Overview
A funnel only tells the truth when every deal walks the stages in order. When a deal jumps from Contact straight to Closed, your conversion report stops making sense: it looks like the opportunity closed with no qualification, no proposal and no negotiation.
That jump happened often when the Bot moved deals. It only saw the number of the destination stage — no name, no type — so it picked by the name of the outcome ("Closed", "Won") and skipped the middle of the funnel.
Two things were fixed:
- The Bot now sees the funnel in order. When it looks up a pipeline's stages, it receives the real sequence, with each stage's name and type (open, won or lost). That alone cuts most of the skipping, because the Bot starts treating it as a funnel instead of a menu of options.
- There is a per-pipeline option that REFUSES a move that skips a stage. That is the hard guarantee: with it on, the server returns an error and the deal does not move.
The first fix is guidance. The second is a rule. If your operation needs a guarantee, turn the option on.
Prerequisites
- The CRM module enabled on the account.
- At least one pipeline with stages already created and in the right order (the stage order on the settings screen is the order the rule uses).
- An Administrator profile to turn the option on or off. Agents can see the setting but cannot change it.
Step by step
- Open CRM from the sidebar.
- Click the CRM Settings (gear) and pick the pipeline you want to protect.
- Scroll to the Closing deals section — the same one that holds Require a reason when marking won or lost.
- Turn on the Move one stage at a time switch.
- That is it. From then on, any attempt to move a deal past a stage is refused — whether it comes from the kanban board, the list view, an automation, the FlowBuilder or the Bot.
To turn it off, flip the same switch back. The setting is per pipeline: you can enforce the sequence on your sales funnel and leave the support funnel free.
Settings & options
| Option | Where it lives | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Move one stage at a time | Pipeline settings → Closing deals | Off | Refuses a move that skips stages |
| Require a reason when marking won or lost | Same section | Off | Asks for a written reason on close |
The two options are independent and can be used together.
What is ALWAYS allowed, even with the option on:
- Moving back. Falling back is not skipping. A deal can return from "Proposal" to "Qualification" as many times as needed.
- Marking as lost. A lost stage is always reachable, from anywhere in the funnel. A deal can die at any point — the rule never traps a live deal inside a funnel it has already left.
- Advancing to the next stage. The rule blocks the jump, not the normal step forward.
What gets blocked is the forward leap: leaving stage 1 and landing on stage 4. That includes jumping straight into a won stage — winning without walking the funnel distorts the report just as much.
What the refusal looks like: the platform returns a message that names the missing stage, for example: "This pipeline advances one stage at a time. Move this deal to 'Proposal' first." That wording is deliberate — the Bot reads it and corrects itself, moving to the right stage instead of retrying the same jump.
Use cases
- A sales funnel with a trustworthy report. If the team is measured by stage-to-stage conversion, a skip breaks the metric. Turn the option on for that pipeline.
- A Bot moving deals on its own. When the Bot is allowed to move CRM deals, this option is the safety net against an accidental "everything closed".
- A team still learning the process. People also mis-drag cards on the kanban. The rule teaches the process in practice, with a message that says exactly where to move next.
- An operational board with no strict order (support, triage, production): leave it off. Not every board is a sequential funnel.
Tips, limits & best practices
- The rule applies to people too, not only to the Bot. It is enforced on the server, at the moment the move is saved. The Bot acts with the same credentials as the team, so there is no way to apply the rule only to it — and that is a good thing: the same discipline applies to everyone.
- Stage order is the order shown in the pipeline settings. If you reorder the stages, the rule immediately follows the new order. Review the order before turning the option on.
- HONEST LIMIT — the rule fails open. If the platform cannot determine the position of one of the stages involved (for example, the deal is sitting on a stage that was archived afterwards), the move is allowed, not blocked. That was a deliberate choice: better to let a rare case through than to trap a deal with no way out. The option prevents the common skip; it does not replace human review of the funnel.
- Off by default. No existing pipeline changes behavior until someone flips the switch.
- Reordering a card inside the same stage is not a stage move — it is never blocked.
- If you also enabled Require a reason when marking won or lost, the reason stays mandatory on close, including when the close happens by dragging the card.
Troubleshooting
"I can't drag the card to the stage I want." Read the message: it names the stage the deal has to go through first. Move there and continue. If your real process genuinely skips that stage every day, either the stage should not exist, or the option should not be on for that pipeline.
"The Bot keeps skipping stages." Confirm the switch is on for that deal's pipeline (the setting is per pipeline, not per account). With it on, the skip is refused on the server — the Bot has no way around it.
"We turned it on and a deal got stuck." Marking as lost and moving back are always allowed, so a deal never runs out of exits. If something still looks stuck, check whether the deal's current stage still exists and is active in the pipeline settings.
"The switch is disabled for me." Only Administrators can change pipeline settings. Ask an administrator.
"A skip went through even with the option on." That is the fail-open behavior described above: when a stage's position cannot be determined, the move goes through. Check whether a stage along the path was archived and tidy up the funnel.