Business Development & CRM
Track pipeline and opportunities
Follow leads, opportunities, and pursuit decisions.
Before you begin
Choose Pipeline leads or Opportunities in Business Development. Identify the owner, department, and pursuit context for the record. Note that most Business Development permissions give you the whole company’s pipeline, but a create-only role only sees its own department’s or its own opportunities.
Track pipeline and opportunities
Open Business Development and choose Pipeline leads or Opportunities. A lead is the early, lighter-weight version; converting it is what creates the formal opportunity record.
Open an opportunity and maintain its owner, department, value, and stage. Keep stage (how far the pursuit has gotten) and outcome (Pending, Won, Lost, Cancelled) straight; they’re two separate fields, and Won/Lost live in outcome, not stage.
Use Bid/No-Bid scoring, and the stakeholder, partner, and funder records to support the pursuit decision.
Once an opportunity is Won, hand it over to create the real project. That’s also the point where it archives out of the active pipeline.
Key concepts & fields
| Concept | What to know |
|---|---|
| Stage vs outcome | Two separate fields that are easy to mix up. Stage (Evaluation, Shortlisted, Negotiation) tracks how far along a live pursuit is; outcome (Pending, Won, Lost, Cancelled) tracks how it ended. Won and Lost live in outcome, not stage, so you won’t find them in the stage list. |
| Archiving on Won/Lost | Marking an opportunity Won or Lost archives it automatically, moving it out of the active pipeline into the Archive view. It’s one-way: you can’t win or lose your way back to active, though the record itself is still there and still editable from the archive. Cancelling, on the other hand, does not archive it. |
| Handover | Turning a Won opportunity into a real project. It only appears once outcome is Won, and it only works once, so you can’t hand the same opportunity over a second time. From that point, every ordinary project-creation rule applies: an active owner, a real billing method for client-billable work, active team members, and so on. |
| Pipeline lead vs opportunity | A lead is the earlier, lighter-weight version of a pursuit. Setting its stage to “Converted to opportunity” is what actually creates the formal opportunity record; after that, the lead itself is locked and can only be viewed as history, not edited. |
| Revenue share | The percentage of the full project value your organization keeps, as distinct from the full value itself. If you’re not the lead partner on the deal, your fee amount can’t be entered above the full opportunity value. |
| Currency | Amounts on opportunities are never auto-converted: a deal recorded in NGN stays in NGN in every total, deliberately, so an old deal is never quietly restated at today’s exchange rate. Totals are grouped by currency rather than summed together across them. Pipeline leads are the one exception: those figures do get converted into your organization’s base currency for comparison. |
| Bid/No-Bid scoring | Six dimensions, each scored 1 (weak) to 5 (strong). The recommendation (full pursuit, selective pursuit, light touch, or no-go) is calculated automatically from your organization’s thresholds; it isn’t something you set by hand. |
| Technical lead unit | Despite the name, this is a reference to one of your organization’s active departments, not free text you type in. Pick it from the list. |
Troubleshooting
I can’t find an opportunity I know exists
If your access is limited to creating opportunities (nothing broader), you’ll only see the ones in your own department or that you personally own; anything else looks like it isn’t there at all. Ask someone with wider Business Development access to check, or ask for the record’s department to be corrected.
Handover says it’s already been handed over
This opportunity already has a linked project. Open that project directly instead of trying to hand it over again.
Handover says only a won opportunity can be handed over
Set the outcome to Won first. That will also archive the opportunity out of your active pipeline, which is expected, not a side effect to worry about.
An opportunity vanished from my pipeline board
Check the Archive view before assuming it’s lost. Marking the outcome Won or Lost archives it automatically; marking it Cancelled does not, so a cancelled pursuit stays visible in the active list.
I can’t edit a converted lead
Once a lead becomes an opportunity, the original lead record locks to protect the history. Go find the opportunity it became and make your changes there instead.
My revenue share amount won’t save
If you’re not the lead partner, your fee amount can’t exceed the full opportunity value. Double-check the percentage and the full value before re-entering it.
My dashboard totals don’t add up the way I expected
Check whether you’re comparing figures in the same currency first; amounts are grouped by currency rather than converted into one number. Also keep in mind weighted pipeline totals exclude anything already Won or Lost, by design.
I picked a technical lead unit and got an error saying it’s not from this organization
That department may have been deactivated since it was last used. Pick an active one from the list, or ask an admin to reactivate it.