Two groups, or no stage
Every stage belongs to Lead or Customer. You can rename stages and add more within each group. Each group has a default. No stage means just a contact. New records start with no stage unless you choose one. Existing customers keep their Customer stage.
When someone goes to QuickBooks
When QuickBooks is connected, blank records and leads stay out of QuickBooks until they become customers. Creating a job, creating an invoice (even a draft), or approving an estimate moves them to your Customer default. A site visit counts as a job. Someone already in a Customer stage keeps that stage.
Stride never moves anyone back on its own. Deleting a job or voiding an invoice leaves the stage alone. You can move someone back yourself, but that never removes them from QuickBooks. Someone already linked to QuickBooks keeps syncing edits at any stage.
Choose a Customer stage when adding someone to send them to QuickBooks right away. Customers brought in from QuickBooks get your Customer default. Make customer and sync in QuickBooks Records also makes a lead or blank record a Customer. See Set up QuickBooks Online.
Set up your stages
- Open Settings → Data & pipelines → Customer stages.
- Rename, color, reorder or add stages inside Lead and Customer. For example, add Waiting for a call under Lead and Regular customer under Customer.
- Choose a default for each group. Only owners and administrators can change this setup.
- Move everyone off a stage before archiving it. To archive a default, choose another default first.
Find and change a stage
- On Customers, use the Stage column. If you saved columns earlier, add Stage from Columns.
- In Filter & sort, choose Leads, Customers, No stage, or one stage.
- Open a customer and select the stage under their name, or the Stage field in Key information. Choose a stage or No stage. Anyone who can edit the customer can change it. Activity records who changed it and why.
- Ask Stride chat to change a stage. Review the customer and new stage before confirming.
Add Stage to the create form
Stage is optional and starts off the form. In Settings → Data & pipelines → Customer fields, add Stage to the create form. You can prefill a stage. Choose No stage to leave it blank.
Bring stages in with your records
For a customer CSV import, map your stage column to Stage. Names must match your active Stride stage names; capitalization does not matter. A blank cell means no stage. Unknown names are row errors. For a chat migration, map your source’s lead or client status to Stride stages. With no mapped stage, the record starts blank. Migrated jobs and invoices make it a Customer, but migration itself never sends records to QuickBooks. See Bring in records from another system.