Your Leads board is where the day-to-day happens: seeing what's live, moving deals along, keeping a record of every conversation, and spotting the ones going quiet. This guide covers using it once it's set up.

If you haven't shaped your stages and cards yet, start with Setting Up Leads.

Across the top of the board:

Each column header shows the number of deals and their total value, so you can see where your pipeline is weighted without adding anything up.

Drag a card into the next column. That's it.

Moving happens on the board rather than on the lead itself. The lead page shows you which stage it's in, but doesn't change it.

Four stages are driven by your proposals, and a lead moves into them on its own:

That's the automation you'd want, and it means your board reflects reality without anyone maintaining it.

Between those moments, a lead stays exactly where you put it.

So if you've sent a proposal and you drag that lead into your own "Chased twice" column, it stays there. It won't spring back to Pending Approval. It moves again only when something actually happens to the proposal, such as it being signed.

This is what makes your own follow-up columns worth having. Build the stages that match how you chase, and the board will hold them.

A lead can only sit in one of those four proposal-driven stages if its proposal actually matches. You can't drag a lead with no proposal into Pending Approval, because there's nothing pending.

When a move is refused, Socket tells you what that stage needs rather than just bouncing the card back.

You can move a lead backwards, or skip stages entirely, and Socket won't stop you. It will flag that you've gone outside the usual flow, but it's a note rather than a barrier.

That's deliberate. A renewal for an existing client might never need a discovery stage, and sometimes you just want to park something while you wait on the client.

Open any lead and you've got three ways to keep track of it, alongside the summary of who they are.

For the things worth remembering that don't belong anywhere else. What they said about price, what came out of the discovery call, who actually makes the decision.

Click New Note, give it a title and write it up. Each note records who added it and when, and can be edited or deleted afterwards.

Worth being generous here. A note explaining that the prospect's current accountant missed their VAT deadline is the difference between a warm second call and starting again.

Your follow-ups: calls, emails, meetings and tasks. Use New Activity, pick the type, and give it a heading, a note and a due date.

Each one shows its owner and due date, and you tick it off with Complete when it's done. You can filter by type, sort by created or due date, and show completed ones when you want the history rather than the to-do list.

Activities are what feed the Current Activities view on the board, so anything you log here turns up in one place across your whole pipeline. They're also what Last contact on the card is measured from.

This one writes itself. Every proposal created, sent, viewed by the client, and every stage change is recorded automatically, so you can see the shape of a deal without anyone having logged anything.

The Client Viewed entries are the useful ones. They tell you your prospect is reading the proposal even when they haven't replied.

Search by name, and narrow the board with the filters along the top: Lead Owner, Stage, Temperature, Source, and Prospects or Clients. Clear Filters resets it.

The toggle in the top right switches to a list view, which gives you the same leads as a sortable table with paging. Use the columns icon to choose what's in it, ticking on things like Linked Proposal, Created, Last Contact, Opened, Next Action, Services, Entity Type and Prospect or Client.

The list isn't limited to the four optional fields your cards are, so it's the better view when you want everything at once, or when you're working through a long pipeline rather than looking at its shape.

Two things on the card tell you whether a lead needs attention.

Last contact is your most recent logged call, email or meeting. Notes and stage moves don't count towards it, so it's a measure of real contact rather than activity in Socket.

Proposal engagement tells you whether they've opened the proposal, and when. A prospect who has opened it three times and not replied needs a different call to one who hasn't looked at all.

For the wider view of what's drifting across your whole pipeline, see Leads Reporting.

Start the proposal from the lead itself, so it's priced from your pricing menu with your engagement letter and onboarding form attached. The lead moves through Proposal Draft and Pending Approval on its own as you go, and lands in Won when the client signs.

If you've already sent a proposal and want to track it on the board, open the proposal and use Link to Lead, which creates the lead and links it in one step.

Use Mark as Lost on the lead. You'll pick a reason from your own list, and can add a note alongside it.

The note is worth the extra ten seconds. "Price" is a fact, "price, but asked us to come back at year end" is a diary entry.

Some leads land in Lost without anyone marking them: a client declining a proposal, or a proposal reaching its expiry date. Those are recorded with their own reason so your reporting stays complete. If you're closing off a lead that was never really an opportunity, mark it Disqualified, which keeps it out of your win rate.

Setting up your own reasons is covered in Setting Up Leads.

Why has a lead moved on its own?
Something happened to its proposal. Sending, signing, declining and expiring all move a lead, and the lead's timeline will show you which.

Why has it gone back to Proposal Draft?
The proposal was reverted to draft, so the lead followed it.

Why won't it go into the column I want?
That column is tied to a proposal state the lead doesn't match. Socket will tell you what it needs.

I parked a lead in my own column and it moved anyway.
Its proposal was signed or declined. Your placement holds between proposal events, but a real outcome takes priority.