Short answer
The Pipeline is your built-in CRM. Every client conversation from the Unified Inbox becomes a card you can move through stages — so you track deals from first reply to won, without leaving Lancer.
Stages
Every board has five Lancer stages with fixed names, in this order: New Leads → Meeting booked → Proposal sent → Won → Lost. They are locked (you can't rename or remove them), and Lancer's suggestions, the Deals Won card and totals all rely on them.
Your own steps: add up to 4 of your own steps (for example "Follow Up" or "Qualified") between New Leads and Won, from the Pipeline column settings (gear). Your steps show with a dashed outline and a "your step" tag. Lancer never moves deals into them on its own. A board that already had more than 4 own steps keeps them but can't add more.
Boards created before this change are converted automatically, matching columns by their names, and keep their existing cards.
Moving a deal into or out of Won
Into Won (drag, the card chip, the Inbox status, a suggestion, or the list view) opens a Mark as won dialog: pick the win date (calendar, no future dates; quick chips for Today and the Upwork date when known) and the deal value (the deal's own value, else the Upwork offer, else your default). The deal then counts on the Deals Won card from that date.
Out of Won asks "Remove this win?" because it takes the deal off your Deals Won card and share image.
Archiving a won deal asks whether the job is finished: Finished job: keep the win keeps it on the Deals Won card, Remove the win too removes it.
All three show an Undo toast.
Past hires are filled in when you connect
When you connect an Upwork account, Lancer connects the inbox by itself and then moves your past Upwork hires that are still untouched in New Leads into Won, dated by the day the client hired you. This runs once the first conversations are in, and again when your full inbox history has landed. You see it as the little animated scene on the Pipeline page (the knight sorting your past contracts into Won and Not hired) — see How to connect your Upwork account. Deals you have already moved yourself are left alone.
Deal value
Set a deal value on a card to track what your pipeline is worth. A value you type on a deal always wins, even $0. A deal's own value shows as a solid green chip.
Default deal value: set what a typical deal is worth (in USD, whole dollars, up to $100,000,000). Every in-play or won deal without its own value then counts at that amount in the Pipeline column totals, the Deals Won card on the dashboard, and the deal-value filters and sorting. A deal counting at the default shows the same chip dashed (with a "default" tag in the conversation side panel) until you set its own value.
Where to set it: the Default deal value field on the Knowledge Base page; the prompt shown the first time you open Pipeline, Inbox or the dashboard; the deal-value chip in a conversation header; or by clicking the Deals Won card on the dashboard (a small pencil icon appears in its corner, hover it to see your current default). The dialog has quick picks from 500 to 10,000 and previews what your deals without a value would add up to.
Changing or clearing it: changing the default re-prices every deal that has no value of its own; clearing the field removes it.
Only count values you enter: put 0 in the Knowledge Base field, or click "No average, count deals without a value as $0" in the dialog. $0 counts as your answer (so the launch prompt stops appearing), but deals without a value of their own are not priced at anything.
New Leads and Lost are the exception: without their own value they show Set value instead of the default and add nothing to those column totals (a value you type there still counts).
Won date on cards: a won deal shows "Won" and its date (for example "Won Oct 3") next to its value.
Working the board
Column totals follow your filters: the amount and deal count in each column header cover only the deals that match the filters you have on (bidder account, type, campaign, deal value range, started date and search), so they always add up to the cards you see.
Search: the search box above the board searches clients, jobs and messages (in Archived it searches archived deals). Press
/anywhere on the page (when you are not typing in a field) to jump straight into it.Filter by when a conversation started: the Started picker is its own button next to Filters and always shows what is selected (for example "Started · Last 30 days" or "Started · All time"). Pick Last 7 days, Last 30 days, Last 3 months, Last 6 months, This month, Last month, All time or Custom (a start and end date on a two-month calendar, then Apply). The arrows on either side step the window earlier or later by its own length (it becomes a custom range and never goes past today). It applies to the board columns, counts and totals, Archived and the CSV export, and is remembered for next time, so it is a good way to keep old, messy deals out of your working view. Cards show "Started" with the date (for example "Started Sep 14"), and the CSV export has a Started column. Conversations imported when you connected your account are dated by their first stored message where Lancer has one, otherwise by their last activity, so an older imported conversation's start date can be approximate.
Tasks: add tasks with due dates and notes so follow-ups don't slip. Open them with the Tasks button at the top right (next to Export, Archived and the stage settings gear); it shows a red count when tasks are overdue, and clicking it again takes you back to the board. The Tasks view groups them by when they are due (Overdue, Today, Next 7 days, Later, No date), has a search box for tasks and clients, and keeps finished tasks under a collapsible Done list. Through MCP, an AI assistant can also add a short tag to a task (such as follow-up) and append a line to a task or deal note without rewriting it.
