1
Opportunities vs Contacts
Understanding the difference between a contact and an opportunity is key to using your pipeline correctly — they are related but distinct objects in Jtek.
- A contact is a person — Maria Johnson is a contact. She has a name, phone, email, tags, and a history of conversations with your team.
- An opportunity is a specific deal — "Maria Johnson — 3BR Westlake — $750k" is an opportunity. It lives on your pipeline board and tracks the status of that specific deal.
- One contact can have multiple opportunities — Maria might be looking to buy a home (opportunity 1) and sell her current one (opportunity 2). Both are tracked separately on the board, both linked to her contact record.
- Opportunities have deal-specific fields contacts don't — Deal value, expected close date, pipeline stage, and assigned team member are opportunity-level fields, not contact-level fields.
- Closing an opportunity doesn't delete the contact — When you move an opportunity to "Closed Won" or "Closed Lost," the contact remains in Jtek with their full history intact.
Tip: Not every contact needs an opportunity. Only create an opportunity when there's a specific deal to track — a real lead with intent and some probability of closing.
2
Creating an Opportunity From a Contact
The fastest way to create an opportunity is directly from the contact's record — the contact is already linked and you just need to fill in the deal details.
- Open the contact record — Click the contact's name in your contact list to open their full record.
- Click the "Opportunities" tab — Find it in the horizontal tab row on the contact record (Overview, Opportunities, Appointments, Activity, etc.).
- Click "+ Add Opportunity" — A slide panel opens with the opportunity form. The contact is already pre-filled.
- Select the pipeline — Choose which pipeline this deal belongs to from the dropdown.
- Select the starting stage — Pick the stage this deal is currently in. If you just had the first conversation, "New Lead" or "Contacted" is appropriate.
3
Creating an Opportunity From the Pipeline Board
You can also create opportunities directly from the pipeline board — useful when you're doing pipeline reviews and adding multiple deals at once.
- Go to Opportunities in the left sidebar — The Kanban board for your current pipeline is displayed.
- Click "+ New" at the top right of the board — Or click the "+" button at the top of any stage column to start a new opportunity in that specific stage.
- Type the contact name in the Contact field — As you type, Jtek will suggest existing contacts. Select the right one. If the contact doesn't exist yet, you can create them from here.
- Fill in the deal value, pipeline, and stage — These are the minimum fields. Add an expected close date if you have one.
- Click Save — The opportunity card appears on the board in the selected stage column.
Jtek
Dashboard
Contacts
Opportunities
New Lead
Maria Johnson
$450,000
Close: Apr 15
+ Add
Contacted
Luis Patel
$385,000
Appt Booked
Dana Kim
$520,000
Closed Won
Empty
4
Filling In Opportunity Details
The more complete an opportunity is, the more useful your pipeline reports become. Fill in what you know now and update as the deal progresses.
- Deal value (optional but recommended) — Enter the expected deal value. This powers the pipeline value total shown in your reports and dashboard widget. Even an estimate is better than leaving it blank.
- Expected close date — Set a realistic close date. This enables the "deals closing this month" report and helps flag overdue deals in your pipeline.
- Assigned team member — Set who owns this deal. This is how you route pipeline visibility and reporting to individual team members.
- Opportunity name — Give the opportunity a specific name: "Sarah Torres — Buyer — 3BR Westlake." This makes the board scannable when you have many deals in one stage.
- Notes — Add any deal-specific context: what the prospect is looking for, key constraints, or next steps. These notes are specific to this opportunity, separate from the contact's activity notes.
Tip: Even rough deal values matter. A pipeline showing $1.8M in value is far more motivating and useful than one showing $0 because nobody filled in the deal value field.
5
Moving an Opportunity Through Stages
Advancing an opportunity from one stage to the next is the core action on the pipeline board — and it can be done in two ways.
- Drag and drop on the Kanban board — Click and hold the opportunity card, then drag it to the next stage column. Release to drop it. This is the fastest method during pipeline reviews.
- Open the opportunity and change the Stage dropdown — Click the opportunity card to open the detail panel, then change the Stage field in the dropdown. This is useful on mobile or when you want to update other fields at the same time.
- Stage changes are logged automatically — Every stage change is recorded in the opportunity's history with a timestamp, so you can see exactly when a deal moved and how long it stayed in each stage.
- Stage changes can trigger automations — If you've set up automation workflows triggered by "Opportunity Stage Changed To," those run automatically when you move the card — no extra steps needed.
- Closed Won and Closed Lost are final stages — Moving an opportunity to these stages marks it as complete. It leaves the active board view and moves to historical reporting. You can still view it by filtering for closed deals.