Opportunities

What it is#

Opportunities (at /opportunities) is where the firm works its pipeline. It is not the Directory's clients: a client has projects; an opportunity is work the firm hopes to win, for a prospect or for a client it already has.

For a firm with CORE's CRM module, the opportunities are CORE's, and everything done here is written to CORE. A firm without it starts an opportunity as a potential project in the project wizard (+ Add potential project); its stage, who it is assigned to, its follow-ups and probability are kept in COREboards. HubSpot deals, when HubSpot is connected, are shown read-only.

A potential project from the wizard is marked draft and lives in COREboards only. If your firm has CORE’s CRM and the work becomes real, Put in CORE’s CRM… files it there: CORE gets the opportunity with its client, value, probability and stage, its open follow-ups move across, and the wizard work you have already done becomes that opportunity’s estimate. The desk then shows one row, CORE’s.

Principals and firm admins hold the rail row; a firm admin can grant it to anyone in Settings → Users & Access. Hide $ masks every amount.

Home#

• Arrange the page: the four tiles stay at the top. ↑ Move up / ↓ Move below on What needs doing or the Pipeline swaps them, so the board can sit right under the tiles, and the arrow beside What needs doing folds it away (its count stays in view). The desk remembers your arrangement on every device.
• Open pipeline: the weighted value (each value times its probability), with the full value and the count beside it. Win rate: won out of decided in the last twelve months. Follow-ups: due within a week, and overdue. Needs attention: the length of the queue below.
• What needs doing: follow-ups that are overdue or due within a week (Done ticks one off), opportunities whose target date has passed, ones whose expiration date in CORE is within two weeks or has passed (New date… sets a new one right in the row and saves it to CORE; Open opens the opportunity), ones in the same stage for sixty days or more, and open ones with no activity in thirty days and nothing scheduled. These are suggestions; nothing here acts on its own.
• Stage steps (the button beside the board's filters): the firm's own checklist for each stage. When an opportunity is moved into a stage here, by dragging it on the board or changing its stage in the drawer, COREboards first shows the new stage's steps, filled in: each step's due date (counted from today), its hours and who it is assigned to. Change any of them for this opportunity only, untick a step to leave it out, then Move and add them as follow-ups; Cancel leaves the opportunity where it was. The defaults: Due in is days after the move (0 is the same day). Hours is an optional estimate of how long the step takes, on the firm's time increment, added to the follow-up's words ("Start the estimate (about 1.5 h)"); it is not a time entry. Who is whoever moved it (the default), the opportunity's owner, or a person named on the step. Kind is CORE's follow-up type (To-Do, Phone Call, Email and so on), a label only: picking Email or Direct Message sends nothing. A step already open on it is not added twice. Each follow-up also shows in its person's To-Do list, under Opportunities: tick it to mark it done in CORE, or click it to open the opportunity. A firm admin sets the steps; everyone else with the desk can read them. A stage changed in CORE itself does not add them.
• Pipeline: every open opportunity by stage, as a Board (in beta) or a List; the desk remembers which you chose. Show won and lost adds the closed ones. A card or row opens the opportunity.
• The board has a column per stage with its count, full value and weighted value. Drag a card to the exact place you want it: within its column to set the order, or into another stage, where the change is saved to CORE (or to the potential project) and read back. While you drag, the column under the pointer is outlined and a slot shows where the card will land. The order is the firm's, the same for everyone; a card nobody has placed sits below the placed ones, biggest weighted value first. Dropping a card on Won or Lost opens the same close-out as Won… and Lost… in the opportunity: it asks the amount, or the reason it was lost, before anything changes, and Cancel leaves the card where it was. A potential project moves among CORE's stages once it is put in CORE's CRM, and HubSpot deals do not move here.
• Days in stage: the badge on a card counts days since it entered its stage, amber after a month and red after two. CORE keeps no stage history, so COREboards counts from 23 October 2026, or from when it first saw a change made in CORE; a count that starts that way reads ≥ (at least).
• Filters narrow the board and the list by who it is assigned to, type, target date and source, and can be saved as presets, like the other boards' filters.

