Basics . 4 min read

Add an opportunity

This is the distinction that trips up every new account, so it is worth thirty seconds: a contact is a person, an opportunity is one potential job for that person. Rosa Alvarez is a contact. Her roof is an opportunity. If she asks about guttering next spring, that is a second opportunity on the same contact, and keeping them separate is how you track two jobs without losing either.

Raise one

1. Click the Opportunities tab.
2. Click + Add Opportunity, top right.
3. Choose the Primary Contact from your existing contacts. If they are not in the system yet, you can enter their details here and the contact is created with it.
4. Give it a name. It defaults to the contact's name, which is fine for one job and useless for three. "Alvarez, roof replacement" beats "Rosa Alvarez".
5. Pick the Pipeline and the Stage it starts in.
6. Leave Status as Open.
7. Put in the Opportunity Value, even if it is a rough number.
8. Click Create.

Owner and followers

The Owner is the person responsible for chasing it, and that is who alerts and tasks will point at. Followers get visibility without owning it, which is how you keep an office manager in the loop without making them responsible. If nobody owns a job, nobody chases it.

Changing things afterwards

• Move a stage: drag the card to the next column on the board, or open it and pick a new stage from the dropdown.
• Change the value: open the card and edit the value field, then save.
• Change the owner: open the card, pick a new owner, save.
• Wrong person attached: open the card, remove the primary contact, add the correct one and mark it primary before saving.

The habit that makes it work

Raise the opportunity when the job becomes real, which is usually the first conversation, not when the quote goes out. A pipeline that only contains quoted work tells you what you already know. One that contains everything live tells you what to do today.

Next: Create and send an invoice