Tracking leads in your pipeline

How to add a lead and move it through the six stages, the board and list views, card order and list sorting, follow-up badges, budget ranges, and how leads leave the pipeline.

A lead is a potential project you haven’t formalised yet. When you qualify a lead and turn it into a project, its account and contact carry over with it.

Leads are included on the Grow and Scale plans. See Plans and limits.

Add a lead

Go to Leads.
Click New Lead. To start the lead in a particular stage, click the + at the top of that stage’s column on the board instead.
Enter the project name, then choose the Account and the Person of Contact.
Choose the Source and the Stage.
Set the Budget Range, or tick I don’t know the budget yet.
Add any notes in the Notes panel.
Click Create Lead.

If the company or the person isn’t in Billow yet, type the name in Account or Person of Contact and choose Create new account or Create new contact. Billow can also fill in the form from your notes.

Lead fields

Field	Required	What it holds
Project	Yes	The name of the potential project
Account	Yes	The company the lead is for
Person of Contact	Yes	Your contact at that company. Choose the account first.
Source	Yes	How the lead reached you: Outbound, Sales Call, Inbound, Referral or Existing
Stage	Yes	Where the lead is in your pipeline
Budget Range	No	A rough budget range
Notes	No	Anything you want to keep with the lead

The six stages

Stage	What it means
Lead Captured	The lead came in and you haven’t talked yet
Discovery Call	You’re in conversation
On Hold	The lead is paused for now
Qualified	The lead is a good fit and ready to become a project
Unqualified	The lead is not a fit
Lost	The deal didn’t close

The first four are the working stages and show up as columns on the board. Unqualified and Lost are end states and live outside the columns.

Board and list views

The leads page has a board view and a list view. Switch between them with the two icons at the top right. The same four tabs sit above both views.

Tab	What it holds	In board view
All	Every lead in the working stages	Board columns
Needs action	Leads in Lead Captured, Discovery Call or On Hold	Board columns, narrowed to those three
Unqualified	Leads in both end states, Unqualified and Lost	Table
Converted	Leads that became a project	Table

The list view shows every tab as a table.

A Converted row shows the project’s status in place of a stage badge, plus a View project button.

Change a lead’s stage

Open the board.
Drag the lead’s card to another stage column.

The new stage saves straight away.

To change the stage from the lead itself, open the lead, choose a new Stage and click Save changes.

Card order on the board

Drag a card up or down within its column to change its place. The order saves straight away and is the same for everyone in your workspace. When you drop a card into another column, it lands where you drop it.

A lead that reaches a column any other way, such as a new lead or a stage change on the lead’s page, shows at the top of its column. Pending bookings from Calendly or Cal.com stay above every lead in Discovery Call.

Sort the list

The list shows the newest leads first. Click a column header to sort by it, click it again to reverse the order, and click it a third time to go back to newest first. Leads without a value in that column stay at the bottom either way. Pending bookings stay at the top of the list.

Mark a lead as unqualified or lost

Open the lead’s … menu on the board or in the list.
Choose Mark as unqualified or Mark as lost.

The lead moves to the Unqualified tab.

On the board, you can also drag the card onto Unqualified or Lost in the bar that appears at the bottom of the board while you drag. Billow confirms with “Marked as unqualified” or “Marked as lost”, with an Undo button for five seconds.

To move the lead back into a working stage later, open it and change the Stage.

Follow-up reminders

A lead that has sat in Lead Captured, Discovery Call or On Hold for two weeks without a stage change gets a red “You should follow up” badge on its card.

The badge appears on the board only. It doesn’t appear in the list view, and Billow doesn’t email you about it.

Budget ranges

New leads start with a rough budget range already set. Adjust it, tick I don’t know the budget yet, or leave it.

The slider’s minimum and maximum are a workspace setting. Adjust scale saves as soon as you click Apply, even if you don’t save the lead, and changes the slider on every lead for everyone in the workspace.