One opportunity#

An opportunity opens in the side drawer. It shows every field CORE keeps on the opportunity. Name, stage, value, probability, target date, Expires (CORE's expiration date), assigned to, type, next step and description can be changed, and so can everything under Additional details: priority, competition, campaign, promotion, sales goal, forecast amount and status (Active or Inactive). Its groups, custom fields, and when it was created and last updated are shown there too; a won or lost one also shows its closed amount. Each change saves on its own about a second after you make it, or at once if you close the drawer, and ✓ Saved to CORE shows beside that field (✓ Saved for what COREboards keeps). Expected start and Duration say when the work would run if it is won; CORE has no fields for them, so COREboards keeps them, and Revenue Forecasting's What-If spreads the fee across those months instead of guessing. Changing the probability here also clears any figure set for it in Revenue Forecasting's What-If, so the firm has one number.

When it has an estimate

Once the opportunity has an estimate in the project wizard, the estimate is the source: the value is the estimate's fee, and Expected start, Ends and Duration come from its phase dates. They show here marked as from the estimate, and are changed in the wizard. CORE's value is kept in step with the estimate's fee, so CORE, the dashboard's pipeline and Revenue Forecasting's What-If show the same number.

Go / No-Go

Go / No-Go on an opportunity's Details asks whether it is worth chasing. Six questions are answered Weak, Some or Strong: our kind of work, our relationship with the client, our odds of winning, whether the fee covers the effort, whether we have the people, and whether it is worth it beyond the fee. Beside each is what COREboards knows: the client's projects with you in CORE and how earlier opportunities with them went, CORE's odds, the fee, the estimate and what chasing it has cost so far, and whether the firm has room (from Impact). Where those facts answer a question on their own, the answer is filled in and marked suggested until you pick one. Answers save as you pick them. From four answers it scores the lead and reads Go, Think it over or No-Go; a Weak on having the people always reads No-Go. Go or No-Go records the decision with your note, who made it and when, and the board's card shows it. After a No-Go, Close it as lost: we passed… opens the Lost close-out with the reason filled in.

Impact

An opportunity opens on Details: its fields, pursuit cost, follow-ups and calls. Estimate & Proposal (just Proposal for a potential project in the wizard) holds the estimate and the proposals. Impact shows what winning it would do.

Impact (a tab at the top of an open opportunity) widens the drawer to show what winning it would do, before anyone says yes, without leaving the board. It opens with one sentence on whether winning it closes the firm's gap to its monthly revenue target and who it would stretch. Then come the revenue it adds and its weighted value, whether the firm has room (naming months it is already full on confirmed work), a month-by-month revenue chart like Revenue Forecasting's, and the team month by month. The team view puts each person's planned hours from the estimate on top of what they are already booked for in Resource Allocation, against their capacity. Without an estimate or a team plan, it says so and points to where to start one. Drag the drawer's inner edge to make it wider or narrower (double-click the edge to reset); each tab remembers its own width.

On the board, a card says Over capacity and the month when winning it would take the firm past capacity, and Impact in Filters narrows the board to the ones that fit or the ones that would not.

Pursuit cost

Pursuit cost is what chasing it has cost so far: the hours, labor at each person's cost rate, and expenses on its pursuit project, the Marketing or Overhead project linked to the opportunity in CORE, including that project's phases. It shows as a share of the opportunity's value, and on the board's card. The dollars show only to people allowed to see cost; everyone with the desk sees the hours. With no project linked, choose where to Record it on: A new phase adds a phase named for it under the Marketing or Overhead project or phase you pick (where the firm already keeps its pursuit phases is offered first) and links it, so time and expenses are recorded against this opportunity alone; CORE links only one opportunity to a project, so a shared Business Development phase can hold just one. An existing project links one already in CORE. A new opportunity can do the same as it is made: tick Track time and expenses spent winning it. The group's heading shows the total and hours, so you can read it with the group shut. Once linked, Rename fixes the name of a phase made for the opportunity (in CORE, with its code when the code was made from the name), and Change links a different project or a new phase instead; the old one stays in CORE with any time on it. COREboards remembers the pursuit project, so the cost stays even after CORE's link moves to the won project.