Export to CSV for reporting or your own analysis.
Cards and the deal view
Cards are tinted by source: Outbound (your proposals), Invite and DM each have their own colour and a small source tag. Each card shows the source, an unread count (for example "2 new") and the account, then the job as the headline, the client, the last message as a chat line ("John: ..." or "You: ..."), the deal value, and a whose-turn chip: Your turn with how long they have been waiting (the dot warms from green to amber to red the longer it waits) or Their turn.
Click a card to open the deal view. There is no Reply button on the card any more; reply and the other actions sit in the corner when you hover. Open in Inbox always opens the Inbox in a new tab.
The deal view shows a dated timeline (job posted, proposal sent, conversation started, last message) and adapts to what the deal has: with a job post it shows the numbers, the job (Show full job post), the proposal or invite, and tasks next to the conversation; without one (most DMs) the conversation leads, with an At a glance panel (messages per side, typical reply times and the longest quiet stretch). Invites show Upwork's invite note and your reply. Only facts the deal actually has are shown. Move to and Archive are in the footer.
Moves to confirm
When Upwork shows that a deal has moved on but your Pipeline hasn't caught up, Lancer shows a "N moves to confirm" bar at the very top of the Pipeline, for example 6 moves to confirm (3 wins, 2 meetings, 1 contract). If every move is the same kind, the bar says so plainly (for example "3 hires to confirm" or "2 meetings to confirm"). Click Review to open a side drawer with the moves grouped by kind; each row shows From stage → To stage, the date, amount and account, and clicking a row opens its deal view. Dates read like "Hired Oct 5", "Booked Oct 12" or "Proposed Oct 14".
Hires (Upwork shows a contract with the client): Move opens the Mark as won dialog so you can check the value and date first.
Meetings booked and contracts proposed: Move goes straight to Meeting booked or Proposal sent, with no dialog.
Move all N (at the top of the list) goes through every row in order: meetings and contracts move right away, and each hire opens the Mark as won dialog. Cancelling a Mark as won dialog stops the run.
Dismiss stops suggesting that stage for that conversation. Nothing moves on its own.
If the same Upwork conversation appears under two of your accounts (for example the agency account and the freelancer inside it), it is suggested once, from the most recently active copy, and not at all once it has been moved or dismissed under either account. The list shows up to 50 rows, hires first and then the newest meetings and contracts; the count in the bar still includes every move. Only conversations with activity in the last 90 days are listed.
Hires are only suggested for contracts that began after you first connected that Upwork account, and each is dated by when the client accepted the offer (or by the contract's start). Hires from before you connected are not listed here: Lancer adds those to Won automatically (see above). The Hired on Upwork chip on a card likewise only appears when Upwork shows a dated offer acceptance. The dashboard's Deals Won card still shows just the hires ("N hires to confirm").
Suggested stage moves
Lancer reads the system events Upwork posts into a conversation and, when one shows a deal has moved on, suggests the next stage. You always decide: nothing moves until you click.
Offer accepted, milestone funded or approved, contract started or restarted → suggests Won. If the deal has no value yet, the deal value is prefilled from the offer budget when Upwork shows one; you can edit it in the Mark as won dialog that opens when you click Move.
Contract proposed → suggests Proposal sent.
Meeting or consultation scheduled, or a call started → suggests Meeting booked. A cancelled meeting is not suggested.
A received offer alone is not treated as a win until it is accepted. Suggestions only move a deal forward, never out of Won, Lost or Archived, and never on events older than your own last manual move. They use the Lancer stages, so they work on every board.
You will see the suggestion as a bar above the reply box in the conversation (Move / Dismiss) and as a small chip on the Pipeline card. Dismiss means that stage is not suggested again for that conversation.
Weekly Pipeline email
Every Monday at 14:00 UTC, Lancer emails each workspace owner a short summary, but only when there is news for that workspace — otherwise you get nothing that week. It is sent when at least one of these is true:
a client replied during the last 7 days and the conversation is still in New Leads (the email lists those clients, newest first, and each links to the conversation);
a client hired you on Upwork this week that you haven't confirmed in the Pipeline yet;
Lancer saved you an hour or more this week (the same Time saved as on your dashboard).
The email also shows how many moves to confirm are waiting (with a Review moves button), your deals won in the last 30 days, and the time Lancer saved. Wins, meetings and contracts alone never trigger an email. Open my Pipeline at the bottom takes you straight to the board.
To turn it off, click Unsubscribe or Email settings at the bottom of the email, or open /settings/profile in Lancer ("Email settings") and switch off Weekly pipeline email. It is a per-person setting, so it only stops the email for you.
Inbox and Pipeline together
The Inbox is where you read and reply to clients; the Pipeline is where you track where each deal stands. See Unified Inbox + CRM (how it works).