Rotting opportunities are deals that have sat in a pipeline stage too long without activity. VipeCloud flags them in the pipeline with a yellow or red indicator so you can catch stalled deals before they go cold, without manually auditing every stage. This article covers how the indicators work and how to configure the thresholds that trigger them.
How Rotting Indicators Work
Each opportunity card on the pipeline board can show one of two color states based on how long it has gone without activity:
Yellow - the opportunity has had no activity for at least as many days as the warming threshold
Red - the opportunity has had no activity for at least as many days as the rotting threshold
These thresholds can be set at two levels:
Pipeline default - one warming threshold and one rotting threshold that apply to every open stage in the pipeline, unless a stage sets its own
Stage override - any individual stage can set its own warming and rotting thresholds, which take priority over the pipeline default for that stage only
In practice, this means you set the timing once at the pipeline level, then only touch the stages where deals naturally move faster or slower than the rest of the pipeline. A franchise discovery call, for example, might reasonably sit for a week before it is worth flagging, while a signed agreement waiting on a franchisee's paperwork might need a longer threshold before it is considered stalled. You are not required to configure every stage individually to account for that kind of difference, and you are not limited to a single threshold that fits some stages well and others poorly.
Won and Lost stages never display rotting or warming indicators, regardless of threshold settings.
How to Set the Pipeline-Wide Default
Click CRM in the left navigation bar.
Click Opportunities.
Click Edit Pipeline.
Scroll to Default Rotting Thresholds.
Enter a value in Default warming threshold (days).
Enter a value in Default rotting threshold (days).
Click Update Pipeline.
The rotting threshold must be equal to or greater than the warming threshold. Leaving the default warming threshold blank means no stage will turn yellow unless it sets its own warming threshold. Leaving the default rotting threshold blank works the same way for red.
How to Override the Threshold on a Specific Stage
This section continues from the same Edit Pipeline page used above, in the Pipeline Stages list at the bottom.
Scroll to Pipeline Stages.
Click the edit icon next to the stage you want to change, or click + Add New Stage to set it on a new stage.
In the Edit Stage panel, enter a value in Warming threshold (days).
Enter a value in Rotting threshold (days).
Click Save.
Any value entered here overrides the pipeline default for that stage only. Leaving a field blank means that stage inherits the pipeline default for that threshold instead.
Key Notes
Warming and rotting thresholds are independent settings. You do not need to set both - a stage or pipeline can use just one.
The rotting threshold must be equal to or greater than the warming threshold whenever both are set.
Stage-level thresholds always take priority over the pipeline default for that stage. Leave a stage's fields blank to inherit the pipeline default instead.
Won and Lost stages never display rotting or warming indicators, regardless of any threshold setting.
Rotting and warming indicators are a visual cue only. They do not affect stage percentage, win-probability calculations, or forecasting.