Working with the Sales Pipeline

The Recommendations board has been updated to act as your Sales Pipeline. This means enquiries can flow directly here from forms, and sales teams can manage the full lifecycle of a lead in one place — from new enquiry through to booking.

Board stages

• New → Unqualified enquiries land here.
• Rejected → For enquiries that can’t be worked (no availability, wrong fit).
• In Progress → Created when an enquiry is accepted. Clicking ‘Accept’ assigns you if you weren’t already assigned.
• Proposal Out → Moved manually once a proposal has been sent.
• Booked → Moves automatically when a customer books.
• Lost → Moved manually if a lead doesn’t convert (include lost reason).

Accepting or rejecting enquiries

From New:

• Accept → converts enquiry into a lead in In Progress.
• Reject → moves to Rejected, tracked in Enquiries report.

🗑️ If you delete a recommendation, the associated enquiry returns to New so you can re-qualify or reject it.

The Sales Pipeline gives you an overview of your leads at each stage. Tasks represent the work that needs doing to keep them moving; what needs to happen next, who's responsible, and by when.

Every lead should carry a concrete next action until it's booked or lost. Easol opens some of these tasks for you:

• A new enquiry arriving through a form on your site opens a Respond to new enquiry task due that day, so a first response is never missed. It closes when you reply or reject the enquiry.
• A customer replying to a message you sent from the lead opens a Reply to customer task, assigned to whoever owns the lead. It closes when you reply.
• A booking's balance passing its due date opens a Chase balance task. It closes when the balance is paid or the booking is cancelled.
• A customer signing a contract that needs your countersignature opens a Countersign contract task. It closes when you countersign or the document is deleted.

You can also create your own – a follow-up call, a chase, a site visit – and attach them to the lead so they appear alongside the automated ones.

The Tasks page is where the work happens. Filter or group by lead state (In progress, Proposal out, Booked or Lost) to focus on one stage of your pipeline, or sort by lead start date, group size or value to prioritise by what matters most.

See Tasks: Your to-do list in Easol for the full guide. 

Customer messages and tasks

If you use the Inbox as well as Tasks, it helps to know which messages become tasks and which become inbox tickets.

When a customer replies to a message you sent from the Messages tab on their enquiry, recommendation or booking, the reply lands on that record and opens a Reply to customer task assigned to whoever owns the lead.

When a customer emails you out of the blue, there is no conversation to attach it to, so it opens a ticket in your Inbox instead and no task is created.

One email address can therefore serve both purposes. You do not need separate addresses for sales and support.

Replying

Reply from the Messages tab on the lead and the task closes on its own. Your reply stays on the lead where the rest of your team can see it.

If you reply somewhere else, such as by phone, mark the task Complete yourself.
 

Sending proposals

In In Progress, reps qualify the lead (discuss needs, send quotes by email, etc.).

Assigning a customer to a Recommendation

Before sending a Recommendation, you can assign a customer to it. Open the Recommendation, click Add customer in the customer panel, and either pick an existing customer by email or fill in their first name, last name, and email to create one.

Assigning a customer:

• Saves the customer to the underlying booking as the lead booker
• Unlocks the third-party payment link (see below)
• Doesn't send the customer any email until you share a link with them

You can remove the assigned customer at any point before the booking is made.

Sharing the Recommendation

The Share section on the Recommendation page shows up to two links:

• Recommendation link — for the customer to review the proposal and book themselves
• Third-party payment link (only when a customer has been assigned and the third-party payments feature is enabled) — for whoever is paying on the customer's behalf (e.g. a corporate finance team). The payer doesn't need an account.

Move the lead to Proposal Out manually once you've sent the Recommendation to the customer.

If booked, the lead automatically moves to Booked. If lost, move it manually to Lost and record the lost reason.

Reporting

• Enquiries report → shows all inbound enquiries (accepted + rejected) routed to any board. Now includes a rejection reason column.
• Recommendations report (Sales Pipeline report) → shows all accepted enquiries / qualified leads, with:
  • Timestamps for stage changes (Created → Proposal Out → Proposal Opened → Booked/Lost)
  • Enquiry ID for traceability
  • Lost Reason for pipeline analysis

How to start using the sales pipeline for sales enquiries

• Form response routing: Update the response routing settings for any forms you use to receive sales enquiries to Sales Pipeline
• For existing open sales enquiries in the Enquiries board that don’t yet have a recommendation created: move them into the Sales Pipeline and begin using accept/reject
• For existing open sales enquiries with a recommendation already created: set them to Resolved status