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Mark an opportunity as lost, dead, postponed, or canceled
Mark an opportunity as lost, dead, postponed, or canceled

If an opportunity is no longer going ahead, mark it as lost, dead, postponed, or canceled to make it inactive. Easily reinstate later on.

Matthew James Finkel avatar
Written by Matthew James Finkel
Updated over a week ago

Rather than deleting an opportunity that isn’t going ahead, it’s better to mark it as lost or dead, or cancel it.

  • Lost, dead, or canceled opportunities remain on your system for your reference, giving you insight into where business might be getting lost.

  • They’re made inactive, so they’re hidden from default views.

  • Costs, serialized asset allocations, and bookable resource allocations are remembered on a postponed opportunity, making it easy to pick back up where you left off.

  • You can reinstate or clone these opportunities in future if the job is going ahead.

Mark an opportunity as lost or dead

At inquiry, draft, and quotation stage of an opportunity, you can mark as lost or dead:

  • Mark as lost
    When you know an opportunity has gone to a competitor, mark it as lost.

  • Mark as dead
    When an opportunity has gone cold or the client is no longer interested, mark it as dead.

From an opportunity page, click the Mark as lost or Mark as dead links under Actions on the details pane.

If you’ve allocated assets or bookable resources, these will be lost. We’ll also remove costs, too.

Mark as postponed

You may mark a quotation or an order as postponed. Do this if your customer has told you that they’d like this opportunity to take place in future or if it’s likely you’ll reinstate in future.

From an opportunity page, click the Mark as postponed link under Actions.

Asset allocations, bookable resource allocations, and costs are retained, so these will be there when you reinstate the opportunity in the future. 

Cancel an opportunity

When your opportunity has progressed to an order, you can’t mark it as lost or dead. Instead, you can cancel it.

To cancel an opportunity, click Cancel opportunity under Actions on the details pane.

Orders can be canceled up until any products have been checked-in on it

When canceled, the opportunity status will change to canceled and this opportunity will become inactive. 

Find your lost, dead, or canceled opportunities

The easiest way to see all of your lost, dead, or canceled opportunities is to filter the view in Opportunities to see inactive opportunities.

To do this, head to the main Opportunities screen and click View: Live and then choose Filter Selection from the menu. On the next screen, select “Inactive” and update the view.

Custom view

To view more detail, create a custom view

Custom views are a great way to see a list of lost, dead, or canceled opportunities over a specific period of time. Add as many criteria as you like to the view to drill down into the data.

Reinstate a lost, dead, or postponed opportunity

Lost, dead, and postponed opportunities can be reinstated. From a lost, dead, or postponed opportunity, click Reinstate opportunity under Actions on the details pane.

On the popup, choose the new opportunity start date.

When you move the start date, all of the dates in the scheduler adjust accordingly. We also update the dates of any services on the opportunity.

Clone canceled opportunities 

Canceled opportunities can’t be reinstated, but you can easily re-create them by cloning the opportunity to create a copy. 

Just click Clone opportunity under Actions on the details pane. Your cloned opportunity will be a draft order, ready to modify before converting to a quotation or order.

Common questions

How can I record a cancellation reason?

There's a few ways you might like to do this:

  • Discussions are a great way to store notes. Create a discussion with the subject "Cancellation notes" or something similar and add your team as participants.

  • Use activities. When you find out that the opportunity isn’t going ahead, you can create an activity to note that you spoke to the client and that they’re canceling. Add further information to the completion note.

  • Create your own custom field to record this information. 

Can I delete opportunities?

You can! If you'd rather delete opportunities, use the trash can icon at the top of the screen. Keep in mind that when you delete opportunities, they're permanently removed from the database. 

You can delete an opportunity up until you've booked products and services out.

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