Closing a deal, end to end

Closing is a stage move like any other, so move applies the same stage rules and refuses a close it cannot satisfy. Won hands the person to onboarding and support; lost stops the chasing. Both settle the value, deal with the deal's open follow-ups, and leave a record of who decided and when — which is the part that gets asked about months later.

Status: Available What this means
Audience: both
In the app: #/sales, #/relationships
Last verified: 2026-09-10
Product version: 6.3.2

The close is a move, not a button of its own#

An opportunity in sales.py has a stage, a value and a review flag. Won and lost are positions on that stage list, reached through the same move every other progression uses, under the same stage rules. That is deliberate: if closing had its own path it would be the one path where a required field could be skipped, and the pipeline would fill with deals that were won on paper and had no value on them.

The value is held in minor units — money(value_minor, currency) — so a deal is stored as a whole number of the smallest unit of its currency and never as a float that drifts. A close is the moment that number stops being an estimate, so it is worth setting the real figure with set_value before the move rather than after it.

The thirteen stages of a close#

TRIGGER — a person decides the deal is done, or a conversation makes it plain: an order, a signed quotation, or a customer saying they have gone elsewhere.
USER / EXTERNAL EVENT — the decision arrives on the Sales screen, from the Assistant, or as a reply on a thread that a person then acts on. Connect does not decide on its own that a deal is won.
AUTH / WORKSPACE RESOLUTION — the opportunity belongs to exactly one workspace; the kernel scopes the query and row-level security backs it, so an Owner session and a customer session reach their own deals through the same code.
INGEST / REQUEST — move receives the opportunity, the target stage and the person making the change. A missing target is refused rather than guessed at.
CANONICAL RECORD — the opportunity's stage changes. The value, currency and any review flag travel with it; nothing is copied into a second 'closed deals' table that could disagree with the first.
CLASSIFICATION / RESEARCH / REASONING — the stage rules run. They are the reason a close can be refused: a rule that requires a value, or an order of stages, is checked here and reported rather than silently bypassed.
KNOWLEDGE + MEMORY + RULES — safe_sales still applies to anything said to the customer about the close. A price or a warranty term Knowledge does not support is refused and escalated, whether the deal is opening or closing.
AUTONOMY / APPROVAL — the move itself is a person's decision. Any message that goes out about it — a thank-you, a hand-over note — obeys the channel's autonomy mode like any other reply.
ACTION / PROVIDER — none for the move. A provider is only involved if a message accompanies it, and that leaves through the ordinary send boundary.
RESULT — the deal shows its new stage on the pipeline immediately. A refusal shows the rule that refused it, not a generic failure.
RELATIONSHIP / TIMELINE / MEMORY — the person's timeline gains the close; on a win, journey moves the lifecycle stage and onboarding_action becomes the next thing that matters; on a loss, the reason is worth writing as memory so the next conversation starts from it.
AUDIT / USAGE / NEEDS YOU — who closed it, when, from which stage, and under which rule is recorded. Anything that could not be completed — an unanswered commercial question, a follow-up that needs a decision — is left where a person will see it.
NEXT — a won deal becomes onboarding and then support; a lost one leaves a relationship that is still real and a set of follow-ups that should now stop.

Stage by stage#

Stage	What you see	What changes	What can fail
Decision	You pick won or lost	Nothing yet	The deal is under review and the question behind the review is still open
Rules	A refusal, or nothing	Nothing on a refusal	A stage rule is unsatisfied — most often a missing value
Move	The card sits in its new column	Stage, and the value if you set one	Two people closing the same deal at once; the last write is the one that stands
Lifecycle	The person's stage changes on a win	`journey` position	A win with no company linked leaves onboarding attached to a person and not an organisation
Follow-ups	Open chases on the deal	Completed, cancelled or stopped by you	Nothing stops them for you — a lost deal that keeps ringing is a follow-up nobody closed
Record	The timeline entry	An audit row naming the person	Nothing: the record is written with the move, not afterwards

Won and lost are not mirror images#

Won: The relationship gets busier, not quieter. journey moves the lifecycle stage, onboarding_action picks the person up, and support cases become the likely next record. Follow-ups about closing should be completed; follow-ups about delivery usually want creating.
Lost: The relationship stays. The person is still a person, the company is still a company, and the timeline still holds every exchange. What must stop is the chasing: stop_for_person or stop_for_thread is the honest end, and leaving the rows open is how a lost customer gets rung a fortnight later.
Lost to a competitor: Worth recording as memory rather than only as a stage, because the useful part is the reason. A stage says the outcome; memory says why, and the next conversation can start there.
Reopened: There is no special reopen. Move the stage back, and the timeline shows both moves in order — which is more honest than a deal that quietly forgets it was ever lost.

What goes wrong here#

The value is wrong by a factor of a hundred. Values are minor units. A figure entered as though it were major units is out by the currency's exponent, and the pipeline total is the first place it shows.
Follow-ups outlive the deal. Nothing cascades from a stage move to the follow-up rows on purpose — an automatic cancel would take out delivery chases as well as sales chases. Closing them is a step, not a side effect.
The close is refused and the refusal is read as a fault. A stage rule that will not let a deal reach won without a value is doing its job; see The deal would not move stage.
The deal disappears from the board. Closed stages are usually filtered out of the default view rather than deleted; A deal is not on the board walks the four reasons in order.

Questions#

Can Connect close a deal on its own?

No. Connect can raise a deal for review, draft the message that surrounds a close and schedule the chasing, but the stage move to won or lost is a person's decision. That boundary is the same one that stops it inventing commercial terms.

What happens to the demos attached to a deal?

A demo has its own lifecycle — requested, scheduled, completed or cancelled — and a close does not resolve it. A scheduled demo on a lost deal should be cancelled, and one on a won deal is often the onboarding session, so it is worth completing rather than deleting.

Does the customer get told the deal was closed?

Only if somebody sends something. Marking a deal won or lost changes your records; it does not send a message. Any note that does go out is drafted and released under the channel's autonomy mode like any other reply.