Getting Started with Pipelines and Opportunities in Captivation Hub

Pipelines and opportunities give you a clear, organized way to track potential deals and move contacts through your sales process — from first touch to closed. In this guide, you'll learn how pipelines and opportunities work, how to set up your first pipeline, and how to add opportunities manually, in bulk, or through automation.

By the end of this guide, you'll have a working pipeline your team can use to track and manage leads every day.

Understanding Pipelines and Opportunities

Before creating your first pipeline, it helps to know how the different pieces fit together.

Term	What It Means
Pipeline	Represents your overall sales process — the full journey from lead to closed deal.
Stage	A step within a pipeline (for example: New Lead, Contacted, Proposal Sent, Closed Won).
Opportunity	A specific record tied to a contact that moves through the pipeline stages. Each opportunity tracks its own status, value, and notes.
Contact	The person associated with an opportunity. A contact can have multiple opportunities across different pipelines.

How They Work Together

When you create an opportunity, you link it to a contact and place it in a pipeline stage. As the deal progresses, you move the opportunity forward through the stages. This gives you a real-time view of where every lead stands and what needs attention next.

Before You Begin

Make sure you have the following in place before setting up your pipeline:

• At least one contact in your account (you can add contacts manually or import them)
• Access to the Opportunities section in Captivation Hub
• A clear idea of the stages in your sales process

Step 1 — Create a Sales Pipeline

Go to Opportunities in the left menu, then click Settings and select Pipelines. Click Add Pipeline, give it a name, and add the stages that match your process.

Add as many stages as you need by clicking Add Stage. You can reorder them by dragging, and rename or delete them at any time.

When you're done, click Save. Your pipeline is now ready to use.

Step 2 — Choose How to Add Opportunities

There are three ways to get opportunities into your pipeline. Pick whichever fits your situation:

• Import contacts as opportunities — best if you have an existing list
• Create manually — best for adding individual deals one at a time
• Create by automation — best for hands-off lead capture using workflows

Option A — Import Contacts as Opportunities

If you already have a list of contacts, you can bulk-import them directly into a pipeline stage.

Go to Contacts, select the contacts you want to import, and click Add to Pipeline. Choose your pipeline and the starting stage, then confirm.

You can also import opportunities from a CSV file. Go to Opportunities and click Import in the top right. Download the sample template, fill it in, and upload it.

Option B — Create an Opportunity Manually

To add a single opportunity, go to Opportunities and click the + button or Add Opportunity. Fill in the contact name, pipeline, stage, and any other details like value, status, and assigned user.

Click Save and the opportunity will appear in your pipeline view.

Option C — Create an Opportunity by Automation

You can use workflows to automatically create opportunities when a contact takes a specific action — like submitting a form, booking a call, or clicking a link. This keeps your pipeline up to date without any manual work.

In your workflow, add the Create/Update Opportunity action, then set the pipeline, stage, and any other details you want populated automatically.

Here's a quick look at how the opportunity creation flow works end to end:

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a contact have more than one opportunity?
Yes. A single contact can have multiple opportunities across the same or different pipelines. Each opportunity is tracked separately.

Can I rename or delete a pipeline stage after it's set up?
Yes. Go to Opportunities → Settings → Pipelines, open the pipeline, and edit the stage name or remove it. Opportunities in a deleted stage will need to be moved manually first.

Can I move opportunities between pipelines?
Yes. Open the opportunity record and change the pipeline from the details panel. The opportunity will move to the first stage of the new pipeline unless you specify otherwise.

What's the difference between opportunity status and stage?
Stage is where the opportunity sits in your process flow. Status is the outcome (Open, Won, Lost, Abandoned). You can mark an opportunity Won or Lost from any stage.

Can I assign opportunities to specific team members?
Yes. When creating or editing an opportunity, use the Assigned To field to select a team member. You can filter the pipeline view by owner to see each person's deals.