Why Track Pipeline in Notion?
If you’ve ever tried to manage your sales pipeline in a traditional CRM, you know the feeling. You need three clicks just to see which deals are closing this month. The interface feels clunky. The dashboards are rigid. And every time you want to see something different, you’re either building a custom report or squinting at a confusing table.
Notion takes a completely different approach. Instead of forcing you into a predefined structure, it gives you the building blocks to create exactly what you need. The result is a pipeline management system that’s highly visual, fully customizable, and refreshingly simple to use.
The kanban views make it dead simple to see what’s happening at a glance. You can drag deals between stages with your mouse. Everything lives in one place alongside your meeting notes, company docs, and team wikis. And unlike enterprise CRMs that cost hundreds per user, Notion starts free and scales affordably.
This makes Notion particularly powerful for small sales teams under 10 people who value visual clarity over advanced automation. It’s perfect if you need flexibility to adapt your process without waiting for IT. And it’s ideal when you want your pipeline context living next to your documentation instead of siloed in a separate tool.
That said, Notion isn’t trying to be Salesforce. If you need deep email integration, automated workflows, or built-in calling, you’ll need a traditional CRM. But for visual pipeline management that you actually want to use? Notion excels.
Database Setup
The foundation of any Notion pipeline system is your Deals database. Think of this as your master list of opportunities. Every potential sale gets its own page in this database, and the properties you choose determine what information you track.
Essential Deal Properties
Start with your Deal Name as the title. Keep it consistent and descriptive. Something like “TechCorp - Enterprise Plan” tells you immediately what the deal is and who it’s with. This clarity matters when you’re scanning your kanban board.
Link each deal to your Accounts database through a Company relation property. This connection lets you see all deals associated with a particular account and roll up total business value. It’s the difference between seeing individual trees and understanding the forest.
Value should be a number property formatted as currency. This is your deal amount and it drives all your pipeline calculations. Later you’ll sum these values to see total pipeline and use them in weighted formulas.
Stage is a select property with your pipeline stages as options. This is arguably the most important property because it determines where deals appear in your kanban view. Most teams use something like Discovery, Demo, Proposal, Negotiation, Closed Won, and Closed Lost. Keep your stages simple and make sure everyone understands what each one means.
Close Date tracks when you expect to close the deal. This date property powers your calendar view and helps you forecast which deals will land in which month. Be realistic here because overly optimistic close dates create forecasting chaos.
Owner assigns the deal to a specific person on your team. This person property lets you filter to “My Deals” and enables accountability. Everyone knows who’s responsible for moving each opportunity forward.
Probability represents your likelihood of winning the deal as a percentage from 0 to 100. You can set this manually for each deal or tie it to your stage. A deal in Discovery might be 20% while Negotiation is 80%. This number becomes crucial when calculating weighted pipeline.
Additional Properties to Consider
Created time auto-populates and helps you track deal age. Knowing a deal has been sitting for 90 days tells you something important, even if it’s been moving through stages.
Source tracks where the deal came from. Options like Inbound, Outbound, Referral, or Partner tell you which channels are producing pipeline. This becomes gold for analyzing what’s working.
A Contacts relation lets you link multiple people from your Contacts database. Sales rarely happens with just one person. You need to track the decision maker, the champion, and various influencers. This multi-select relation gives you stakeholder visibility.
Next Steps is a simple text field for the immediate action item. “Send proposal by Friday” or “Schedule technical demo” keeps you focused on forward movement. When deals stall, it’s often because next steps weren’t clear.
Competitor as a multi-select lets you track competitive deals. Are you always competing against the same vendors? That’s useful intelligence for product and positioning decisions.
Risk Level can be a select with High, Medium, and Low options. Tag risky deals and you can create a filtered view to focus your attention where it matters most.
Last Activity Date tracks engagement. Whether you update this manually or calculate it from a related Activities database, stale deals become immediately visible.
Using Formulas for Insights
This is where Notion gets powerful. Your Weighted Value formula multiplies value by probability and divides by 100. So a 100K deal at 40% probability contributes 40K to your weighted pipeline. This gives you a more realistic view than raw pipeline totals.
