Contents
How to use
Use the Pipeline Management to follow-up on sales related activities on both prospects and existing customers.
The first view is the activity list and it shows open activities that have been assigned to you and that you need to follow-up on. An activity can be assigned to you by yourself or by another user ie. a manager.
Watch this video to get a quick tour of the Pipeline Management module:
Activities
Pipeline Management, Activity list
If your list is empty you can either add a new activity to an existing prospect or customer, or add a new prospect or customer to the system.
Add a new activity
You can add a new activity on the Create new button(s) as seen below.
1. Create a new activity.
2. Create next activity (allows you to set the previous activity to done at the same time).
Setting an activity as Done
You can set an activity as Done by clicking here:
Or here:
When you set an activity as Done it will be removed from your activity list. Also, if you want to Delete the activity entirely, you can right click and select the delete option.
Adding a Prospect
The Prospect list is a list of all prospects and customers. From here you get all the basic information such as address, contacts and so on.
Pipeline Management, Prospect list view
How to add a new prospect
You can add new prospects on the Create new button as seen below.
Note: both existing customers and prospect are show in the list.
Existing customers are shown with this icon
Prospects are shown with this icon
How to add a new contact
You can add new contacts on the Create new button as seen below.
Additional information on a contact
Use the tabs as seen below to add additional information about your contact.
The highlighted buttons in the image above will change the orientation of the contact card.
Add an activity
You can add an activity to the prospect by clicking the Add new activity button. Activities are assigned to an employee and will be show in the Activity list on the left side menu.
Pipeline
Pipelines are used to show and describe the opportunities on the prospect eg. What it is you are trying to sell. On each pipeline you can add information such as responsible, rating, probability rate and so on.
The probability rate and the profit amount are divided and equal the budget value. The budget value can be divided into a value pr. month (Allocation column) and equals the Budget value column.
Adding a new pipeline
You can add new pipelines when you create a new prospect for the first time or when you go to the Pipeline tab as shown below.
How to convert a prospect to a customer
Prospects can be converted to customers by clicking on the Pipeline tab and from there converting the pipeline to a job (this triggers the conversion).
There are 3 different options available:
1. Convert pipeline to a job (creates a new job and converts the prospect to a customer)
2. Connect an existing job to the pipeline (use this option if you already have created a job on the generic ‘Sales’ customer in the system and want to use this and don’t convert the prospect to a customer)
3. Remove the connection to a job.
Once you have connected the pipeline to a job the profit amount field is controlled by the total amount on the Price quote on the job instead of the pipeline Profit amount field.
Pipeline amount distribution & Pipeline payment plan
On each pipeline you can specify the value of the pipeline.
The pipeline value will, unless you specify otherwise, distribute itself evenly month by month. This is shown in the Pipeline forecast 12 months graph.
If you would like to change the even amount distribution, you can set up a Pipeline payment plan. (available from version 8.3.6.177 and with system variable no. 962 enabled)
Inputting the amounts here will update the Pipeline forecast 12 months graph to show the specified amounts from the Pipeline payment plan, instead of an even amount distribution.
When you convert the pipeline to a job, the Pipeline payment plan will be transferred to the Price quote payment plan. If you make changes to the price quote payment plan, it will update back to the pipeline.
Green colour
The green colour represents a Won pipeline. A Won pipeline is triggered once you convert a pipeline to a job/customer and approve the price quote on that job.
Filter
You can use the filter control (as seen below) to track and filter on specific changes.
Pipeline summary forecast
The Pipeline summary forecast view is a graphical view of pipelines and the current value of these. Generally it gives you an idea if you have enough new business and projects going on.
When a job is in status Quotation, all price quotes (except for those with the approval status “Cancelled”) are included in the amounts reflected in the forecast. When the job changes to In process, only the approved price quotes (status “For approval” or “Approved internally/externally”) are included.
Pipeline management, summary forecast without planned work
Planned work
Activating the Planned amount option, will add an additional line in the forecast view.
Pipeline Management, summary forecast with planned work
The way WorkBook calculates the planned work is to look at all the tasks on a job, to see how much time there is actually booked on a task but only up to the time remaining as listed on a given task
Job, scheduling, tasks, resource planning
Job, scheduling, tasks, resource planning
So although in the example above, it says there are booked 50 hours it will only count up to the 45 hours as listed in the time remaining. The hours is then multiplied by the hourly rate.
Jobs in process and Pipeline projects
These two tabs shows a detailed list of how the data is calculated on the 12 month forecast view.
Example:
Looking at the Opportunity stage you’ll see some figures pr. month.
Swithcing to the Pipeline project view, these figures are pulled from the pipelines in the different stages for example opportunity:
Pipeline stages
The pipeline goes through the following stages and each stage is automatically triggered by the system if it meets the requirements for going to the next stage.
Stage name | Description / triggered by |
Cold | When the amount on the pipeline is zero. |
Lead | When the pipeline contains an amount and the probability value is beneath the percentage value set in System variable no. 679. |
Opportunity | When the pipeline contains an amount and the probability value is over the percentage value set in System variable no. 679. |
Sales proposal | When the pipeline has a job attached and the job status = “Quotation” |
Project won | When the pipeline has a job attached and the job status = “In process, On hold, Ready for invoicing or Invoiced”. |
Refer to this help article for more information on Pipeline stages and setting up the Pipeline Management.
Insert a financial budget to the Pipeline Summary Forecast
From version 8.7 it is possible to have a financial budget attached to the Pipeline summary forecast.
NB: Please note that at the moment this is NOT possible to setup from V9.
Before you can add a financial budget you need to create one. You do this by following this article. The budget must be approved before you can use is in the Pipeline summary forecast.
After you have done this you need to say which account you wish to have in the Pipeline summary forecast. This has to be the same account/-s that you have chosen on your financial budget.
After you have done this you can have the dimensions on your budget being shown on your Pipeline summary forecast.
Resource search
The Resource search enables you to create lists of contacts filtered by different criteria.
Pipeline Management, Resource search view
How to add a new search
You can create a new search by clicking on the Create new button(s) as seen below.
Expressions and criteria
In order to start searching for people to be added to your list and can add an Expression and criteria to that expression. Generally the Expression is a way to group criteria.
In the example above I have made a search for contacts that have the criteria “Sales” in the job title. There a many different criteria to add to your expression. You can review the result immediately by clicking the Search results tab:
When you have made a change in the criteria click the refresh button to update the list.
Export
You can export the list to Excel and from Excel into a mail system for example.
A video on exporting resource search lists:
Approval
You can add an approver to approve the list.
Activity
You can have the system create activities to be added to your sales people’s activities list.
You can set various parameters for the activity creation as seen below. Once you click “Create activity” an activity will be added to the activities list.
Once you click “Create activity” an activity will be added to the activities list.
Adding contacts to lists
Lists in the Pipeline Management system is used to attach contacts to various lists and eventually being able to export to Excel or ActiveCampaign. Many clients have a list for newsletters and perhaps another for the yearly Christmas greeting.
NB: This is another feature that has not yet been implemented in the V9 version.
Start by adding a new list:
After you have created the list, you can then start attaching contacts to that list:
Now you have contacts assigned to the list, you might want to see all contacts assigned to that list. You can use the Resource search to do so.
Start by adding a new search:
Add an Expression (used to categorize the search criteria if there are more than one)
Add a criteria and make sure to select Interest ID = <list name>
That’s it! If you go to Search results, your contacts will now appear:
You can go back and add more search criteria if needed, or export the list to Excel, using the Excel button in the tool bar.