Understand deals and pipelines

What a deal is

A deal is an active commercial decision with an accountable owner—not every customer conversation. Create one when there is a specific company or contact, a product or service need, and a decision your team intends to progress. Keep support questions and unqualified enquiries in the inbox until commercial work is real.

Every deal belongs to a pipeline and stage. The stage describes where it is in your process; status records whether the outcome is open, won, or lost. Won and Lost stages update status through a governed transition rather than an ordinary field edit.

The operating model

WRKZY separates the reusable catalog and deal line items from versioned customer quotes. Deal value can be controlled by line items while each shared quote remains an immutable commercial offer with its own response history.

Daily work versus management views

Use Work for action queues such as Awaiting us, Overdue, Quote pending, and Data gaps. Use Board to understand flow through stages, Table for dense review and approved bulk updates, and Forecast for period, owner, probability, currency, category, and target inspection.

Open the Deal Room when a decision needs context. It brings together the stage journey, pulse and risks, details, line items, tasks, notes, quotes, suggestions, and durable history.

Example: qualify before forecasting

An inbound contact asks for pricing. Keep the enquiry in the inbox while the need is unclear. Create a deal when the team confirms the company, likely scope, owner, and next discovery action. Start it in a creation-enabled open stage, add an evidence-based probability, and create a task with a due time. Move it to Proposal Sent only after a governed quote is actually shared.

Data discipline

Never advance a deal simply because time passed. Stage, probability, forecast category, expected close date, and priority should express different facts. Close as Won or Lost only after the commercial outcome is known; archive duplicates or irrelevant records without rewriting their history.

Verify and recover the model

Open one representative deal from Work, Board, Table, and Forecast and confirm each view explains the same underlying stage, owner, value, and next action. If counts differ, check filters, archive state, expected-close period, and currency readiness. Correct the deal or pipeline definition at its source rather than creating a replacement record.