Days in Stage can be calculated by finding the difference between now and when the stage last changed. Deals sitting too long in one stage often signal a problem. This formula surfaces those stuck opportunities.
Days to Close measures the gap between your close date and today. Negative numbers mean you’re overdue for a close date update. This keeps your forecast honest.
A Health Score formula might flag deals as red, yellow, or green based on how long they’ve been in stage. If a deal sits for more than 14 days, mark it at risk. Between 7 and 14 days, watch it. Under 7 days, it’s healthy. This visual indicator helps you spot trouble fast.
Pipeline Views
Your Deals database can be viewed in multiple ways, and that’s the magic. The same data looks completely different depending on what question you’re trying to answer.
The Main Kanban Pipeline
Your primary view should be a kanban board grouped by Stage. This gives you the classic pipeline visualization where each column represents a stage and cards represent deals. Sort cards by Close Date so the most urgent deals appear at the top of each column.
Filter out Closed Won and Closed Lost deals so you’re only seeing active opportunities. Those historical deals are useful for analysis but clutter your day-to-day pipeline view.
Show the deal name, value, close date, and owner on each card. Some teams add a health indicator icon. The goal is to pack just enough information onto each card that you don’t need to click through to get the full picture.
The beauty of kanban is the drag-and-drop interaction. When a deal progresses from Demo to Proposal, you literally drag the card to the next column. This tactile experience makes updates feel natural instead of tedious.
You can also add a sub-group by Owner if you want to see each rep’s deals within each stage. This creates a matrix view that’s powerful for team pipeline reviews.
Table View for Details
Sometimes you need more than the kanban can show. A table view displays all your properties in columns, letting you see everything at once. This is your detailed list view.
Use the same filters as your kanban to hide closed deals. Sort by Close Date ascending so the most urgent deals appear first. Now you can scan down the table and see exact values, probabilities, weighted amounts, and all those additional properties you couldn’t fit on the kanban cards.
This view is perfect when you’re doing cleanup. You can quickly spot missing close dates, deals without owners, or opportunities that need probability updates. It’s also great for export if you need to pull pipeline data into a spreadsheet.
Calendar View for Close Date Planning
Create a calendar view using Close Date as the date property. Now every deal appears on the calendar on its expected close date. Filter to active deals only.
This visualization immediately shows you which weeks are heavy and which are light. If you’ve got eight deals all supposedly closing on the same Tuesday, something’s wrong. Either those close dates are placeholders or you’re about to have the busiest day of your life.
You can drag deals to different dates right in the calendar view. This makes it easy to spread load or update dates as circumstances change. The visual representation also helps you think about capacity and timing in a way that tables and kanban boards don’t.
Filtered Views for Specific Needs
Create a “My Deals” view filtered to Owner equals you. This becomes your personal pipeline. You don’t care about your teammate’s deals right now. You need to see your own priorities.
A “Closing This Month” view filters to deals with close dates in the current month and stages that aren’t closed. This becomes your focus list as the month-end approaches. What needs to happen to get these deals over the line?
“High Value Deals” might filter to opportunities over 50K and sort by weighted value descending. These are your big fish. They deserve extra attention and scrutiny.
“At Risk Deals” filters to your red health score or deals that have been in stage for more than 14 days. This is your trouble list. These deals need intervention or they’ll slip.
“Won This Month” shows Closed Won deals from the current month. This is your victory lap view. It’s motivating to see what you’ve accomplished.
“Lost Deals” displays all your Closed Lost opportunities. When you’re ready to do win-loss analysis, this view makes it easy to review what didn’t work.
You can also create views grouped by Owner for team pipeline reviews, or grouped by Source to analyze channel effectiveness. Each view answers a specific question.
Dashboard Setup
Views within your database are powerful, but dashboards take it to another level. Create a dedicated Pipeline Dashboard page and pull in linked database views configured for different insights.
