Optimize Your Deal Pipeline Management for Accounting

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welcome back to the accounting Guys YouTube channel my name is Blake and today I'll be talking about the sales deal process and Pipeline and how to effectively track your deals and make sure everything's flowing through smoothly Brian will be your trainer today hope you [Music] enjoy so first we're going to go up here to sales and you'll notice there is a lead quote and a deal option let's just Define those for a second so a lead is something coming from the website or you have a different light speeded integration where you are receiving customer information in order to reach out to them once you've met or talked to that client that will then turn into a quote and then from a quote so there you can actually put units or options different items that you're looking to sell so you can get some pricing into play that one once they've said yes I want to do this here's here's some money to hold the unit or go ahead and take my credit application that's when it turns into a deal where where this thing is actually going to happen and so one thing that you can see in this leads quiles and Deals option is you're you're going to see across the top you can see leads quotes Deals Deals that have been finalized inactivated leads or voided quotes and voided deals so this this is a filter to help you get through the different stages of your pipeline and again the current deals should be these sales are going through we've gotten money from the customer we've taken a credit app it's it's more likely than not that this deal is going through our system and then if it's not if that deal is aging let's get it out of here because we want to see what is our current deals we want to be able to manage what our leads and what our quotes are so that way we can have a good Pipeline and a good feel for what's happening in the deal and light speed has one more step that you can identify a little bit better where is this deal at in this process if I've got these three Deals that are open what stage are they in if they're in a current deal and I'll click on this little carrot up at the top and you can see on the right that you do have different stage options and this is completely customizable to your dealership so anytime we say there's an option or a drop- down list if you go to that module so we're in sales and you go down to lists you'll be able to find it inside of there more than likely so here are lists and stages and you can create as many stages as you want now as you're creating these stages as an accountant we we like to be super defined and have steps for everything you have to think about your salesperson are they actually going to go in here and move that drop down each time that it moves from a greet to asking questions from asking questions to identifying major unit from identifying major unit to presentation are they actually going to be doing that in real life or is that just extra noise that the the sales people aren't going to use and so our reports they never follow that order so talk with your salespeople and your sales manager and Define what your stages need to be and and these stages are something that you can use throughout the full process during a lead during a quote during the deal so keep that in mind as well as you're defining your stages going back to stages uh you have this stage order or the sequence as it starts with a greet then we ask questions and we identify the unit something that you can do for example this one that says close the deal a lot of dealers use this for we've already gotten everything done and my Accounting Office just needs to finalize it but I finished on my side as the salesperson you can also open this up and click on this color category and assign it a color this way if we we'll go ahead and make this red for an example and we will go to this deal and we'll switch the stage which is up here at the top to close the deal in this screen you'll see that color has now changed it to red and makes it very easy for you to identify what deals are ready to be closed if we're just waiting on a counter what deals are in the separate stages for us to be able to work through those leads a little faster if you remember from our other video you can also write click on this column or on this row here and you can add stage name to the side of it as well if you want to just see the stage name here you don't want to have this popped open all the time to know uh what the stages are what colors are associated to what stage now one thing I want to talk about is a very this is a common issue we see amongst dealers as their first getting into light speed or as they're working through the system trying to make light speed reflect what happened in real life so our dealers will say I've you know I've got a list of 15 deals but seven of those deals have already happened we you know customer has the unit they've taken it out of the dealership if if that's the case those deals should be finalized and more more often than not they're saying well we want to make sure we get paid by the funding company from the lean holder which that is true you want to make sure you're receiving the money before you've put that deal down and say that it's complete that it's finished you want to track your contract and Transit and so it's a lot easier if you make light speed match what happened in real life again we're finalizing the deal if we've if I've handed this if this customer's taken this motorcycle or boat and they've left the dealership what we did was we finished the deal and we put that balance on account in accounts receivable or in cont contraction Transit so we should be finalizing the deal choosing accounts a charge or accounts receivable and charging it to that lean holder then what we can do in the receivables option we can go to our reports and our aging and we can say what ones are contracts and Transit customers and we can see the balance by lean holder by customer what makes up the the balances and it makes it easier for you to track and know oh I've got seven different deals that need to be funded from Freedom Road Financial I've got five from synchrony I've got 10 from Yamaha Financial it versus having to go through each individual deal in the in the deal stages to identify oh this one's not funded yet how much was it who was our lean holder it just makes things a lot easier when you match it to real life if they've taken that unit it should be finalized to accounts receivable then you manage your contracts and Transit list and as you receive those fundings then you receive them then uh it's it's a very small change to make where you finalize it to AR and then you receive it in but it seems to be one that people get a little bit confused on on the process because they they're just so they're very concerned about making sure they got that money and this process makes it so much smoother and easier for you to identify what deals you've been funded on and what deals you haven't it will also help you identify in a sales deal I'm going to go to our sales recap screen if we put Finance income on a deal or we forgot to put Finance income on a deal and this box is now uh let's say this had $5,000 of Finance income that should show up in your contracts and Transit account as well and you can identify if if somebody missed a step there uh one quick little tip here we'll go over sales deals more into depth this is just more talking about leads quotes and Deals and and staging the deal but one very important piece of sales deals is reviewing the sales cap recap screen if you're going to hit this finalize button you should go to the sales recap screen and make sure that all of the margins for the different units the parts the extras and fees that the margins makes sense if the margins don't make sense you're probably missing something you could be missing uh the cost on your units you could be missing uh the cost of a extended warranty or you're you're charging for a prepaid maintenance plan but you're showing all the revenue now instead of later when you do the maintenance and so it's important to review the sales recap screen make sure all the margins are good go go ahead and hit that finalize button and Casher it to accounts receivable if they've taken the unit and they and you're just waiting on the funding so let's recap really quick so we talked about the difference between a lead a quote and a deal and then inside of there you have different stages so that you can better identify where the deals are and then before you finalize check that sales recap screen if the unit has left the dealership it should be finalized it should if they haven't paid us cash or check and we have all the money today then that should be going to account receivable where we receive the funding after that brings us to the end of this video if you have any trainings or videos you'd like to see in the future those are our favorite videos to make so go ahead and leave those down below in the comments if you'd like to get in touch with us or schedule a one-on-one training with a dealership specialist our contact information is in the description thanks for [Music] watching