Follow-ups and calls

Follow-up… schedules one: a date, the kind (CORE's list), who does it, what to do, and its priority (Medium unless you pick High or Low; CORE shows the same priority). High and Low show on the follow-up's line. Done and Reopen tick it off. Log a call writes a note on the opportunity in CORE.

The estimate

Start the estimate… opens the project wizard with the opportunity's name, client, value, target date and the person it is assigned to filled in, for the phases, fees, schedule and team. It stays linked: the drawer shows its fee, Use as the value copies that fee onto the opportunity, and Open the estimate goes back to it. The wizard then shows Back to the opportunity at the top, which returns you to the desk with its drawer open. It is not counted as an opportunity of its own, on the desk or in Revenue Forecasting's What-If.

The proposal

Write a proposal… on the Estimate & Proposal tab opens the proposal builder. A proposal is a list of sections, in the order they print. It starts with two: the Letter, ready to edit, and the Fee by phase. Add a section adds a Text section or a Scope of services section, which starts as a table with a row for each priced phase and a column for what you deliver. Each text section has its own toolbar: body text, heading and subheading, bold, italic and underline, bulleted and numbered lists, links, and tables: Table asks how many columns and rows and whether there is a header row; click in a table to add or delete rows and columns or turn the header row on or off, drag a column's right edge to make it wider or narrower, align the column the cursor is in left, centre or right, and move it with ← Move and Move → (its width and alignment go with it). In a column with dates, Dates as writes them all one way: 10/01/2026, 10/01/26, Oct 1, 2026, October 1, 2026, 1 Oct 2026 or 2026-10-01. Add a column adds a column of your choice: blank, Included ✓ (a check in every row, centred), the Fee of each phase from the fee by phase (right-aligned), or each phase's Dates from the estimate's schedule, matched by the phase name in the first column. ✓, ✗ and — are one click away. The PDF, the Word file and CORE keep widths and alignment. Field inserts a merge field, filled in whenever the proposal is printed (the preview, the PDF, the Word file and CORE's copy) from the opportunity as it is then: the prospect's first name, last name and company; the project's name, your firm's name and the date; and the first, last or full name of the Principal, the Project Manager or anyone else by their title on the estimate's team. A field reads the way you would say it, such as {{Prospect first name}} or {{Project Manager last name}}, and can be typed as well as inserted; one the proposal cannot fill prints as written, and the builder points it out. Lock on a section keeps it from being changed by accident: its words, name and layout can't be edited and it can't be removed until you click Locked to unlock it (it can still be moved). ↑ and ↓ move a section, × removes it (you are asked first when it has text), and its name is only for the list: put a heading in the text for one the client should see. The fee section stays linked to the fee-by-phase table while you write. It is fixed into the version when you save. While you write, the proposal is kept as a draft in COREboards a moment after each change: Close leaves it to finish later, Continue the draft picks it up (anyone at your firm who edits opportunities can), and Discard draft throws it away. Nothing reaches CORE until you save a version. Edit on a version that is not marked signed opens it to change that version itself: saving updates its text, fee and PDF in CORE instead of adding a new version. Once a version has gone to the client, write a new version instead, so what they have matches CORE. The look (logo, colours, typeface) is your Invoice Designer template, so the proposal matches your invoices. Save as template… keeps the whole proposal under a name for your firm: its sections in order, their layouts and locks, the cover and the page setup. The client's, project's and your firm's names become fields, so Start from on any opportunity offers it with that opportunity's names filled in; its fee, schedule and team come from that opportunity's estimate. Saving a name that is already used replaces that template, and the same panel lists your templates to delete. Preview PDF opens it and Word downloads it as a Word document to edit before sending. Save to CORE writes it to CORE's proposals on the opportunity, with the PDF attached and the whole document as the proposal's text. You send it yourself. A firm without CORE's CRM downloads the PDF or the Word file instead.

