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Opportunities

Updated

Opportunities hold your sales pipeline and potential deals. For a manufacturer that means clients buying products; for a non-profit, people intending to donate.

Opportunities are created automatically when a qualified lead is converted, or manually with links to their contacts and organizations. Links matter here, since they record who is involved and in what role.

An open opportunity appears as an Insight card on every linked contact, lead, and organization.

Insightly Opportunity Record Detail View — This screenshot shows a numbered annotated view of an Insightly CRM opportunity record called “Let’s Make a Deal,” highlighting key fields such as organization name, pipeline stage, current state, forecast close date, and opportunity value. The numbered callouts (1–8) help users identify specific areas of the record, making it useful for a support article explaining how to read or navigate an opportunity page.

Insightly Opportunity Record Detail View

On this page:

Fields unique to the opportunity record

  • Summary Bar. The key details at a glance.
  • Pipeline. Set up by an administrator to guide salespeople through a defined process. Completed stages show green, the current stage blue, upcoming stages grey.
  • Converted from Lead. Present only if the opportunity came from a lead, hyperlinked back to the original.
  • Current State & Reason. Open, Suspended, Abandoned, Lost, or Won. Open and Suspended are open states; the rest are closed, meaning the work is finished. Administrators can define State Reasons explaining why the state changed.
  • Probability of Winning. A percentage from 0 to 100, adjusted as negotiations move.
  • Forecast Close Date. When you expect the deal to close.
  • Linked Email Address. A version of your Insightly mailbox address that links saved emails, and their senders and recipients, to this opportunity.
  • Value. A currency value, definable as a fixed bid or lump sum, or per hour, week, or month. Totals display at the top of any opportunity list and can be included in reports.

Creating an opportunity

  1. Click the Add New Item (+) button at the top of the page and select Add New Opportunity.
  2. Enter a name.
  3. Complete the remaining fields: Organization, Category, Probability of Winning (a whole number from 0 to 100), Forecast Close Date, Opportunity Value (select the currency and enter whole numbers, no commas or decimal points), and any custom fields.
  4. Click Save, or Save & New to start another.

ℹ️ Agree on a naming pattern before people start creating records. Something carrying customer, product or service, and expected close, such as Company Inc. | 50 Units | April 2017, stays searchable and readable in a list.

From a contact or organization

Create the contacts and organizations first, then build the opportunity from one of them. On the record, click Actions and select Add New Opportunity, and the link is created for you.

From a contact, the contact’s Primary Linked Organization populates the opportunity’s Organization field. From an organization, that organization populates it.

Customizing opportunities

Pipelines guide the sales process. Activity sets can be tied to a pipeline so tasks and events are created automatically when a stage is reached.

Categories label opportunities, projects, tasks, and files. Category is a built-in dropdown whose values and colors an administrator can change, so it behaves like a custom dropdown field that ships with the product.

Custom fields and Page Layouts are the two levers for fitting the record to your business. Custom fields put standardized information directly on the data-entry form, across 16 field types. Page Layouts control which fields appear, in what order, and to whom, and Advanced Permissions can restrict a layout to particular profiles.

Party Planning Pipeline Stage Progress Bar — This image shows a pipeline called “Party Planning” currently in Stage 2 of 5, “Reservations,” which has been active for 894 days. It displays a horizontal progress bar with completed, current, and upcoming stages, helping users understand how to track and navigate deal or project stages in Insightly CRM.

Party Planning Pipeline Stage Progress Bar

State reasons

State Reasons record why an opportunity’s state changed. Administrators add them for everyone.

  1. Go to System Settings > Opportunity States.
  2. Select the state to add a reason to.
  3. Type the reason in the Reason field.
  4. Click Add Reason.

The reason then appears whenever an opportunity is moved to that state.

Opportunity States Configuration in System Settings — The screenshot shows the Opportunity States settings page in Insightly CRM, where administrators can view and manage state/status options (such as Lost and Won) along with their associated reasons (e.g., Financing Disqual, Financing). This page allows admins to add, edit, or delete opportunity reasons, which helps teams track why deals are won or lost.