Pipeline Summary Metrics
At the top of your dashboard, add a linked database view of your Deals. Filter to active stages only. Configure it to show summary statistics at the bottom.
Use rollups to calculate Total Pipeline by summing all deal values. Calculate Weighted Pipeline by summing your weighted value formula. Count total deals in the pipeline. Average them to see average deal size.
These four numbers give you instant context. Your Total Pipeline might be 550K across 12 deals with a weighted value of 250K and average deal size of 46K. That tells a story about pipeline health and deal composition.
Pipeline by Stage Breakdown
Add another linked database view grouped by Stage. Show the count of deals and sum of values per stage. This shows you exactly how much pipeline sits in each part of your funnel.
Discovery might have 120K across 3 deals. Demo has 200K across 4 deals. Proposal has 150K across 3 deals. Negotiation has 80K across 2 deals. This distribution reveals bottlenecks and conversion patterns.
If you consistently have tons of pipeline in early stages but nothing in late stages, you’ve got a qualification or progression problem. If everything stacks up in Proposal, maybe your commercial terms need work.
Attention Needed Section
Create a linked database view filtered to your at-risk deals. These are opportunities going stale or flagged as high risk. Display them prominently on your dashboard because they require action.
Maybe you’ve got OldCorp at 50K that’s been stale for 10 days and SlowInc at 35K with no activity for 8 days. These deals need phone calls or they need to be closed lost. The dashboard makes that clear.
Closing Soon
Add a filtered view showing deals closing in the next week. This is your immediate focus. What has to happen in the next few days to close these deals? This view keeps urgency front and center.
Team Dashboard for Managers
If you’re managing a team, create a separate team dashboard. Break it down by rep with filtered views showing each person’s pipeline.
You might show a summary table with columns for rep name, deal count, total pipeline, and weighted pipeline. Sarah has 4 deals worth 180K weighted at 72K. Mike has 3 deals worth 140K weighted at 56K. This gives you instant visibility into team capacity and distribution.
Below the summary, add kanban views grouped by Owner so you can see each rep’s deals across stages. This becomes your one-stop shop for team pipeline reviews.
Monthly Forecast View
For more sophisticated teams, create a forecast dashboard organized by confidence level. Committed deals are in Negotiation with high probability. Best Case adds Proposal stage deals with medium confidence. Pipeline includes everything else.
Show the math clearly. If your target is 400K and you have 150K committed plus 170K best case, you know you’re in range. If committed is only 50K with two weeks left in the month, you’ve got a problem.
Break it down by week to show when deals are expected to close. Week 1 has 50K, Week 2 has 125K, Week 3 has 95K, Week 4 has 50K. This weekly view helps you plan resources and spot gaps.
Connected Databases
Your Deals database becomes exponentially more powerful when connected to related databases. This is where Notion’s relational structure really shines.
Accounts Database
Create an Accounts database with properties for Company Name, Website, Industry, Company Size, and Type (Prospect or Customer). Add a relation to your Deals database.
When you link a deal to an account, both databases update. The account page automatically shows all related deals. Use rollups to calculate Total Value and count Active Deals per account.
This lets you see account-level pipeline. TechCorp might have three deals totaling 200K. That’s very different from knowing you have a single 50K deal. Account-level visibility changes how you prioritize and strategize.
Contacts Database
Track people in a Contacts database with Name, Email, Phone, Title, and a relation to Accounts. Add another relation to Deals using multi-select.
Now you can link multiple contacts to each deal. Mark their Role as Champion, Decision Maker, or Influencer. When you open a deal page, you see all relevant stakeholders. When you open a contact page, you see every deal they’re involved in.
This stakeholder mapping is crucial for complex B2B sales. You need to know who you’re multi-threaded with and who you haven’t reached yet.
Activities Database
Some teams create an Activities database to log calls, meetings, emails, and notes. Each activity links to a Deal, Account, and Contact.
This creates a timeline of engagement. You can see the last time anyone touched a particular deal. You can analyze activity patterns across won versus lost deals. And you can use this data to automatically update Last Activity Date on your deals.
