Why Deals are separate from Leads
If you've used a CRM before — Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, or similar — this pattern will feel familiar: leads and deals (sometimes called "opportunities") are tracked as two different things, not one continuous record.
Here's the thinking behind it:
A lead is about the person. A deal is about the sale. A lead can generate multiple quotes, go quiet for months, come back with a different building in mind, or never buy at all. None of that is really "progress" toward a purchase — it's just relationship history. A deal, on the other hand, only exists once there's a real, active opportunity to close. Keeping them separate means your lead record doesn't get cluttered with false starts, and your pipeline only reflects the sales you're actually working.
It keeps your pipeline honest. If every saved design or quote counted as a deal in progress, your pipeline value and stage counts would be inflated with people who were just browsing. By only promoting a lead to a deal once it's qualified, the numbers in your Deal Summary — pipeline value, average deal size, deals needing attention — actually mean something. This is standard CRM practice: qualify first, then track.
It supports a repeatable process. Lead stages (New, Engaged, Qualified, Nurture, and so on) describe where someone is in a relationship. Deal stages (Open Quote, Contract Sent, Payment Issued, and so on) describe where a specific sale is in a transaction. Separating them lets each stage set describe one thing well, instead of trying to force a single set of stages to cover both "are they interested" and "are we closing." That's part of why a lead can bounce between Nurture and Engaged multiple times, while a deal moves in largely one direction toward Closed Won or Closed Lost.
One lead, multiple deals. Because they're separate, a single lead can have more than one deal over time — someone who bought a shed last year and comes back for a garage this year doesn't need a new lead record; they just get a new deal against the same relationship. Your lead history stays intact.
In short: Leads answer "who are we talking to and how warm are they?" Deals answer "what are we actively trying to close, and where does it stand?" Keeping those two questions separate is what makes both easier to answer.
Deal stages
Deals move through their own set of stages, separate from lead stages:
Open Quote — pricing has been presented, no commitment yet
Design in Revision — the design or configuration is being adjusted based on customer feedback
Contract Sent — the agreement has been sent and is awaiting signature
Payment Issued — payment has been received or processed
Closed Won — the deal is complete and converted to a sale
Closed Lost — the deal ended without a sale
Most stage changes are manual — you move a deal forward yourself as things progress. The one exception: if a customer checks out directly in the external configurator, SalesView automatically creates a deal and advances it straight to Closed Won.
Creating a deal
From the Leads list or a Lead Detail page, click Create New Deal.
Select a design (a default is chosen for you, but you can pick a different one).
Set the deal stage.
Assign a dealer, if you have permission.
Optionally, add a note.
Click Create Deal.
Deal Summary
At the top of the Deals tab, the Deal Summary gives you a snapshot of your pipeline at a glance:
Total pipeline value (this excludes anything already Closed Won)
Needs attention — deals that have been sitting in a stage too long:
Open Quote flagged after 14 days
Contract Sent flagged after 7 days
Payment Issued flagged after 3 days
(other stages aren't flagged yet)
Closed-won total
Average deal size
You can adjust the time range (e.g., last 30 days) to recalculate pipeline value and average deal size for that window.
The Kanban board
The Deals tab has two views — a list and a Kanban board — toggled from the top right of the page. On the board, each deal is a card grouped under its stage. Drag a card to a new column to move that deal forward (or back) a stage.
Deal Dashboard
Click into any deal to open its Deal Dashboard — everything about that one deal in one place:
The current stage, shown as a progress tracker across all stages
The design and quote tied to the deal
Lead context and contact info
Internal Notes — the same note-taking feature covered in Managing Drafts and Leads, scoped to this specific deal. Use it to track deal-specific conversations or tasks — "Sent revised contract 9/2, following up Friday" — separately from the broader lead history.
From here, you can revise the design using the same embedded configurator as on the Lead Detail page — clicking Save changes creates a new version.
Note: The version number keeps counting up for that reference number, but not every version is necessarily part of this deal. So it's normal to see a version number "missing" here — it just means that version isn't attached to this particular deal.
When a deal reaches Closed Won with more than one quote attached, you'll be asked to select the winning quote — the one that actually got the sale.