Leads Pipeline

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Leads Pipeline Overview

The Leads Pipeline provides a visual kanban board interface for managing inquiries from initial contact through to booking. This system helps you track progress, prioritize work, and never lose track of a potential customer. When Pipeline is enabled for your organization, a separate Home > Pipeline page lists every job — lead, quote, booking, and payment status — in one table or board. Use Leads to work the inquiry; use Pipeline to scan the whole book of work.

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Pipeline Stages

Your leads move through six distinct stages:

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1. New

Leads enter the pipeline here when they first come in:

• Automatic Creation: Created from your inquiry form, imports, or manual entry
• Initial Information: Contains basic customer and event details

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2. In Progress

You’re actively working the lead:

• Working the Lead: Use this stage while gathering details, replying to the customer, or preparing a quote

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3. Quote Sent

When a quote has been sent to the customer:

• Quote Tracking: Each quote sent is listed on the lead detail page
• Auto-Advance: Cortado automatically moves a lead into Quote Sent the first time you send a quote for it

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4. Accepted

The customer has agreed to move forward. Cortado prompts you to generate the event(s) and turn the lead into a booking. If a lead is marked Accepted but no event has been created yet, a banner on the detail page offers a one-click Generate Events action. Once a booking exists, the same stage shows as Booked (a purple badge) on the kanban, table, and detail page — so you can tell “won and converted” apart from “accepted, still waiting for events.” Booked is not a separate column; it’s Accepted with a booking attached. See Booked Leads.

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5. Rejected

Lead did not convert. Cortado prompts you for a reason whenever a lead moves into this stage, so you always know why a deal didn’t close. See Rejection Reasons below.

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6. Stale

Leads that have gone cold. Use this stage to keep the kanban focused on active work without losing the record.

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Kanban Board Usage

The kanban board provides a visual way to manage leads:

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Drag-and-Drop Functionality

Move leads between stages by dragging cards:

• Visual Feedback: See cards move smoothly between columns
• Auto-Save: Changes save automatically
• Status Updates: Stage changes update inquiry status

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Card Features

Each lead card shows you what you need to triage at a glance:

• Event Date and Customer Name: The event date (or date range for multi-day events) alongside the lead’s contact name and company
• Event Type Badge: Color-coded badge for the event type (wedding, corporate, etc.)
• Quote Total: The most recent quote total if one has been created
• Guest Count and Event Count: Total guests expected and number of events for multi-event inquiries
• Quick Tags: Icon badges for any quick tags you’ve applied — see Quick Tags
• Source Badge: Where the inquiry came from — see Inquiry Source Attribution
• Owner Avatar: The teammate assigned to this lead, if any — see Lead Assignment
• Relative Received Timestamp: A short “received 2 hours ago” line so you can instantly tell new leads from old ones

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Compact and Expanded Views

Use the Compact / Expand toggle above the kanban to switch between a denser card layout for scanning many leads and a fuller layout with all metadata visible.

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Lead Assignment

New inquiries can be automatically assigned to a member of your team as they come in, so leads don’t sit unclaimed. Set this up under Settings > Company > Lead Assignment.

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Assignment Rule

Choose one of three rules for how new leads get an owner:

• Unassigned — new leads arrive with no owner, and your team claims them manually
• Default — every new lead is assigned to one person you choose from a Default User list
• Round the Horn — new leads rotate through a list of teammates one at a time, in the order those teammates were added, spreading inbound work evenly across the group

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Owner on the Board and Table

Once a lead has an owner, an avatar appears on its kanban card, and the leads table gains an Owner column, so you can see at a glance who’s working what.

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Reassigning a Lead

Open any lead’s detail page and click the owner pill to open Assign Lead. You can hand the lead to anyone in your organization — not just the people in the rotation — or set it back to Unassigned.

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Quick Tags

Quick tags are visual flags you can apply to any lead to keep priorities straight. They appear as small colored icons on each kanban card and as toggleable badges on the lead detail page. The five available tags are:

• Follow Up — you owe this customer a response
• Urgent — needs attention soon
• Hot Lead — high intent to book
• VIP — important customer or account
• Waiting — you’re waiting on the customer

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Applying Tags

Open any lead’s detail page and click a tag under the Original Inquiry card to toggle it on or off. Multiple tags can be applied to the same lead.

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Tag Legend

Because tags display as icons on the kanban board, there’s a legend at the top of the board that shows each icon next to its label. Hover any tag icon on a card to see its name in a tooltip.