The relationship flows both ways. Open a deal and see all logged activities. Open a contact and see every interaction you’ve had with them across all deals.
Advanced Features
Once your basic pipeline is humming, you can add sophistication.
Deal Page Templates
Set up a template for new deal pages. When someone creates a deal, they get a pre-structured page with sections for stakeholders, pain points, requirements, competition, next steps, and activity log.
This ensures consistency across your team and makes sure important context doesn’t fall through the cracks. Everyone captures information the same way.
The template might include linked databases showing related contacts and recent activities. It might have checkboxes for qualification criteria. The goal is to make deal documentation effortless.
Automation with External Tools
Notion doesn’t have built-in automation, but you can connect it to Zapier or Make for workflow automation. Trigger a Slack notification when a deal closes. Create a calendar event when a deal moves to Demo stage. Sync deal data to your CRM or accounting system.
If you’re technical, the Notion API opens up custom integration possibilities. You can build webhooks that respond to database changes or scripts that pull pipeline data into your own dashboards.
Stage Duration Tracking
Add a hidden property that captures the timestamp when a deal enters each stage. Use formulas to calculate how long deals typically spend in each stage. This reveals process bottlenecks and helps you set realistic timelines.
If deals spend an average of 18 days in Proposal but only 5 days in Demo, you know where the friction is. That insight drives process improvements.
Best Practices
The best pipeline system in the world is useless if nobody maintains it. Here’s how to keep your Notion pipeline current and valuable.
Update Immediately
Don’t batch updates. When you finish a demo, drag that deal to Proposal stage right then. When you learn a new close date, update it immediately. The moment you wait until Friday to update everything is the moment your pipeline becomes fiction.
Make updates part of your workflow, not a separate task. After every customer interaction, spend 30 seconds updating the deal. This habit keeps data fresh and builds trust in the system.
Review Regularly
Schedule a weekly pipeline review. Scan for stale deals and either take action or close them lost. Update confidence levels on forecasted deals. Archive old closed opportunities that clutter your views.
A monthly deeper clean handles duplicate contacts, updates stage definitions if your process evolved, and ensures property options are still relevant.
Keep It Simple
The temptation is to track everything. Resist it. Start with 10 core properties and only add more when you find yourself repeatedly wishing for specific data.
Thirty fields per deal means nobody will fill them out. The perfect property set is the one your team actually uses, not the one that captures every possible data point.
Use Templates Consistently
If you set up deal page templates, enforce their use. Consistency makes it easy to find information across deals. When everyone structures their notes differently, tribal knowledge stays locked in individual heads.
Avoid Common Pitfalls
Don’t build complex formulas just because you can. Fancy calculations that nobody understands become maintenance nightmares when the person who built them leaves.
Don’t create fifty different views. You’ll spend more time deciding which view to use than actually managing pipeline. Stick to five or six core views that answer your most common questions.
Don’t let deals go stale. If there’s been no activity in 14 days, something’s wrong. Either work the deal or close it lost. Zombie deals that never get attention hurt forecasting and waste mental energy.
Key Takeaways
Building an effective pipeline tracker in Notion comes down to five core elements. First, create a Deals database with essential properties like stage, value, close date, owner, and probability. Don’t overcomplicate it initially.
Second, set up a kanban view grouped by stage. This becomes your primary visual pipeline where deals progress through drag-and-drop simplicity.
Third, add filtered views for specific needs like My Deals, Closing This Month, and At Risk. These focused views answer common questions without creating cognitive overload.
Fourth, use formulas for weighted pipeline calculations and health scores. These add analytical power without requiring manual data entry.
Fifth, connect your Deals database to Accounts and Contacts for full relationship context. This transforms individual deals into a connected system that reveals patterns and opportunities.
The secret isn’t building the most sophisticated system. It’s building one that your team will actually maintain. Simple, visual, and consistently updated beats complex and abandoned every single time.
Need Help With Notion Pipeline?
We’ve built pipeline systems in Notion for sales teams. If you want a customized setup, book a call with our team.