Pipeline Time Machine
Track how your sales pipeline changes over time. View historical deal movements, identify growth patterns, and understand what's driving pipeline changes.
The Pipeline Time Machine enables you to look back through your deal history to understand how your pipeline has changed over time. It builds a detailed historical view that reveals shifts in deal amounts, progression through stages, and key metrics across any period, giving you deep visibility into your pipeline's evolution and patterns.
How to Inspect your Pipeline
The Pipeline Trends page gives you powerful tools to visualize and inspect your pipeline over time. It's the fastest, easiest way to conduct full pipeline inspections to understand what's happening.
Filters
The filter chips live at the top of the page. Open one chip at a time:
- Pipeline. pick one or more Pipelines and Stages.
- Owners. filter to specific Deal Owners or Teams.
Choose your Time Period
The date range picker on the right side of the filter bar controls the time range used by the chart and the Pipeline Table. Click it to expand the picker:
- Quick presets: YTD, Last 3M, Last 6M, Last 12M
- A draggable timeline for setting an explicit start and end
- Span +/− to expand or contract the visible range one period at a time
Group By
The Group control sits to the left of the date range picker. Pick how the chart and table buckets are sized:
- Day, Week, Month, or Quarter
Historical Pipeline Chart
The chart is the top half of the Pipeline Time Machine page. It plots the value of your pipeline at the end of each grouped period across your selected date range. Mouse over a bar to see the exact value for that period.
Notes:
- The bar values are the value of the last day in the grouped period. For example, if you are grouping by month, the bar value is the value of the last day of the month.
Pipeline Table
The Pipeline Table sits directly below the chart. It shows the same time range as the chart, broken down period-by-period across columns, with one row per pipeline change category. Each cell shows the value plus the percent change vs. the previous period (green = up, red = down).
The table is grouped into three sections:
- Total @ Start. the pipeline value at the beginning of each period.
- Changes. what moved the pipeline value during the period: New Deals, Reopened Deals, Amount Increased, Amount Decreased, Closed Won, Closed Lost, Total Changes, and the resulting pipeline value at the end of the period (
@ End). - Stage Movement. deals that were already in the pipeline and either stayed put (No Movement), Moved Forward, or Moved Backward in stage during the period.
Click the download icon (top right of the table) to export the matrix as CSV.
What each row means
| Row | Section | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| Total @ Start | Total | Pipeline value at the beginning of the period. |
| New Deals | Changes | Deals created during the period. |
| Reopened Deals | Changes | Deals previously closed that were reopened during the period. |
| Amount Increased | Changes | Existing deals whose amount went up during the period. |
| Amount Decreased | Changes | Existing deals whose amount went down during the period. |
| Closed Won | Changes | Deals that closed Won during the period. |
| Closed Lost | Changes | Deals that closed Lost during the period. |
| Total Changes | Changes | Net of all the change rows above. |
| @ End | Changes | Pipeline value at the end of the period (Total @ Start + Total Changes). |
| No Movement | Stage Movement | Open deals that did not change stage during the period. |
| Moved Forward | Stage Movement | Open deals that advanced one or more stages during the period. |
| Moved Backward | Stage Movement | Open deals that moved back one or more stages during the period. |
Total @ Start + Total Changes).Here are some of the most common causes of pipeline changes:
| Pipeline Change | Impact | Details | Advice / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Deals | Up | When new deals are created, the pipeline goes up. | When creating new deals, be sure that you are consistent in how you pick your initial Amount value. This directly impacts your pipeline value. |
| Closed Deals | Down | When you Win or Lose a Deal, your pipeline goes down. | Yes - Winning Deals is bad for your pipeline. If your win ratio is 33%, for every deal you win, you must add 3 more deals to the pipeline. |
| Amount Changes | Up or Down | When Deal Amounts change, your pipeline changes. | This is one of the hardest pipeline data points to uncover in your CRM. Data Parrot automatically reveals these changes for you. |
| Re-Opened Deals | Up | Changing a deal from closed won/lost to open again will increase your pipeline. | Data Parrot reveals re-opened deals automatically. Some companies create new deals, others re-open closed deals. Data Parrot supports both! |
| Pipeline/Stage Changes | Up or Down | When filtering on Pipelines/Stages, Data Parrot reveals deals that entered/exited the filtered pipeline/stages. | Examples are a deal moving from a pre-sales pipeline to a sales pipeline, or from Outbound Target to Qualified. |
| Owner Changes | Up or Down | When filtering on Deal Owner, Data Parrot reveals deals that were re-assigned to/away from the filtered owner(s). | Most common use case: hiring a new rep and assigning new deals to them. Existing reps will have their pipelines go down! |
Outbound Target to Qualified.Notes:
- Deleted Deals will disappear from your pipeline completely including the entire history. It is typically recommended to create a custom stage, or even pipeline, to move deleted deals into instead of actually deleting them.
- Merged Deals will consolidate for your pipeline history. For instance, if you had 2 duplicate deals, merged them together, then the Pipeline Chart will show only the merged deal across the history.
Detailed Deal-Level Changes
Click any cell in the Pipeline Table to drill into the exact deals that make up that number. A deal table appears below the Pipeline Table showing every deal in the selected cell. including Deal Name, Pipeline, Current Amount, Baseline Amount, Amount Change, Baseline Stage, End Stage, Close Date, and Owner. Use the search box, column picker, and download icon to filter and export the list.
The columns shown adjust to the row you selected. For example, Moved Forward shows baseline stage and end stage, while Amount Increased shows baseline amount and current amount.
Making the Most of the Pipeline Time Machine
- Monitor Overall Health: Use the chart to quickly assess if your pipeline is growing, shrinking, or remaining stable over time. Group by the range that makes the most sense based on your average sales cycle.
- Investigate Individual Sales Rep Pipelines: Pipeline growth is one of the most important leading indicators of sales performance. Filter by Deal Owner to see how your reps are doing.
- Focus on the Pipeline Table: Scan the Changes and Stage Movement rows to spot which categories are driving your pipeline up or down period over period.
- Drill Down: Click any cell in the Pipeline Table to see exactly which deals are behind a number and investigate further.
By regularly reviewing your Pipeline Time Machine to inspect your pipeline, you'll gain valuable insights into your sales process, helping you make data-driven decisions to optimize your pipeline and boost your overall sales performance.
Next Steps
- Predict Sales with AI Forecast: Boost forecasting with predictive analytics.
- Track Deals: Monitor deal health and progress.
- Activity Dashboard: Explore to see a detailed view of all your sales engagements across your sales team.
- Read more on our website: Learn more about pipeline history tracking and analysis.
AI Forecast
AI-powered sales forecasting for accurate pipeline predictions. Visualize deal health, track pipeline trends, and make data-driven revenue decisions.
Data Parrot Win/Loss
Data Parrot has two versions of Win/Loss analysis: Win/Loss Pro and Win/Loss Max. Use the guide for the version included in your plan.