How to Set Up and Customize Your Deal Pipelines and Deal Stages in HubSpot

Learn how to customize HubSpot's sales tools to match your sales process.

Deal pipelines are a useful tool for sales teams as they provide a clear visual representation of the sales process. They serve to predict revenue and pinpoint obstacles in the selling process. Deal stages are the key milestones within the pipeline that indicate an opportunity's progress toward closure.

If you have permission to adjust property settings, you have the flexibility to design and modify deal pipelines and stages according to your team's specific requirements.

Create a new deal pipeline

If your account has multiple distinct sales processes, it's possible to establish extra pipelines. The suggestion for employing separate pipelines arises when these sales processes entail distinct stages that necessitate individual pipelines. Alternatively, if your sales processes share similar stages, you can utilize a single pipeline for multiple users and teams while controlling access through user permissions. For instance:

• Your business has an online direct to consumer sales process with a few stages, such as In cart, Closed Won, and Closed Lost. You also have a wholesale sales process that requires more stages, such as appointment scheduling and contract negotiation. In this scenario, you should create separate pipelines.
• Your business sells multiple brands and your HubSpot account has teams for each brand. The process to sell products for each brand is the same and you can use the same stages for all sales. In this scenario, it's not recommended to create separate pipelines. Instead, you can use the same pipeline and set Team only user permissions so each team can only access their brand's deals (Professional and Enterprise only).

To create a new deal pipeline:

• In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
• In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Objects > Deals.
• Click the Pipelines tab.
• Click the Select a pipeline dropdown menu, then select Create pipeline.

• In the dialog box, enter a Pipeline name and click Create.

Once you've added deals to your pipeline, learn how to edit the deals in a pipeline.

Edit or delete deal pipelines

You can also rename, reorder, manage access to, or delete deal pipelines.

• In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
• In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Objects > Deals.
• Click the Pipelines tab.
• Click the Select a pipeline dropdown menu and select a pipeline.
• Click the code code icon to view the pipeline's internal name. The internal name is used by integrations and the API.
• On the right, click the Actions dropdown menu and select one of the following:

• • Rename this pipeline: change the pipeline’s name. In the dialog box, enter the new name, then click Rename.
  • Reorder pipelines: change the order of your pipelines. In the pop-up box, drag the pipelines to move them to a new position, then click Save.
  • Manage access: manage which users can view and edit the pipeline.
  • Delete this pipeline: delete the pipeline. In the dialog box, click Delete pipeline to confirm. You can't delete a pipeline if it contains deals. You'll need to delete or move deals to another pipeline before deleting the pipeline.
• Click Customize board and card view to select the properties that are displayed on the board and board cards for the pipeline.
• Click Customize deal tags to create and manage color-coded labels that categorize deals (Sales Hub Starter, Professional, and Enterprise only). 

Add, edit, or delete deal stages in a pipeline

You can also add your own stages or edit and delete existing stages. To customize the stages in a pipeline:

• In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
• In the left sidebar menu, navigate to Objects > Deals.
• Click the Pipelines tab.
• Click the Select a pipeline dropdown menu, then select the pipeline to edit.

• To add a new deal stage:

  • Under the existing deal stages, click + Add stage.

  • Enter a deal stage name, then click the dropdown menu in the Deal probability column and select or enter a probability.

• To change the name of an existing deal stage, click the stage's name, then enter a new name in the text box. 

• To reorder stages, click the stage and drag it to a new position.

• To view the internal name for a deal stage, hover over the stage and click the code code icon. The internal name is used by integrations and the API.

• To delete a stage, hover over a stage and click Delete. If there are deals in the stage you're deleting, you'll need to move these existing deals to another stage. To do this in bulk, navigate to the deals index page, and in list view, bulk edit the Deal Stage property.

• To set who can edit deals in a specific stage, in the Editing access column, click the dropdown menu, then select whether to give edit permissions to all users with deal access, or only to super admins (Professional and Enterprise only).
• To edit the properties shown when a deal moves to a certain stage, hover over the Update stage properties column and click Edit properties.
• Once you're done editing, click Save in the bottom left.

You can also automate tasks on deal stages when editing or creating a sales pipeline.

Customize properties shown in each deal stage

You can also customize which deal properties are presented to users when manually moving a deal to a specific stage. Users must have Edit property settings permissions to customize deal stage properties.

• Navigate to the pipeline you want to edit.

• In the row of a stage, hover over the Conditional stage properties column and click Edit properties.

• In the dialog box, select the checkboxes next to any new properties you want to appear.

• To require a value for a property, select the checkbox in the Required column (Starter, Professional or Enterprise only). When a property is required, users won’t be able to create a deal in that stage unless they enter a value for that property.

• To reorder the properties, click and drag them to a new position.

• To remove a selected property, click the X next to that property in the Selected Properties column.

• Once you've selected your properties, click Next. The properties you've selected will automatically appear when manually creating a new deal in that stage or when moving an existing deal to that stage.

• Once you're done editing, click Save in the bottom left.

Manage access to deals by team or stage (Professional and Enterprise only)

Regardless of your HubSpot subscription, you can update an individual user's access to deals. However, if your account has a Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise subscription, you can also edit deal access based on a user's team and restrict editing access for certain deal stages.

Assign access to deals based on team membership

If your pipeline includes deals assigned to multiple teams, you can configure deal access so that users on a team can only access deals assigned to themselves or other team members. This means multiple teams can share a pipeline without affecting the deals assigned to other teams. 

• In your HubSpot account, click the settings settings icon in the main navigation bar.
• In the left panel, navigate to Users & Teams.
• To edit an individual user's permissions, click the name of a user on the desired team. To edit multiple users' permissions, select the checkboxes next to the users' names. If the users aren't yet on a team, learn how to create and add users to a team.
• Click Edit permissions.
• In the right panel, navigate to the CRM tab.
• In the Deals row, set the user's view permissions to Team only, then clear the Unassigned checkbox. This will automatically update the edit and delete permissions.

• Click Save. The user(s) must log out and back in for the permissions to take effect.

With these permissions, the users can now only view, edit, or delete deals where they or another user on their team are the owner. If a user is on multiple teams, they can access deals assigned to any of their teams.

Learn more about editing user permissions.

Restrict editing access for specific deal stages

Super admins can set whether deals in specific stages are editable by all users with access to deals, or only by other users with super admin permissions. If a stage is limited to super admins, once a deal enters that stage, only super admins will be able to edit the deal or move it to a different stage. Users with deal access can still view deal records in that stage, but can't make changes until an admin moves it to an editable stage.