The Customer Pipeline is a kanban board for tracking where each customer sits in their relationship with your shop — Lead, Active, At Risk, Churned, whatever stages you define — separate from scheduling a job. It's a different tool from Workflow (which tracks appointments moving through your shop floor); this one tracks the person.
Where it lives
Go to Customers in the left nav, then click the Pipeline tab (it sits next to Customers, Fleets, and Loyalty). You can also bookmark it directly at `/app/customers/pipeline`. The page heading reads "Customer Pipeline" with a small Beta badge next to it — worth knowing going in, since a couple of rough edges below are a byproduct of that.
Setting up your board the first time
If your shop has never used the Pipeline before, you won't see any columns — just a "Set up your pipeline" button. Click it and SalesThumb seeds six starter stages: Lead → Prospect → Active → At Risk → Won Back → Churned, each with its own color. You can rename or recolor any of them afterward (more on that below), and you're not required to keep all six — delete the ones you don't need. One thing the setup screen's own description doesn't quite deliver on: it says you can "rearrange anytime," but there's no drag-to-reorder control on this page today. New stages you add always land at the end of the row; the six starters keep the order they were seeded in.
Adding customers to the board
Nothing gets placed on the Pipeline automatically when you add a customer — it's opt-in. Click Add Unplaced near the top of the page to open a tray listing every customer in your shop who isn't on the board yet. Each row shows the customer's name and lifetime spend, a stage dropdown (defaulted to whichever stage is marked as your default — Lead, out of the box), and a Place button. Pick a stage and click Place to add them. There's no drag-from-tray-onto-a-column shortcut — placing is a one-click action per customer, not a drag.
Moving customers between stages
Once a customer is on the board, drag their card from one column to another to change their stage — the whole card is the drag handle. A short tap or click instead opens that customer's full profile, so you don't have to fight the drag gesture just to look someone up. Each card shows their name, a "Fleet" tag and company name if they're a fleet account, lifetime spend, vehicle count, how long since their last visit, and how long since your last contact (SMS or email, either direction) — plus a small photo strip pulled from their most recent vehicle photo, if one's on file.
Customizing your stages
Click Add Stage to create a new column — give it a name and pick from ten preset colors. To edit stages you already have, click Customize Stages, which opens a dialog listing every column. From there you can change a column's color (pick a swatch, then click Apply color), rename it (edit the text field, click Rename), or delete it. Deleting a stage that still has customers in it requires picking a destination from a "Move customers to…" dropdown before you can confirm — SalesThumb won't let you delete a populated stage and silently orphan those customers.
Reading the stats row
Above the board, four cards summarize the whole pipeline: Total Customers (everyone currently placed), Active Pipeline (customers with a visit or contact inside whichever date range you've selected — Today, This week, This month, Last 30/90 days, Year to date, or Last 12 months — via the pill buttons next to the page title), At Risk, and Avg Time in Stage (average days since customers entered their current stage, across the whole board). Two things worth knowing about that range selector: it only changes the Active Pipeline number — it doesn't hide or filter which cards you see on the board itself, so switching to "Today" won't shrink your columns. And the At Risk count isn't tied to a specific stage — it counts anyone sitting in *any* column whose name contains the word "risk" (case-insensitive). Rename your "At Risk" stage to something else and that counter drops to zero; add a second stage with "risk" in the name and it starts counting that one too.
Setting up an automatic stage-move rule
This is the part that saves you from manually re-sorting the board. Click Auto-stage Rules (lightning-bolt icon, top right) to open the rules dialog. Under "Add a rule," you'll pick from five trigger types:
- No visit in N days — the customer hasn't had a completed appointment in that many days (this also catches customers who've never had a completed appointment at all)
- No contact in N days — no SMS or email in either direction in that many days
- Lifetime spend ≥ $X — total dollars paid across all invoices, computed live from completed payments
- Lifetime spend < $X — same spend number, below the threshold instead
- First visit in last N days — their earliest completed appointment falls inside the window, for catching brand-new customers
Pick a trigger, enter the number (days or dollars, depending on which trigger you chose), optionally narrow it with "Only customers in" (defaults to "Any stage" — leave it alone to check your whole board, or pick a specific stage to scope the rule to just that group), choose the destination stage under "Move to," and click Add rule.
For the "flag as At-Risk after 90 days with no visit" example: trigger = No visit in N days, value = 90, "Only customers in" = Active (so you're only pulling from your active customers, not re-flagging people already sitting in Churned), "Move to" = At Risk.
Rules only ever act on customers who are already placed on the board — a rule won't reach into your full customer list and place someone who isn't there yet. And a rule quietly skips anyone already sitting in the destination stage, so running it repeatedly doesn't reset their "time in stage" clock or spam the audit log.
Running rules and managing them
Rules evaluate automatically overnight — the dialog's own copy says this runs nightly at 15:00 UTC. If you don't want to wait, click Run rules now at the bottom of the dialog (it's disabled until you have at least one rule) to apply every enabled rule immediately; you'll get a result line like "Evaluated 2 rules · moved 4 customers." Each rule in the "Active rules" list shows a plain-language description ("No visit in 90d → At Risk"), when it last ran and how many customers it moved (or "Hasn't run yet" if it's brand new), a Pause/Enable toggle, and a delete button that requires a second click to confirm.
Who can do what
Viewing the board, dragging cards between stages, adding customers from the Unplaced tray, and adding/renaming/recoloring/deleting stages are all open to anyone with access to the Customers page. Auto-stage rules are more restricted — creating, editing, pausing, deleting, or running a rule requires the "manage automations" permission. Owner, Admin, and Manager have that by default; Technician, Front Desk, and Service Writer do not. If someone on your team can drag cards but can't see the Add rule button do anything, that's why.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Do new customers automatically show up on the Pipeline board?
A: No. Adding a customer doesn't place them on the board — you have to add them yourself via the "Add Unplaced" tray, pick a stage, and click Place.
Q: How do I set up a rule that flags a customer At-Risk after 90 days with no visit?
A: Open Auto-stage Rules, choose the "No visit in N days" trigger, set the value to 90, optionally set "Only customers in" to your Active stage so it doesn't re-flag already-churned customers, set "Move to" to your At Risk stage, and click Add rule. It'll apply automatically on the nightly run, or immediately if you click Run rules now.
Q: When do auto-stage rules actually run?
A: They evaluate automatically every night at 15:00 UTC. You can also force an immediate run at any time with the Run rules now button in the Auto-stage Rules dialog.
Q: Can I reorder my pipeline stages?
A: Not from this screen. New stages are always added to the end of the row, and there's no drag-to-reorder control today — you can rename, recolor, or delete a stage, but not change its position.
Q: Who can create or edit auto-stage rules?
A: Owner, Admin, and Manager roles can create, edit, pause, delete, and manually run rules. Technician, Front Desk, and Service Writer can view and use the board itself (dragging cards, adding stages) but can't manage rules.