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Pipeline and deals

Create a pipeline from a template, activate it, add deals with a currency-aware value, set exit requirements and stage automations, and close work with terminal stages.

8 min read · Reviewed 2026-07-13

A pipeline is the set of stages a deal walks through on its way to closed. Clyentra keeps the two jobs apart: you build pipelines under Automation, and you work deals on the board. This guide covers both, in that order.

Two screens, two jobs

Pipelines and workflows share a home: /admin/automation has two tabs — Workflows and Pipeline. Both are automation. If you were looking for pipeline settings under Sales, this is why you couldn't find them. Workflows are covered in workflow-automation.

Every pipeline starts from a template

This is not a suggestion — it is a requirement. The Create Pipeline dialog says so: "Start from a template — you can rename, add, or remove stages after creating." Template cards each carry a Use template button. The header button Create Custom opens the same dialog and still asks you to pick one.

If you genuinely want to design your stages from nothing, pick the Blank Guided template. That is the from-scratch path — it satisfies the template requirement and then gets out of your way.

1. Go to `/admin/automation` and open the `Pipeline` tab. You'll see your existing pipelines plus the template gallery.
2. Pick a template. Hit Use template on a card that resembles how you sell, or take Blank Guided to lay out your own stages.
3. Review the preview. The preview footer is the important line: "Created as a draft — activate it when the stages look right." Nothing you create here goes live on its own.
4. Rename, add, and remove stages. Everything the template gave you is editable. Make the stage names match the words your team actually uses on calls.
5. Activate it. Move the pipeline from Draft to Active. Only then does it appear on the deal board and in the deal form.

Draft, Active, Archived

A pipeline is in exactly one of three states, and the filter tabs (All Pipelines / Active / Draft) let you find each.

• Draft — you are still building it. Invisible to the board and to the deal form.
• Active — live. Only Active pipelines appear on the board and in the Pipeline picker on the deal form.
• Archived — retired. Kept for history, not for new deals.

An empty board usually means an unactivated pipeline: If the deal board says "No active pipelines yet. Create one to start tracking deals." with an Add Pipeline button, you either haven't built a pipeline or you built one and left it in Draft.

Creating a deal

The New Deal button opens a sheet: "Create a new deal by selecting an existing customer or adding a new lead." The submit button is Create Deal.

1. Pick the contact. Search your existing leads and customers. No match? The sheet offers a way out: "Can't find a match? Create new lead". The Company field auto-fills from whoever you pick.
2. Name the deal. Deal Title is required. "Acme Inc. — 40-seat rollout" beats "Acme".
3. Choose a `Pipeline`. Required, and only Active pipelines are listed. The deal lands in that pipeline's first stage.
4. Set `Deal Value` and currency. The value field has its own currency picker — USD, EUR, GBP and CAD among eight supported currencies — defaulting to your organization's currency. A Toronto deal can be booked in CAD while a Berlin deal is booked in EUR.
5. Set `Source Channel`. Website, Referral, Social Media, Email, Advertisement, WhatsApp, E-Commerce, or Other. This is what lets you answer "which channel actually pays?" later.

Working the board

The board is a Kanban of deals, one column per stage, with a List view toggle when you want a table instead. The list columns are Deal, Company, Pipeline, Stage, Deal Value, Owner, and Created.

You advance a deal by dragging its card. On success you get Deal moved to "{Stage}". Sometimes the drag is refused — and that refusal is the whole point of the stage editor.

The stage editor

Open a stage from pipeline management and you get the Pipeline Stage Editor. It has four things worth understanding.

Stage name — what the column says. Stage behaviour carries two switches: Active ("When off, leads skip this stage") and Terminal Stage ("Leads that reach this stage are considered closed").

Exit requirements is the quality gate — "All conditions must be met before a lead can leave this stage." You build conditions out of lead properties and operators. This is how you stop a deal being dragged into Proposal with no budget, no decision-maker, and no close date on file. Every condition you add here is a Cannot move deal — missing required fields message you will see later, on purpose.

Exit requirements are your qualification policy, enforced: Instead of asking reps to remember what "qualified" means, encode it once: Budget Range is set, Authority Contact is set, Expected Close Date is set. The board will not let a deal past the gate until it's true.

Stage automations

The stage editor also carries automations that fire On Stage Entry (ENTRY) or On Stage Exit (EXIT). This is where you hang the things that should always happen at a specific point in the sale — a task, a notification, an email — rather than on a generic record change.

Stage automations are created here, in the stage editor, not on the Workflows tab. Trigger-driven automations that fire on record create/update/delete live in workflow-automation; stage-driven ones live here. Use the one that matches when you actually want the thing to happen.

Closing a deal

There is no separate win/loss flag in Clyentra. Closure is modelled by terminal stages — mark a stage as Terminal Stage and anything that reaches it is considered closed. Most teams end up with two: one for won, one for lost.

A deal sitting in a terminal stage shows a Reopen Deal action. You can also reach it from the Pipeline panel of the lead sidebar — see leads-and-customers.

Stage names are yours, not ours: Clyentra does not ship a fixed set of stage names. What you get depends on the template you chose, and every one of them is renameable. Design the board around how your team actually sells.