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Rejection Reasons

When a lead moves to the Rejected stage — whether you drag its card on the kanban, change the stage from the leads table, or use the stage dropdown on the detail page — Cortado prompts you to record why.

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Selecting a Reason

The rejection dialog asks for:

• Reason (required) — pick from Cortado’s built-in set of standard rejection reasons (for example, Budget, Timing, or Competitor)
• Notes (optional) — add any additional context that will help you learn from this loss

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Rejection Banner

Once a lead is rejected, its detail page shows a red banner with the reason and any notes you entered, so the full context is visible every time you or a teammate revisits the record. The reason can be updated at any time if your understanding of why the deal didn’t close changes.

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Inquiry Source Attribution

Every new inquiry captures where it came from, so you can see which marketing channels actually drive business.

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Source Badges

On the leads list, each lead displays a source badge. Cortado checks the captured attribution data in a fixed order and shows the first rule that matches, so every lead carries exactly one badge.

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Paid ads

• Google Ads — any Google Ads click identifier (gclid, gbraid, wbraid, gad_source, or gad_campaignid) was on the URL. This is the first rule checked, so an ad click outranks every other signal — including your UTM tags.
• Facebook — a Meta ad click identifier (fbclid) was captured. The same badge is used for organic Facebook traffic.

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Search

• Organic Search — the visitor clicked through from a search engine’s results page without any campaign tags. Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Baidu, Yandex, and Brave Search are all recognized.
• Google, Bing, Yahoo — these appear as badges of their own only when the link was tagged utm_source=google, utm_source=bing, or utm_source=yahoo. An untagged click from a search results page shows Organic Search instead.

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Social and community

• Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, and X (Twitter) — the visitor followed a link from that network, or arrived on a link you tagged with that utm_source.

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AI assistants

• ChatGPT — the visitor followed a link out of ChatGPT.

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Email

• Newsletter — the link was tagged utm_source=newsletter.
• Email — the link was tagged utm_source=email.

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Your own site and everything else

• Website — the visitor came from another page on your own site. Because the inquiry form is usually embedded on your website, this is one of the most common badges you’ll see.
• Referral — the visitor came from a different site than the one hosting the form.
• Direct — no referrer or campaign data was captured. The visitor typed your address in, or came from a source that strips referrers (many apps and email clients do).

When a visitor lands on your inquiry form via paid or social traffic, Cortado captures the Google Click ID (gclid), Facebook Click ID (fbclid), and every UTM parameter from the URL — and from the host page that embeds the form, not just the iframe itself. That means clicks from ad landing pages, Instagram bios, partner sites, and email newsletters get attributed to the right source instead of being lumped into Direct or Referral.

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Full Attribution on Lead Detail

Open any lead and scroll to the Original Inquiry card. The Source row shows the classified channel, the campaign name (if a utm_campaign was set), and an expandable Raw attribution data section with every parameter that was captured at submission time.

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Filtering and Searching

The leads table and kanban share one filter bar so your selections follow you between views.

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Quick Search

Use the search input above the board or table to filter by contact name or email.

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Filter Pills

Click + Filter above the leads list to add any of the following:

• Stage — show only leads in specific pipeline stages
• Event Type — filter by wedding, corporate, party, and other event types
• Event Date Range — show only leads whose event falls between a From and To date you pick. The active range appears as a badge with both dates visible.
• Received Date — filter by when an inquiry came in. Choose a preset (Past 3 Days, Past Week, Past Month) or set a custom From/To range.

Each active filter shows as a pill. Click a pill to adjust it, or click the X on the pill to remove that filter. Click Reset on the right side of the filter bar to clear all filters at once.

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Persistent Filters

Your filter selections are automatically saved to your browser’s local storage. When you come back to the leads page later — or switch between the table and kanban views — your filters stay exactly as you left them.

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Inquiry Detail View

Click any lead card to open the detailed inquiry view:

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Header Section

The top of the detail page surfaces the customer and stage controls:

• Customer Information: Name, email, and phone — each with a one-click copy button
• Stage Dropdown: Change the current pipeline stage
• Owner: The assigned teammate, shown as a pill you can click to reassign — see Lead Assignment
• Move to Events: Convert an accepted lead into a booking with generated events. After a booking exists, this becomes View Booking.

