A sales pipeline tracker is the view leadership reads to see what is in play, what moved and what is about to close, without opening a single deal. This article answers how to replace the shared tracker spreadsheet with a live dashboard on the platform, and which six numbers belong on it. The board in Opportunities is where salespeople work. The tracker is where owners and directors read the result, and it should update itself every time a card moves.
Why the spreadsheet tracker stops working
Most firms start with a spreadsheet: one row per deal, columns for value, stage and owner. It works while one person keeps it. Once three or four people sell, the spreadsheet falls a week behind, versions multiply and nobody trusts the totals.
The deeper problem is that a spreadsheet only shows a moment. It cannot tell you that a deal moved backwards last week, or that a salesperson's deals have not been touched in a month. A tracker built on live pipeline data can.
The six numbers a tracker should show
Keep it small enough to read in two minutes.
- Open value by stage, so you see where the money sits.
- New deals created this period, by source.
- Deals won and lost this period, with value.
- Deals with no activity past their stage's threshold, by owner.
- Expected closes this month and next.
- Average days from first stage to won, over the last quarter.
Anything else belongs in a deeper report you open when one of these six looks wrong.
Before you start
- A pipeline in Opportunities with stages your team uses consistently.
- Values and expected close dates filled on most open deals.
- A lead source on every contact, set up as described in capturing where leads come from.
- Permission to create and share dashboards in the account.
- A decision on who reads the tracker and how often.
How to set it up
- Open the Dashboard section and click + Add Dashboard in the Dashboard Selection Menu.
- Type a Dashboard Name that matches the pipeline this tracker reports on.
- Leave the Private Dashboard toggle off and set which roles can open the tracker.
- Click Confirm to create the blank tracker.
- Click + Add a widget manually and add Total Opportunity Value, filtered to the pipeline you track.
- Add Opportunity Counts by Status, Won Opportunity Value and Lost Opportunity Value, clicking Save on each widget.
- Add Lost Opportunities By Reason and Opportunity Revenue Over Time so leadership sees the trend as well as the totals.
- Click Save Changes to keep the tracker layout, then retire the old spreadsheet on a fixed date.
The stalled tag comes from a workflow, set up as part of the weekly pipeline routine. Without it, the fourth widget stays empty.
Reading the tracker without fooling yourself
Open value is the number people quote and the one that misleads most. It rises when salespeople add hopeful deals and falls when they clean up, so it tracks behaviour as much as demand. Read it alongside new deals created and deals won.
The most useful single reading is the trend in average days to won. If it creeps up quarter on quarter, deals are getting harder, even if the board looks full.
Suppose the June tracker shows an illustrative £310k of expected broker fees and procuration income open, 64 new cases and 22 completions, and average days to completion has drifted from 48 to 61 over two quarters. The directors would open the stage widget, look for the stage where cases wait longest, say documents received, and add a document-chasing sequence there.
What it replaces and what it costs in time
The tracker replaces the weekly spreadsheet update, the end-of-month email asking every salesperson for their numbers and the board pack someone assembles by hand. It costs about two hours to build. After that, nobody updates it; it reads from the pipeline.
The real cost is upstream. A tracker is only as good as the values, dates and stages on each deal, so it depends on the team keeping cards current.
The mistake most people make
Building twenty widgets because the platform allows it. A crowded tracker gets glanced at and ignored. Six numbers that each prompt a question are worth more than twenty that each need explaining.
When a tracker is not what you need
If the question is which marketing channel produces revenue, you need a source and attribution report, covered in measuring lead generation. If the question is why deals get stuck in one column, you need to look at how your stages are defined. The tracker shows that something is wrong; it rarely shows why.
A very small team with a handful of deals may not need a tracker at all. The board itself is readable at that size.
Troubleshooting
Values on the tracker are far higher than finance expects. Deal values are being entered inconsistently, some as monthly fees and some as annual contract value. Write one rule and put it in the value field's description.
The source widget shows a large blank group. Contacts are arriving without a source. Fix the forms and imports that create them, then backfill the gap where you can.
Expected closes are always overdue. Owners set close dates once and never update them. Add a workflow flag for past close dates and review them weekly.
People keep using the old spreadsheet. It still exists. Set a date, archive it, and make the dashboard the only place numbers are discussed in meetings.
Frequently asked questions
Can the tracker show each salesperson's numbers?
Yes. Add an owner filter to the dashboard, or create a copy filtered to each owner. Keep the team view as the default so the conversation stays on the pipeline as a whole.
How often should leadership look at it?
Weekly is enough for most firms. Daily checking tends to produce questions about normal fluctuations. Monthly is too slow to catch stalled deals.
Does a tracker work with more than one pipeline?
Yes. Either build one dashboard per pipeline or add a pipeline filter. Do not add the values of different pipelines together if they measure different things, such as new business and renewals.
Can I export the tracker for a board meeting?
You can export the underlying report data. Most firms find it simpler to show the live dashboard in the meeting, which avoids a second version of the numbers.