Images, schedule, team and acceptance

Image in a section's toolbar (or Add a section → Image) puts a picture in the proposal: upload a PNG or JPEG of up to 10 MB, or choose one from your firm's image library. Tick Also save it to the image library to reuse an upload in later proposals, or select an image and choose Save to library. Select an image to size and place it: Small, Half, Two-thirds or Full width, or drag the blue corner to any width (the toolbar shows it, say 55% wide). Left, Centre and Right put it on a line of its own. Text on its right and Text on its left put the text that follows beside the picture, up to 60% of the width, as far down as the picture reaches; a table or another image always goes below it. A picture keeps its proportions and is never squeezed to fit the end of a page: when it does not fit, it moves whole to the next page, with a heading just above it. Remove takes it out. Pictures pasted from a web page or Word are left out, so use Image for those.

Schedule and Project team are linked to the estimate, like the fee. The schedule shows each dated phase with a bar across its months, or, if you pick Dates list under its Layout, as a plain list of each phase with its start and finish. It always prints on one page: when it does not fit at the foot of a page, it moves whole to the next. The team lists the estimate's project team (or everyone planned on its phases) by name and title, never rates or hours. Both print with their section name as the heading, show what will print as you write, and are fixed into the version when you save. Cover page adds a first page of its own: your logo, a title (the project's name unless you write another), a subtitle, the client, the date, and a picture from an upload or your image library. It always prints first and has no page number. Its Layout runs the picture edge to edge across the top of the page (in Word it runs the width of the text) or leaves the client or the date off. With a cover, the first page of the letter leaves out the client and project, since the cover has them. Acceptance adds signature and date lines for the client and for you. The client signs a printed or PDF copy; there is no electronic signature.

Laying out the proposal

A heading never sits alone at the foot of a page: it moves to the next page with what follows it. Text size (Small, Normal, Large) and Margins (Narrow, Normal, Wide), under the sections, set the whole proposal's page, in the PDF and the Word file alike. Preview beside it shows the actual PDF next to the builder and renders it again a second after you stop changing things, so you see page breaks, gaps and sizes as you work (drag the drawer wider for a bigger page). Each section's Layout button holds the choices that section has; a dot on it means something is changed. Every section can start on a new page, stay on one page (new sections start with it ticked; a section longer than a page still runs on to the next), or have no, normal or large space above it. Project team: 1 to 4 people per row, titles on or off, heading on or off, and Include each person's bio: each employee's bio from their profile prints under their name as written (bold, italics, lists). Fee by phase: leave off how each fee is set, show each phase's share, show each group's subtotal, show each phase's dates from the schedule under its name. Schedule: Gantt chart or dates list, dates on or off, grey bars, heading on or off.

Click an image to size it (Small, Half, Two-thirds or Full width, keeping its proportions) and place it on the left, in the centre or on the right. The letter's sign-off ("Sincerely") prints just before the Acceptance section when there is one, so the client signs below it. The Word file follows the same choices.

Scope of services

Add a section → Scope of services… starts a scope from this proposal's phases (a table with a row for each priced phase and a column for what you deliver) or from one of your firm's scope templates. A template comes in with the client and project names filled in, ready to edit for this job. To make a scope a template, choose Save to library on its section: it is saved as a Scope (with this proposal's names turned into fields) and is offered here from then on. Add as many columns as the scope needs, as described above.

