. Saved views and the table layout are personal, so anyone who can open the page can set up their own.