A deal is a piece of work you're trying to win. For example, a website redesign you've pitched to a new client, or a monthly SEO retainer you're negotiating with an existing one.
You track each deal through the stages of your sales pipeline until you win or lose it. When you win it, the deal becomes a budget your team can deliver on.
This article shows how to create a deal and what each field in the deal form does.
Ways to Create a Deal
Go to CRM > Deals and click + Deal.
Productive asks: How do you want to create the deal? Pick one of these options:
Create from scratch: start with an empty deal form
Create by copying an existing deal: reuse the setup of a similar deal you've already made
Create from template: start from one of your deal templates
Filling in the Deal Form
Fill in the fields in this order:
Stage: pick the stage the deal starts in. Stages are grouped by pipeline, so this one dropdown sets both the pipeline and the stage.
Client: choose the client company. If the company isn't in Productive yet, you can add it right here.
Deal name: give the deal a descriptive name, for example Acme Website Redesign 2026.
Currency: all financial info on the deal displays in this currency.
Deal type: choose One-off or Retainer. One-off deals create a single budget when won. Retainer deals create a recurring budget with automatically repeating periods.
Deal value: leave it empty to calculate it automatically from the deal's services, or enter a value to set it manually.
Subsidiary: select the subsidiary the deal belongs to. When you pick a client, this field is filled in with that company's default subsidiary.
Owner: assign the person responsible for managing the deal, tracking its progress, and following up. It's set to you by default.
Document template: pick the template used for proposals. You can change it later. The template's message is copied to the deal as the Message displayed on document PDF.
Custom fields: fill in any custom fields your organization uses for deals.
Create Deal with advanced editor: select this checkbox to set up services with the advanced editor. Leave it clear to use the Simple Editor.
Click Create deal to save.
đ Some fields only appear in certain cases:
Subsidiary appears if your organization has more than one active subsidiary. Otherwise, the deal uses your default subsidiary.
Document template appears if your organization has more than one document template.
đ Choose the editor carefully. Once you create a deal with the advanced editor, you can't switch it back to the Simple Editor.
Extra Fields for Retainer Deals
When you set Deal type to Retainer, three more fields appear:
Deal value type: choose whether the deal value is the Total for the whole retainer or Per period
Period: how long each period of the retainer lasts
No. of periods: how many periods the retainer runs for
For example, a 12-month SEO retainer worth 2,000 EUR a month could use Per period as the deal value type, a monthly period, and 12 as the number of periods.
đ Learn more in Retainer Deals.
Quick Add for Client Companies
You can create a new client company while setting up a deal. Type the new company's name in the Client field and create it on the spot. Fill in only the essentials now and complete the rest later.
Quick add needs the Add, edit, and archive companies permission. It's on by default in the Admin, Manager, Profitability Manager, and Coordinator permission sets, and in the Staff permission sets with CRM access.
đ If your organization has a required custom field for companies, creating a new company from the Client field opens the full company form instead. Fill in the required field there before you continue. Optional custom fields never block the quick add.
What's Next
You can edit general deal info (name, client, subsidiary, tags, owner) from the deal sidebar anytime.
đ Learn how to work with your deal in Managing a Deal.
đ Add the work you'll deliver in Adding Services to a Deal.