Sales: leads, deals and quotes

Who this is for: anyone chasing new business — tracking who you're talking to, how likely they are to buy, and what you've quoted them.

What you need first: nothing extra, though the CRM (see "CRM and customers") is where leads are usually added and enriched in bulk — Sales is where you track and report on them.

How this fits together

A lead, a deal and a customer are the same record at different points in its life — there is one list of people and companies you're selling to, shown three ways:

• Leads (/app/sales/leads) is the full, searchable list of everyone you're still winning.
• Deals (/app/sales/deals) is the same leads shown as a pipeline board, grouped by stage — New, Contacted, Qualified, Proposal, Won or Lost — so you can see where things stand at a glance.
• Mark a lead Won and it becomes a customer — it moves off the Leads list and onto /app/customers automatically. Nothing is copied or re-entered; it's the same row. Quotes & Proposals (/app/sales/quotes) is a separate, lightweight list for tracking what you've quoted and its status — for building an itemised quote linked to invoicing, use the Quotes tab in Money instead (see "Money: invoices, accounts and banking").

Steps

1. Open Sales from the navigation to see your dashboard first — pipeline value vs. won, your conversion funnel, revenue won over the last 6 months, and recent wins.

2. Open Leads to see every lead as a list, with stage, temperature (hot/warm/cold), value, source and last contact. Search or filter to find one.

3. Add a lead with the "Add lead" button, or edit one with the pencil icon on its row — the same form Alex and the CRM use, so there's only one place a lead's details actually live.

4. Open Deals to see the same leads as a pipeline board. Filter by temperature (hot, warm, cold, won, lost) from the dropdown at the top.

5. Move a deal along by marking it Won (from its row or from the CRM) when you close it — it becomes a customer automatically. Nothing else to do.

6. Open Quotes & Proposals to see every quote you've tracked, filterable by status (Draft, Sent, Accepted, Declined) and sortable by date or value.

7. Add a quote with "New quote" — enter the customer name and amount and save it as a draft.

Tips

• If a lead looks stuck, check the Deals board rather than the Leads list — seeing it sat in one column for weeks is often the nudge to follow up.
• The stat strips on Sales, Deals and Quotes are all computed live from your real records — nothing shown there is a placeholder or an example figure.
• A lead you can't find on Leads has probably already been won — look for it on Customers instead.

Related articles

• CRM and customers
• Money: invoices, accounts and banking
• Documents

Ask Alex to do this for you

Ask Alex "what's my pipeline worth right now?" or "add a lead for [name] at [company]" and Alex will read back the figures from your real pipeline or create the lead for you.