Deal concepts
Understand Pipeline stage, Deal progress and Deal status, sales channels and departments, and Fill the Gaps.
Some parts of Autopilot make more sense when you understand how they relate to each other. This reference explains concepts you’ll come across while working with deals.
Pipeline stage, Deal progress and Deal status
These describe different aspects of the same deal. They work together so you can track the sale’s overall state, the work still happening, and where it belongs on the Pipeline board.
| Concept | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Deal status | The overall state of the sale: a draft, sold, delivered or cancelled deal. |
| Deal progress | The operational step the deal has reached. Your dealership configures the available progress values. |
| Pipeline stage | The column the deal belongs in on the Pipeline board. |
Why they’re separate
A deal can be Sold while the vehicle is still being sourced or prepared for delivery. Its Deal status tells you the sale has happened; its Deal progress gives your team more detail about what is happening next.
Pipeline stages group deals into useful board columns. Several Deal progress values can lead to the same Pipeline stage, so the board can stay easy to scan while each deal keeps its more detailed progress value.
For example, a dealership might map both On order and On water to a stage called Awaiting arrival. These are example names; the values and stages you see depend on your dealership’s setup.
How they work together
Autopilot decides a deal’s Pipeline stage in this order:
- A deal with Delivered status appears in Delivered.
- Otherwise, a valid manual Pipeline stage selection takes priority.
- Without a manual selection, Autopilot uses the stage mapped to the deal’s Deal progress for its sales channel and department.
- If no stage can be determined, the deal appears as Uncategorised.
Moving a deal to an ordinary Pipeline stage is a manual placement for that deal. It does not change its Deal progress. Select Auto from deal progress in the Pipeline stage dropdown to return to the configured mapping.
Delivered is a special option: selecting it changes the deal’s status to Delivered, subject to the delivery requirements. It is more than moving a card to another column. Read Deliver a deal before completing delivery.
Sales channels and departments
Sales channels and departments organise deals within a dealership. A deal’s Sales channel identifies the part of the dealership’s sales operation it belongs to. Its Department identifies the working area within that channel.
For example, a dealership could use a brand as a sales channel, with Retail and Fleet as departments within it. The names and available combinations come from your dealership’s setup.
Why both exist
A sales channel lets you group sales under a shared setup. Departments give you a more specific way to organise the work within that channel. Two deals can belong to the same sales channel while being handled in different departments.
These selections also provide context for deal setup. Deal progress options are configured for the sales channel, and Pipeline stages and progress-to-stage mappings can vary by department. This is why the same progress value can be grouped differently in different parts of the dealership.
Changing a deal’s classification
Where your access allows, change the sales channel or department from the deal page. Departments are tied to a sales channel, so choose from the departments available within the selected channel.
Changing Sales channel refreshes the deal under the new channel’s setup and clears its Deal progress and any manual Pipeline stage override. Review those values after the change. If the existing vehicle condition is unavailable in the new channel, Autopilot asks you to choose an available condition.
Fill the Gaps
Fill the Gaps helps you find missing deal information and work through it across a selected set of deals. Use it when information arrives after the initial write-up, or when you want to review incomplete records without opening and checking every deal yourself.
A gap is missing information from one of the fields you choose to check. It does not necessarily mean the deal is invalid or blocked: the fields selected for a gap check are separate from your dealership’s approval requirements.
Choose what to check
Open the Command Center using the Autopilot button in the bottom-right corner, search for Fill the Gaps, and select it.
Set up the check by choosing:
- Deals for: your own deals or the team’s deals, where your access allows.
- Deal status: drafts, active deals or both.
- Delivery period: the date range to review, with options to include delivered deals and unscheduled deals.
- Fields: Delivery essentials, Finance essentials, Everything, or Choose fields for your own selection.
The delivery period uses the actual delivery date when available, otherwise the estimated delivery date. Unscheduled deals have no delivery date yet.
Review the selection, then select Start fill the gaps. Autopilot builds a list of matching deals with missing information in the selected fields.
Work through the missing information
Choose a deal from the list. Its missing fields are grouped so you can fill in what you know. Select Save & next to save your entries and continue, or Save & finish on the last deal. Fields you leave blank are left unchanged.
Use Skip this deal if you don’t have the information yet. Skipping does not complete the missing fields. A completed session also does not mean every field on every deal is filled in: it reflects the selection you worked through.
Fill the Gaps updates the deal information you enter. Normal access and field-editing permissions still apply. For the separate checks that control whether a deal can progress, see Approval rules.