Client statuses explained
Every client sits at one stage of your pipeline — from a name you just wrote down, through the work of winning them, to a paying client (or one who went elsewhere).
You start with eleven stages. They're yours to change: rename them, recolour them, reorder them, or add your own. See customize your client statuses.
New clients start at whichever stage is first in your list — Lead, unless you've reordered things.
The stages you start with
| Stage | Colour | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Lead | Blue-grey | The default for new clients. Someone inquired; you haven't qualified them yet |
| Contacted | Blue | You've replied, called back, or met them |
| Qualified | Cyan | A real fit — right work, right budget, worth writing a proposal for |
| Proposal Sent | Purple | A proposal is out with them and you're waiting. Set automatically |
| Follow-up Due | Orange | They owe you an answer and it's overdue. Your chase list |
| Follow-up Scheduled | Indigo | You've already picked a date to chase them |
| Waiting on Client | Orange | The ball is in their court — a decision, a deposit, site access |
| No Follow-up Needed | Teal | Live client, nothing outstanding. Keeps them off your chase list |
| Inactive | Grey | A past client you're keeping for history but not actively working with |
| Active | Green | A current, paying client. Set automatically |
| Lost | Red | They went elsewhere, or the work fell through |
What Velosiq sets for you
Two moments update a client's stage without you touching it:
- Sending a proposal moves them to Proposal Sent — whether you emailed it from the proposal screen or changed its status by hand.
- An accepted proposal, or any payment against an invoice, moves them to Active. A partial payment counts: a deposit is still a customer. This fires however the money arrived — a card payment through Stripe, or a cash or cheque payment you recorded yourself.
Every automatic move is recorded. Velosiq writes a system note — "Status automatically changed to Active" — onto the client, so you can always see when a stage changed on its own and what triggered it. It appears in their Notes tab and on their timeline.
Renaming those stages doesn't break the automation. Velosiq tracks which stage means "a proposal is out" and which means "won", not what you called them. Rename Active to "Client Won" and payments will still land there.
Automation never overwrites a decision you made. Out of the box, a client sitting at Active, Inactive or Lost is left alone — so sending a fresh proposal to someone you'd marked Lost won't quietly pull them back into your pipeline. You control this per stage with the "Automation can move clients out of this stage" checkbox.
Everything else is manual. The follow-up stages, Qualified, Contacted and Lost are yours to set as you work the list.
Working with statuses
- Set the stage when you create a client, or change it any time via Edit.
- The Status dropdown on the Clients page filters the list to one stage. Follow-up Due gives you today's chase list; Lead and Qualified together are your prospect pipeline.
- The Status column sorts in pipeline order rather than alphabetically, so sorting walks the list from coldest to won.
- The spreadsheet importer can set stages in bulk. Your file's status column can hold either the visible name (
Waiting on Client) or the underlying key (waiting_on_client) — capitalisation doesn't matter. Anything Velosiq doesn't recognise comes in at your first stage.
A typical run through the pipeline
- Someone inquires → they land as a Lead. Log the conversation in their Notes tab.
- You call them back → Contacted.
- The job is a fit and the budget is real → Qualified.
- You send a proposal → Proposal Sent, automatically.
- A week passes with no answer → Follow-up Due, so they show up on your chase list. Booked a call for Tuesday? Follow-up Scheduled.
- They sign, or pay their first invoice → Active, automatically.
- The work wraps up and they go quiet → Inactive. Their full history — invoices, notes, appointments — stays intact if they ever come back.
If they hire someone else at any point, mark them Lost. Nothing is deleted, and they stop cluttering the stages you actually work.
Statuses never restrict anything: you can invoice or schedule any client regardless of stage. They exist purely to keep you organized.