Opportunity States Configuration in System Settings

Adding a Reason to a Won Opportunity — A form field shows a user typing “Met feature requirements” as a reason for marking an opportunity as Won, with an “Add Reason” button highlighted in red. This feature allows sales teams to document why a deal was won, helping track patterns and improve future sales strategies.

Adding a Reason to a Won Opportunity

⚠️ A state reason can only be set at the moment the state changes. To add or correct a reason without changing the state, switch the opportunity to Suspended, save, then switch it back and add the reason.

ℹ️ Use Suspended rather than Won for that round trip. Suspended does not update the Actual Close Date field; Won does.

Stage duration tracking

Two ways for administrators to expose how long an opportunity has sat in a stage.

The Stage Duration table

Shows the full progression: which pipeline is in use, how long the opportunity spent in each previous stage, and who last edited it.

  1. Go to System Settings > Objects and Fields and select Opportunity.
  2. Click Page Layouts, then select an Opportunity Layout.
  3. Click the Related tab.
  4. Find Stage Duration under Available Lists and drag it onto the layout.
  5. Click Save Layout to accept the default columns.

The table’s columns are Pipeline Name, Stage Name, Days In Stage, Date Modified, and Modified By.

⚠️ The column set is fixed. Those five can be reordered or removed, but no other field can be added to the table.

To change them, hover over the Stage Duration table in the layout configuration screen until a gear icon appears in its upper right and click it. Select a field in Visible Columns and use the left arrow to remove it, or the up and down arrows to reorder. Sort By and Sort Type set the ordering. Click Save Changes, then Save Layout.

The Time in Stage field

A single number for the current stage, less detailed than the table but quicker to read.

  1. Go to System Settings > Objects and Fields and select Opportunity.
  2. Click Page Layouts, then select an Opportunity Layout.
  3. Find Time in Stage under Available Fields and drag it onto the highlights bar.
  4. Click Save Layout.

Opportunity values in kanban view

The kanban view shows the count and total value of opportunities in each pipeline stage. Dragging an opportunity between stages, or editing its value, updates the numbers immediately.

Opportunity Pipeline Kanban View Example — The image shows an Insightly CRM opportunity pipeline displayed as a Kanban board, with stages labeled “Verify information,” “Set up consultation,” and “Confirm specs,” each showing a total dollar value and individual opportunity cards beneath them. This view helps users understand how deals are organized by stage and their associated monetary values at a glance.

Opportunity Pipeline Kanban View Example

Converting to a project

Once a deal is won, convert the opportunity into a project to manage the delivery work.

  1. Open the opportunity, click Actions, and select Convert To Project.
  2. Enter a Project Name. It defaults to the opportunity name.
  3. Select a Reason for Winning Opportunity.
  4. Select the New Project Owner. It defaults to you.
  5. Leave Copy Emails, Files, and Notes to New Project checked, or clear it. It is checked by default.
  6. Click Convert To Project.

The opportunity’s status changes to Won, a new project is created, and the opportunity and all its links are linked to it.

Converting a Won Opportunity to a Project — The screenshot shows the Actions dropdown menu open on an Opportunity record in Insightly CRM, with the “Convert to Project” option highlighted. This feature allows users to seamlessly turn a successfully closed opportunity into a project, enabling them to begin delivery or execution work directly from the sales record.

Converting a Won Opportunity to a Project

Convert Opportunity to Project Owner Selection — The screenshot shows the “Convert To A Project” dialog in Insightly CRM, highlighting a “New Project Owner” dropdown field that defaults to the current user but allows selecting another user from a list. This feature is relevant because it lets users assign project ownership to someone other than themselves when converting a won opportunity into a project.

Convert Opportunity to Project Owner Selection

⚠️ Links to files on external services do not transfer. Google Drive, Dropbox, and similar links stay with the opportunity and are not copied to the project.

ℹ️ Custom field values carry across only where the fields have been cloned from opportunities to projects and mapped. See the Custom Fields Guide.

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