CRM: Leads, Opportunities and Pipeline Management
What to know
Odoo CRM runs on a single model (crm.lead) that stores both leads and opportunities. The distinction is a settings toggle (CRM settings, Leads), which adds a qualification step; converting a lead to an opportunity can create or link a customer (res.partner). Every record carries a sales team, a salesperson, a pipeline stage (ordered by sequence), expected revenue, probability, tags and UTM source/medium/campaign.
Stages have a type: normal, Won or Lost. Won/Lost close the record, and a lost stage can be configured to require a lost reason. Probability is either manual or mapped automatically to the stage, feeding forecast reports. Assignment is driven by sales team membership plus assignment rules (domain on country, industry, tags; a maximum number of leads per day per salesperson; an option to skip auto-assignment). Activities (call, email, to-do, with activity types and deadlines) are the follow-up engine, and recurring plans on the opportunity feed recurring revenue reporting.
Traps
- Disabling leads does not delete lead records; it changes menus and the default flow only.
- Forecast revenue is expected revenue × probability, not expected revenue alone.
- Assignment rules silently fail if the target user is not a member of that sales team.
- A stage marked Folded hides records from the Kanban but does not close them.
- Won usually requires a customer; a lead without a partner cannot be marked won cleanly.
Rule of thumb
Probability weights the forecast: an opportunity worth 12,000 at 30% contributes 3,600. Always read the stage type, not the stage name, when a question asks whether a deal is closed.