The leads pipeline gives your team a structured way to track potential clients from first contact through to a signed engagement. Instead of managing prospects in spreadsheets or sticky notes, every lead lives in a shared pipeline with clear stages, assigned owners, and a full history.
Pipeline views
The pipeline is available in two views:
Kanban board: A visual board with columns for each stage. Drag and drop lead cards between stages to update their status. Changes save immediately — the card moves as soon as you drop it, with no waiting for a server response.
List view: A table layout showing all leads with sortable columns for name, company, value, stage, source, and assigned team member. Better for bulk actions and filtering large pipelines.
Switch between views using the toggle at the top of the Leads → Pipeline tab.
Pipeline stages
The default stages are:
- Lead — New prospect, not yet contacted
- Contacted — Initial outreach made
- Qualified — Confirmed as a good fit for your services
- Proposal — Proposal or engagement letter sent
- Negotiation — Terms being discussed
- Won — Engagement signed
- Lost — Did not proceed
Stages are fully customizable. Rename, reorder, add, or remove stages to match your firm's workflow.
Lead details
Each lead tracks:
- Name and contact info — name, email, phone, company
- Value — estimated engagement value
- Source — where the lead came from (referral, website, Google Contacts, CSV import, etc.)
- Stage — current position in the pipeline
- Assigned team member — who owns the relationship
- Notes — internal notes about the prospect
Contacts staging area
The Leads → Contacts tab is a staging area where external contacts land before entering your pipeline. This keeps your pipeline clean — only reviewed and approved contacts become active leads.
How contacts get into the staging area
- Google Contacts: Connect your Google account via Settings → Integrations → Google and sync contacts. Synced contacts appear in the staging area for review.
- CSV / Excel upload: Upload a .csv or .xlsx file directly from the Leads → Contacts tab. Columns for first name, last name, email, phone, and company are auto-mapped.
- Outlook / Office 365 (coming soon): Connect your Microsoft account to sync Outlook contacts.
- QuickBooks (coming soon): Import customer records from QuickBooks.
Contact statuses
- Pending — newly imported, waiting for review
- Approved — promoted to a lead in the pipeline
- Dismissed — rejected and removed from the staging area
Use the Source filter to narrow contacts by where they came from (Google, CSV, Outlook, QuickBooks). For large contact lists, results load 50 at a time with a Load More button.
Promoting contacts to leads
Select one or more pending contacts and click Approve. Approved contacts are created as leads in the first stage of your pipeline. Their status in the staging area updates to Approved.
Dismissing and deleting
Dismissing leads from the pipeline
On the Pipeline tab (Kanban or List view), leads are dismissed rather than deleted. Dismissing a lead moves it to the Dismissed tab where it can be reviewed later.
From the Dismissed tab you can:
- Restore a lead back to the pipeline (individually or in bulk)
- Permanently delete a lead when you are certain it should be removed
Dismissing and deleting contacts
In the Contacts staging area, only contacts with a dismissed status can be permanently deleted. Pending and approved contacts cannot be deleted directly — dismiss them first, then delete if needed.
Delete memory
When contacts are permanently deleted from the staging area, SwiftChecklist remembers their email, phone number, and external ID. On future syncs and imports, contacts matching any of these identifiers are automatically skipped.
This prevents deleted contacts from reappearing every time you run a sync or upload a file.
If you need a previously deleted contact to come back through, clear the delete memory from the staging area settings menu.
Import and sync history
Every sync or import creates a history record. Expand the Import history section in the Leads → Contacts tab to see:
- Source — Google Contacts, CSV, Outlook, etc.
- Date — when the sync or import ran
- Contacts found — total records in the source
- Imported — new contacts added to the staging area
- Skipped (duplicate) — contacts matching an existing email or phone
- Skipped (delete memory) — contacts matching a previously deleted identifier
This helps teams understand what happened during each import and whether the delete memory is filtering out contacts they still want.
CSV and Excel upload
To import contacts from a file:
- Go to Leads → Contacts and click Import
- Select a .csv or .xlsx file from your computer
- The system parses and auto-maps columns: first name, last name, email, phone, company
- Review the mapping and click Import contacts
- A summary shows:
- Contacts imported
- Skipped as duplicates (matching email or phone already in the staging area)
- Skipped due to delete memory (matching a previously deleted identifier)
Imported contacts arrive with pending status and are ready for review.
Drag and drop on the Kanban board
Drag lead cards between columns to move them through your pipeline stages. The interface provides visual indicators showing which column you are dropping into. Changes are saved optimistically — the card moves instantly and the server updates in the background.
Plan note: The leads pipeline is available on all plans. Google Contacts sync and Zapier-based integrations require Pro and above.