Opportunities
An Opportunity is a deal in progress for which you already track an expected revenue, a probability of closing and an estimated close date. AdmCloud stores Opportunities in the same record as CRM Leads; the difference is just an internal flag marking the deal as already qualified. This page focuses on how to manage the Opportunity flow once a deal is qualified: the stage board, changing stages, generating Quotes, and the pipeline and closing-effectiveness reports.
What is it and what is it for?
Each Opportunity moves through the Sales Stages your company configured (for example: New, Contacted, Qualified, Closed Won, Closed Lost). As it moves along, you track its expected revenue (calculated automatically from the items you add to it), its probability of closing, and its estimated close date, so you can forecast how much and when your sales team will sell.
From an Opportunity you can generate a Quote with a single click, reusing the items you already captured on it, and then review every Applied Document (quotes and sales orders) generated from that deal on its detail screen. When the deal closes, won or lost, you pick a Lost Reason (if it was lost) or a Purchase Barrier (if it's still open but stalled), catalogs that later let you analyze why your company wins or loses deals.
How to use it
- Open the Opportunities list. It has Open (default), Board (Kanban), Closed, All and Without Quote views. Filter by date, subsidiary, customer/prospect, sales rep, customer class and item class, use the quick per-sales-rep links, and customize which columns show in the table (the column setup is saved per user).
- Work your pipeline on the Board. Each column is a Sales Stage and each card is an Opportunity (or a Lead, if you turn on the Include Leads switch). The card shows the customer, phone, expected revenue, probability, estimated close date, sales rep, and days since last contact (highlighted in red once it passes the configured reminder days). Drag a card into another column to change its stage, or sort cards by priority or by days without contact.
- Change stage without opening the form. From the Opportunity's Details screen, use the Change Stage menu to move it directly to another stage; AdmCloud automatically records the close date when you move it into a stage marked as "closing".
- Generate a Quote. From Details, click Create Quote to turn the Opportunity's items into a formal quote without retyping them. Check the Applied Documents tab to see every quote and sales order generated from that deal, grouped by currency.
- Check the pipeline reports. From the Reports menu on the list or the board, or from the general CRM Reports section, analyze the status and effectiveness of your sales process (see the next section).
Opportunity and Pipeline Reports
Beyond the list and the board, AdmCloud offers several reports dedicated to analyzing your Opportunities:
| Report | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Opportunities (CRM_Opportunities) | A detailed, printable listing of your Opportunities, with the same sales rep, subsidiary, customer, currency, item class and territory filters as the main list. |
| Closing Effectiveness per Month | Compares, month by month, how many Opportunities closed won versus closed lost, to measure the trend of your conversion rate. |
| Closing Effectiveness per Salesperson | The same won-versus-lost comparison, broken down by each sales rep on your team. |
| Without Quote | Lists open Opportunities that don't have a Quote yet, along with the days elapsed since their document date, so they don't get forgotten. |
| Pipeline Analysis | Shows the total value of your open pipeline (expected revenue) grouped by stage and by sales rep, with a variant that breaks it down by month. |
| Opportunities by Last Contact | Shows how many days have passed since an Activity (call, email, visit) was logged on each Opportunity, to spot deals that went cold. |
Key fields
| Field | What it's used for |
|---|---|
| Name | Identifies the Opportunity in lists, the board and reports. Required. |
| Sales Stage | Which step of your sales process the deal is in. Required, and determines its column on the board; if the stage is marked as "closing", AdmCloud sets the Close Date automatically. |
| Customer / Prospect | Who the deal belongs to, from your Customers catalog. |
| Sales Rep | Who on your team owns the deal; their employee record must have an email address configured. |
| Expected Revenue | Calculated automatically from the net amount of the items you add to the Opportunity; it isn't typed manually. |
| Probability | Estimated percentage chance the deal closes won; useful for weighting your pipeline value. |
| Estimated Close Date / Close Date | When you expect to close the deal and, once it closes, when it actually closed (the latter is filled in automatically when you move it to a closing stage). |
| Budget | The prospect's available budget for this deal, if you know it. |
| Currency | Required if the Opportunity has items or an expected revenue greater than zero. |
| Lost Reason | Why the deal was lost, from the Lost Reasons catalog. Moving to a "Lost" stage requires the additional "Lost Deal" permission. |
| Purchase Barrier (No Close Reason) | What's holding back a deal that's still open, from the Purchase Barriers catalog. |
| Acquisition Source | How this deal reached your company, from the Acquisition Sources catalog. |
| Tags | Comma- or semicolon-separated keywords (up to 20 characters each) to classify and filter Opportunities. |
| Reminder Days | After how many days without contact the board highlights the card in red. |
| Subsidiary | Required and visible only if your company has subsidiaries enabled; a subsidiary marked read-only can't be used. |
| Items | The deal's products or services, with quantity, price, discount and tax; they're the basis for the Expected Revenue and for the Quote you generate. |
Validations when saving
- Name and Sales Stage are required; the Sales Stage must exist in your stages catalog.
- If you enter a contact Email, it must be a valid email format.
- Currency is required if the Opportunity has items or an Expected Revenue greater than zero.
- If you assign a Sales Rep, their employee record must have an email address configured; otherwise the record can't be saved.
- If you set a Customer/Prospect, Item Class, Lost Reason or Purchase Barrier, those records must exist and not be voided.
- Subsidiary is required if your company has subsidiaries enabled, and can't be a subsidiary marked read-only.
- Each item line needs an active item, its unit of measure (if the item requires one) and its tax schedule; if the item requires or forbids attributes, the line must respect that.
- Moving the Sales Stage to a stage marked as "Lost" requires the additional CRM "Lost Deal" permission.
- You can't delete an Opportunity that already has Applied Documents (for example a Quote generated from it); unlink or delete those first.
Availability and permissions
- This feature requires the Premium Plus CRM plan or higher, or the Enterprise plan with the CRM module active; if it isn't available, the screen shows a "not available in this edition" message.
- Requires the CRM "Opportunities" permission in your user group (at the add, edit or delete level depending on the action). This is the same permission that controls both Leads and Opportunities, since they share the same security screen.
- Moving an Opportunity to a "Lost" stage also requires the additional CRM "Lost Deal" permission.
- The Contacts tab on Details only appears if your company has that feature turned on; ask your administrator to enable it if you don't see it.
- The Price Level column on item lines only appears if your company has that feature turned on.
- The AI Autofill (Smart Paste) button on the create form only appears if that feature is active for your company; it accepts text or a copied image (a screenshot or a photo), whose text is read automatically.
- If your company uses custom fields on Leads/Opportunities, only the ones marked visible on Opportunities show up on this screen.
Tips and common pitfalls
Check "Without Quote" before your pipeline meeting. That view surfaces open deals that don't have a quote yet, so they don't stall.
Change stage from Details or the Board, not by re-editing the whole form. The Change Stage menu and the Board's drag-and-drop are faster and avoid mistakes from re-entering the rest of the data.
Expected Revenue isn't typed by hand: it's recalculated automatically from the net amount of the Opportunity's items. To change it, adjust the quantities, prices or discounts on the lines instead.
"Cannot be deleted" appears if the Opportunity already has Applied Documents (Quotes or Sales Orders generated from it); check the Applied Documents tab before trying to delete it.
Can't mark it as Lost? You need the additional CRM "Lost Deal" permission; ask whoever manages your company's security to grant it.