The CRM is the workspace inside the Partner Portal where you track every customer organization as a record moving through a multi-stage sales pipeline — from first contact through onboarding, expansion, and churn. This article explains what the CRM is for, where to find it, the shape of the default pipeline, and how stage moves relate (and do not relate) to a customer's AI Employee.
What the CRM does
The CRM gives you one place to:
See every customer organization as a record on a kanban board or list view, grouped by where they are in the sales process.
Capture the information you collect during a sales cycle (call notes, demo summaries, video recordings, lead value, expansion forecasts) directly on the record.
Assign records to employees on your team — or to an employee at a partner organization — and route stage-specific work to the right person.
Track per-record tasks, uploaded documents, and a full activity timeline of everything that has changed.
Send and re-use payment links so a customer can attach a payment method without leaving your flow.
Watch the live link between subscription state and the customer's AI Employee — when a customer attaches payment, their temporary agent automatically becomes a permanent one.
Where to find the CRM
The CRM opens from the Partner Portal Dashboard. From there you can switch between a kanban (board) view and a list view using the view toggle in the top-right corner.
For the full walkthrough of the board and list views, see Manage the customer pipeline. For the per-record drawer that opens when you click a card, see Pipeline record details.
The default sales pipeline
Every customer record lives in exactly one stage at a time. The pipeline ships with 12 stages: 4 non-process stages (also called side states) and 8 process stages that form the linear sales funnel.
The table below lists them in the order they appear on the board. The four side states are pinned to the left, ahead of the funnel itself.
Stage | Type | What it means |
New Lead | Non-process | Default stage. Every new customer record lands here. |
On Hold | Non-process | The customer is paused. |
At Risk | Non-process | The account is at risk of churning — escalate. |
Lost | Non-process | The customer has churned or the deal is dead. |
Contacting | Process | Initial outreach is in progress. |
Demo Scheduled | Process | A demo is on the calendar. |
Demo Completed | Process | The demo happened. Capture the summary and recording here. |
Payment Attached | Process | The customer has attached a payment method. |
Implementation | Process | Implementation is underway. Requires an attached payment method to enter. |
Ready for Production | Process | Build is complete and the AI Employee is live. |
Expand | Process | The customer is healthy and a candidate for expansion (upsell, more locations). |
Maintain | Process | Steady state — the customer is in normal ongoing service. |
You do not have to show all 12. The Manage Stages panel lets you hide any stage from your board, so you can narrow it to the stages your team actually works. See Manage the customer pipeline.
Process stages vs. side states
The distinction between process and non-process stages controls how a record can move.
Process stages are the linear funnel. Movement between them is forward-only — you cannot move a record from Implementation back to Contacting.
Side states (New Lead, On Hold, At Risk, Lost) sit outside the linear funnel. They are reachable from any stage and they bypass the forward-only check. Use them when a record needs to step out of the normal flow — for example, moving from Implementation directly to Lost when a customer cancels mid-build.
Side-state reasons
When you move a record into a side state, the CRM asks you to record why. Each side state offers its own reason list, alongside a free-text comment and an optional next-contact date. Capturing the reason is what makes the board readable to whoever picks the record up next.
New Lead — moved to the wrong stage (advanced by mistake), or incorrect routing (wrong team or assignee).
On Hold — the customer is restructuring, has asked for a follow-up later, is completing another related project, is ghosting, needs to consult other stakeholders, or has budget constraints.
At Risk — payment method removed, subscription canceled, payment failed for insufficient funds, or negative feedback received.
Lost — chose a competitor, not within our ICP, ghosted, Newo lacks required connectors and integrations, requires a more complex workflow, or price is too high.
What blocks a stage move
The platform validates every move server-side and refuses the ones that would break the pipeline's rules. There are five reasons a move can be turned down:
Backward not allowed — the target stage sits earlier in the funnel than the record's current process stage.
Payment required — the record has no payment attached and the target stage is Implementation or later.
Assignee required — the record has no assignee and the target is a process stage.
Files required — a document the target stage depends on has not been uploaded.
Contractor unavailable — no eligible assignee covers the target stage.
Note: The payment gate sits at Implementation by default and covers that stage and every stage after it. The gating stage is a platform setting, so a portal can be configured to gate somewhere else.
Read-only records
Some records are visible to you but not editable. When that is the case, the record shows a lock icon; hover it to see why. There are three reasons:
The record belongs to another organization. It cannot be edited from your portal.
You do not have access to the record's current stage. Stage access is granted per employee.
You are not an employee of this organization.
A read-only record cannot be moved between stages either.
CRM moves and your AI Employee
The relationship between a CRM record and the customer's AI Employee is one-way.
Subscription state drives the agent. When a customer attaches a payment method, the platform automatically promotes their temporary AI Employee into a permanent one. If their subscription is later removed, the agent reverts to temporary because there is no payment method backing it.
CRM stage moves do not change the agent. Moving a record from New Lead to Lost, or from Implementation to At Risk, does nothing to the customer's AI Employee on its own. The agent keeps running as long as the subscription is active. Use the CRM to track sales motion.
This matters in practice: marking a record Lost does not disable the customer's agent.
Next steps
Manage the customer pipeline — work records through the board and list views.
Pipeline record details — fill in a record's stage fields, tasks, and documents.