How to Use Capsule to Keep a Sales Pipeline From Going Stale

The short answer: set each milestone's probability and days until stale, import your open deals with values and close dates, store every email against the right opportunity through the Mail Drop Box or an email add-on, review the stale list every week, on Growth or above add a Workflow Automation that reassigns and applies a Track at the milestones that matter, test it on a test opportunity you then delete, and read the conversion rate on the pipeline dashboard.

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The job: no deal sits for three weeks without anyone noticing. Capsule does this with a plain mechanism: an opportunity with no stored communication for a set number of days gets an orange band. Everything below feeds or acts on that band. For the product and its plans, see the Capsule glossary entry.

Before you start:

• Know what the forecast does with a deal. Capsule multiplies each open opportunity's expected value by its milestone's probability and spreads it over the close dates, per the stages guide. For example, a $12,000 deal at a 40% milestone adds 12,000 x 0.4 = $4,800 to the forecast, so a stale deal with an old probability inflates it.
• Start from the spreadsheet you keep today. The columns you already track become the import file, and pipeline and milestone names in it must match Capsule exactly.
• Pick two readings. The count of stale opportunities each Friday, and the conversion rate the dashboard reports over 30, 90 and 365 days.

What you need

• An admin. Milestones and Workflow Automations are set up by a Capsule administrator.
• A plan. The stale flag and custom milestones work on every plan, including Free with its one pipeline. Workflow Automations need Growth, Advanced or Ultimate, per the workflow guide. A 14-day trial covers testing.
• Your sending addresses on your user record. The Drop Box only accepts email from addresses recorded against your user, per the email storage guide.

Step 1: Give every milestone a probability and a stale limit

Go to Account Settings, Sales Pipelines, select the pipeline and click Add New Milestone. Enter the name, the probability of winning and, optionally, Days Until Stale, per the setup guide. Shorter limits belong on the milestones where silence costs most, such as Proposal sent. You can also stop opportunities going stale on a milestone where waiting is normal.

Step 2: Import the open deals

From the Sales Pipeline tab, click Import Opportunities, then From a File, then Opportunities. The opportunity import guide requires an opportunity name, the contact's name or ID (plus their email if it is a person), the pipeline and the milestone. Add Value as a plain number without commas or symbols, Currency as a code such as EUR, and Expected Close Date in one of the listed formats. Without value and close date an opportunity stays out of the pipeline reports, per the adding opportunities guide.

Step 3: Keep the conversation on the deal

Stale means no stored communication, so storing it is the work. Find your Mail Drop Box address under My Preferences, then BCC it on outgoing mail and forward incoming mail to it. The email storage guide adds three shortcuts: replace dropbox@ with opportunity@ to create an opportunity from an email, with track+name@ to start a Track, or with todo+7d@ to create a follow-up task due in a week. In Outlook and Office 365, use Forward as Attachment, because the default forward drops the addresses Capsule matches on.

Step 4: Run the Friday stale review

Open the Sales Pipeline. Stale opportunities carry an orange band, and hovering shows why, per the pipeline overview. Switch to the list view and filter to open, stale opportunities. For each one: log the last contact, move the milestone, reset the close date, or close it as Lost with a reason. The visual board shows at most 500 opportunities, so larger pipelines need the list view anyway.

Step 5: Automate the hand-offs (Growth and above)

Go to Workflow Automations, choose the Opportunities tab and click Add Automation, then pick the pipeline, per the workflow guide. Triggers are a milestone reached or a status of Won or Lost. Actions are Assign to User, Assign to Team, Add Track, Create a linked Project and Send an Email from your templates. A sensible first rule: when a deal reaches Proposal sent, add a Track of follow-up tasks for the owner.

Step 6: Test, then switch it on

Click Test this Automation to create a test opportunity and move it through the milestones. Then delete it: the guide notes that test opportunities count in your sales and activity reports. Name the automation and switch the toggle from OFF to ON.

Step 7: Ask the pipeline a question

Capsule MCP connects ChatGPT to live CRM data, with Claude and Cursor in a beta for Growth customers and above. Before the Friday review, ask it Capsule's own example, which deals are stalling this month and need extra attention, and read its answer next to the stale list. The human check is the comparison: where the assistant names a deal the orange band missed, look at the stored emails before you change anything.

What Capsule's guides warn about

• Tracks and milestones. An action set to run when a Track completes only runs if the opportunity is still in that milestone when it does.
• The sender's mailbox. A Send an Email action does not run if the user who triggered it has no mailbox set up.
• Bulk reassignment. Reassigning opportunities in bulk cannot be undone, per the adding opportunities guide.
• Deleted automations. They skip the Trash and cannot be restored.
• Failed actions. The Super Administrator gets an email; fix the record, then move it out of the milestone and back in to rerun the action.

The plan page puts its AI badges on Growth and above, which is where AI summaries arrive. The mechanism that does this job, the stale flag, works on every plan, so start there before paying for anything that sits on top of it.

FAQ

How many days should a milestone take to go stale?

Capsule leaves it to you per milestone in the setup guide. Start from your own median time in each stage and shorten it where a quiet week usually means a lost deal.

Does a stale opportunity change the forecast?

Not by itself. The forecast uses value, milestone probability and close date, per the stages guide, so a stale deal keeps counting until someone moves or closes it.

Can emails sync automatically instead of through the Drop Box?

Yes. Email Sync is listed from Growth on the pricing page, checked on 24 October 2026, and Capsule documents add-ons for Gmail and Outlook in its email support section. The Drop Box works on every plan.