The section library

Your firm keeps one library of proposal sections: standard terms, scopes, past projects, anything you reuse. Add a section → From the library… opens it inside the proposal. Add puts a copy in this proposal with its fields filled in: {{client}}, {{project}}, {{firm}} and {{date}} become this client's name, the project's name, your firm's name and today's date. Later changes to the library never alter a proposal you have already written.

Save to library on any text section saves it for the next proposal, with this proposal's client, project and firm names turned into fields so it fits the next client. In the library, New section writes one from scratch, and Edit and Remove change it. A firm admin can mark a section so that only admins change or remove it, which suits standard terms. Admins also see Refresh from CORE templates: it reads your proposal templates in CORE into the library, cut into sections at their headings, and replaces the earlier copies. Nothing is written back to CORE.

Marking a proposal signed

When the client signs, choose Mark as signed… on that version, give the date it was signed, and upload the signed copy (a PDF, or a PNG or JPEG of the signed pages, up to 10 MB). The signed copy is linked to the proposal in CORE beside its PDF, that version becomes the current proposal, and it shows Signed with the date and a link to the copy. Mark the opportunity won… is offered next, so you can close it out in the same place. CORE has no signed status for a proposal, so the signed state is kept in COREboards and the copy is in CORE.

The fee by phase

Fee by phase lists the phases the proposal prices, one row each: the phase, its share of the opportunity's value, its fee in dollars, and how it is billed (Fixed, Hourly, or Not to exceed). Click a percentage or a fee to change it; the total updates. It starts from the estimate when there is one, otherwise from the current version's fee, otherwise one line at the value. A phase at $0 is left off the proposal. On the proposal each phase says how its fee is set, for example "Fixed fee, 20% of $80,000".

Fee by phase from fills the table another way: from one of your project templates or the wizard's starter structures (the value split by their percentages, in whole dollars), or from a past project in CORE of any status, active, completed, inactive or canceled. Type to search; you see only projects you can open. A past project's split is scaled to this opportunity's value, or choose Its fees as they were to use its amounts as they stood.

To change the total contract value, type a new Total under the table: every phase scales to it and keeps its share. When the proposal is saved to CORE, that total becomes the opportunity's value, and the estimate's phases scale to match, keeping their team plan and dates.

Update Fees & Schedule… writes the table into the opportunity's estimate (the draft project behind it, the same one you publish to CORE after a win), starting one if there is none, and sets the opportunity's value to its total. You see what changes first: phases kept keep their team plan, dates and budgets with the new fee; phases added; and any phase of the estimate not in the table, which is removed. From then on the estimate's fee sets the opportunity's value in CORE and feeds Impact, tentative staffing and Revenue Forecasting, and the estimate becomes the CORE project when you publish it after a win. An estimate already published to CORE is not changed here.

Proposal versions

Each proposal you save is a version: v1, v2, v3, newest at the top. The newest one you save becomes the Current proposal, the one CORE treats as primary. Make current on an older version makes it the current one again. Each version shows its fee and how much it changed from the version before. What changed lists the phases whose fee went up or down, and any added or removed.

Write a new version… starts from the current version, every section as it was saved. Start from switches to a past version, the standard COREboards letter, or one of your firm's proposal templates in CORE (its words become the letter). Check a template's names and figures before sending it. If you have already edited the proposal, you are asked before it is replaced.

Won and lost

Won… moves it to CORE's won stage dated today and makes the prospect a client in CORE. Then Publish the project from the estimate (or Start the project… if there is no estimate yet) publishes the CORE project in the wizard. Lost… asks why, which is required, and optionally who it went to and a note; the reason is what the win-loss read depends on.

Adding one#

+ New opportunity asks who it is for — a client or prospect already in CORE, or a new prospect (added to CORE's CRM first). The picker searches as you type, and Add a new prospect at the top of its list switches to a new prospect with the name you typed. Then come the name, stage, type and target date CORE requires, and the value, probability, assigned to, next step, expected start (the month after the target date until you change it) and duration in months. A firm without CORE's CRM is sent to the project wizard instead.