CRM Pipeline
Moving contacts and companies automatically
Auto-advance triggers on a lifecycle stage: every trigger available, how they fire, and why a lead can never go backwards.
Last updated September 2, 2026
Keeping lifecycle stages up to date by hand is the first thing a busy team stops doing. Auto-advance triggers move records for you when something real happens.
The triggers
| Trigger | Fires when |
|---|---|
| An enquiry is submitted | They send you an enquiry through a form or your website. |
| A call is received | A tracked call comes in from them. |
| A promotion is entered | They enter one of your promotions. |
| A quote or estimate is created | You quote them. |
| A sale is started | A sale begins. |
| A sale is completed | The sale is finished — the usual trigger for becoming a customer. |
| A review is received | They leave you a review. |
| A team member is assigned | Someone takes ownership of them. |
| After a period of inactivity | Nothing has happened for the number of days you set. |
| Activity resumes after inactivity | A quiet contact comes back to life. |
A stage can carry several triggers, and it advances when any of them fires. A stage set to manual only never moves on its own.
Records never go backwards
A trigger only moves a record forward. A long-standing customer who submits a new enquiry is not demoted back to a prospect, which is the single most important thing to understand before switching any of this on.
Setting it up safely
- Get the stage list right first. Triggers on a list you are still arguing about will move records into stages you later delete.
- Start with one obvious trigger — "a sale is completed" moving accounts to Customer.
- Watch it for a fortnight before adding more.
- Check the accounts it moved. If any look wrong, the trigger is on the wrong stage.
AUTOMATE WHAT YOU ALREADY DO BY HAND
A trigger is only worth setting for a movement your team already makes consistently and manually. Automating a rule nobody follows just moves records somewhere nobody expects.