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Original Inquiry Card

The sidebar of the detail page shows exactly what was submitted:

• Date and time of the event
• Event type and event days (for multi-day events)
• Location with a one-click copy button
• Requested items and add-ons the customer selected on your inquiry form
• Quick tags — click any tag to toggle it on or off
• Source attribution — the derived channel, campaign, and raw parameters
• Questionnaire required or Questionnaire not required — whether new quotes for this lead will attach booking questions on acceptance. Edit the inquiry to change it. See Booking Questionnaires.
• Received on timestamp in the card footer

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Events Tab

For inquiries with multiple events, a dedicated events card lets you add, edit, and remove each event date, time, duration, guest count, event type, and location. Those lead events are the source of truth until a quote exists. Once you create a quote, Cortado copies the events onto the quote and they stop staying in sync:

• If a quote is still a draft, the Events card warns you that edits here will not update the quote — refresh the quote’s events before you send.
• If a quote has been sent, viewed, or revised, the warning tells you the customer sees the quote’s copy, and that copy is what becomes the booked events on acceptance. Send a quote revision instead of expecting the lead to catch up.
• If a quote is already accepted, the warning tells you these events are booked — edit the event itself, not the lead.

Use Replace with Lead Events on the quote when you intentionally want the quote to match the lead again. See Quotes.

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Activity

An Activity card on the detail page gives you one place for follow-ups and context. It has four tabs:

• Notes: Internal team notes on the lead
• Tasks: To-dos tied to this lead, with due dates and assignees
• Emails: Full email history sent or received through Cortado for this lead
• Quote Interactions: Every send, view, accept, reject, and expiration event for the lead’s quotes — including anonymous views of the shared portal link

See the Activity guide and the Compose Emails guide for the deep dives on each tab. Notes, tasks, and files you add here don’t get left behind, either — once this lead becomes a quote, booking, invoice, or event, that same history stays visible at every later stage. See Notes, Tasks, and Files Follow the Deal for how that works.

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Quote Management

All quotes associated with this inquiry are listed on the detail page:

• Quote History: Every quote created for the lead with its status, total, and whether a questionnaire is required on acceptance
• Inline Actions: Create a new quote, duplicate an existing one, send it to the customer, or copy a shareable portal link without leaving the page
• Auto-Advance: Sending a quote for the first time automatically moves the lead to the Quote Sent stage
• Draft Warning: If any quote on the lead is still in Draft, the Lead Quotes card shows a warning badge. Drafts are not visible to the customer in the portal, so the badge is your reminder to finish and send.
• Event copies: After a quote exists, the Events card warns that lead dates no longer update that quote. Refresh the quote before you send if the inquiry dates changed.

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Booked Leads

A lead becomes Booked the moment it has a booking — usually when the customer accepts a quote, or when you accept on their behalf. Cortado only allows one booking per lead. After that:

• Create Quote is disabled on the lead’s quick actions, with a note to create an invoice instead.
• On the Quotes card, Create Quote is greyed out. Use Create invoice instead for extras (an additional tasting, a last-minute add-on, a second payment). There is still a Create anyway escape hatch if you truly need a draft for internal reference — but the customer will never be able to accept it.
• Other quotes on that lead (drafts, sent revisions, or earlier options) show a Can’t be accepted — lead booked badge. They stay on the record for history.
• On the customer portal, those sibling quotes tell the customer the event is already booked from another quote.

If a lead is Accepted but still has no booking, it is not Booked yet — generate the events first.

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Best Practices

1. Move Leads Promptly: Update stages as leads progress so the board reflects reality
2. Tag as You Triage: Apply quick tags the moment you open a new lead so the kanban tells you what to do at a glance
3. Set Follow-ups: Use tasks and reminders to avoid letting leads go stale
4. Record Rejection Reasons Honestly: The more accurate your reasons, the more useful your post-mortems and reports become
5. Watch Your Source Mix: Check source badges weekly to see which channels actually convert, and adjust your marketing spend accordingly
6. Clean Up Old Filters: If you’re looking at a stale view, click Reset on the filter bar — persistent filters are convenient but can hide new leads
7. Treat quote events as the booking dates — once a quote exists, change dates on the quote (or use Replace with Lead Events) so the customer accepts what you intend
8. Set an Assignment Rule — even a simple Default rule beats leads sitting unclaimed while you’re focused elsewhere
9. Invoice extras on booked leads — once a booking exists, don’t open a new quote; create an invoice against that booking