# One pipeline or several in Pipedrive: a rule for small sales teams

https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-multiple-pipelines/
Published: 2026-10-02 · Updated: 2026-10-25

Use multiple pipelines in Pipedrive only when the processes have different stages. Region, industry, lead source and salesperson belong in a custom field, a filter or the owner field, because every extra pipeline splits your reports into pieces you can no longer compare. Pipedrive’s own guidance draws the line in the same place: use multiple pipelines when your sales processes differ in structure or complexity, and let fields and filters segment deals within a single pipeline ( [Pipedrive: create multiple sales processes](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/how-can-i-have-multiple-pipelines)).

Below: the three-question version of that rule, what a second pipeline costs you in Insights, and how to fold one back in when you have over-built.

## Why every new product tempts you with a new pipeline

A pipeline is the biggest object on the screen. When a four-person team adds a second product, signs its first reseller or hires someone for a new region, the instinct is to give the new thing a board of its own. A board feels like a business. A field feels like paperwork.

Pipedrive makes the instinct cheap to act on. Open the pipeline dropdown, click “+ New pipeline”, name it, set the stages, save. Anyone with deal admin permissions can do it in the time it takes to make coffee, and duplicating an existing pipeline is faster still: the pencil icon next to the pipeline name, then “…”, then “Duplicate pipeline” ( [Pipedrive: create multiple sales processes](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/how-can-i-have-multiple-pipelines)). The same article asks you to put some thought into the structure before you create one. In our experience that sentence is read after the pipeline exists.

The accounts we see most often have more pipelines than ways of selling. A “Partners” pipeline with the same five stages as “Direct”. An “Enterprise” pipeline that differs from the main one by a single legal-review stage and a higher average value. A pipeline per rep, created the week a new rep started so the manager could “see their deals”, which the owner field already did. None of these were mistakes on teh day. The bill arrives at the end of the quarter, when someone asks for a win rate and gets three.

If you are doing a wider cleanup, counting pipelines is the first line of [a Pipedrive audit](https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-audit/). This article is the decision behind that line.

## The rule: when multiple pipelines make sense

We ask three questions, in this order, and stop at the first “no”.

Would the stages be different? Not the names, the exit criteria. If the new process would have “Qualified, Discovery, Proposal, Negotiation” with new labels, it is the same process. Write the stages out for both and compare what the buyer has to do to leave each one, if you cannot name a stage that exists in one process and not in the other, it is one pipeline. How to define a stage by buyer progress rather than seller activity is covered in [how many stages a sales pipeline should have](https://salesbond.app/blog/sales-pipeline-stages/), and that test does most of the work here.

Does the deal move for a different reason? A new-business deal moves because the buyer learns something. A renewal moves because the calendar does, and its stages are named after days to the contract end date, which is why we keep [renewals in their own pipeline](https://salesbond.app/blog/customer-renewal-process-pipedrive/). That is a genuinely different process, and it passes the first question too: “90 days out” is not a stage any prospect goes through.

Is it only the people, the place or the source that differ? Then the answer is no pipeline. Pipedrive’s table says the same in three rows: deals grouped by location or industry go in custom fields and filters, deals organized by salesperson are handled by the owner field, and delivery after a deal is won goes to Projects, not to a pipeline ( [Pipedrive: create multiple sales processes](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/how-can-i-have-multiple-pipelines)).

This is where we part ways with a common piece of setup advice. Some Pipedrive setup guides suggest one pipeline for inbound and one for outbound, or one for SMB and one for Enterprise. We don’t. In both cases the buyer walks through the same stages; what differs is where the deal came from or how big it is, and that is exactly the kind of difference a field can hold while the conversion numbers stay in one place.

There is one more legitimate trigger in Pipedrive’s guidance: pipeline-specific custom fields, when a process needs data the other one never collects. We treat that as a confirmation rather than a reason on its own. A process that needs its own fields almost always has its own stages as well; if it does not, the field can live in the shared pipeline and sit empty on the deals that do not need it. Renewals pass both tests, which is why they are the clearest case for a second pipeline we know.

![Decision flow: three questions for choosing one Pipedrive pipeline or multiple pipelines](https://salesbond.app/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/pipedrive-multiple-pipelines-2.png)

If the team needs it in one line: we open a new pipeline when a deal has to pass through a stage our current pipeline does not have. Everything else is a field.

## What a second pipeline costs you in reports

The first cost is the board itself. Pipedrive cannot show all pipelines combined in a single view, even when they share the same stage names; each pipeline and its stages are stored and managed separately ( [Pipedrive: create multiple sales processes](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/how-can-i-have-multiple-pipelines)). For a manager that means the Monday review is two boards, two scrolls and two sets of “what’s stuck”, for a team that may have fewer open deals than one board holds comfortably.

The second cost is comparability, and it is the one that hurts a small team most. Stage conversion and win rate are per pipeline. Split “Direct” and “Partners” into two pipelines and you have not learned anything about partners; you have two sets of smaller numbers, each too thin to trust on its own. A team that closes a few dozen deals a quarter does not have the volume to split in three and still read the result. Keep the same deals in one pipeline, tell them apart with a field, and the comparison is one filter away in the deals list, with the whole pipeline’s conversion as the baseline. On plans that include custom-field reports in Insights, the win/loss conversion report can also be grouped by that field ( [Pipedrive: deal conversion reports](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/insights-reports-deal-conversion)). That is the method we use for lead source in [inbound vs outbound for a small team](https://salesbond.app/blog/inbound-vs-outbound-sales-small-team/): one pipeline, one field, compare per value.

The third cost shows up when deals start crossing between pipelines, which they will, because a deal that was “Partners” turns out to be direct and an “Enterprise” prospect turns out to be a ten-seat shop. Pipedrive lets you move a deal to another pipeline and stage at any time, and warns in the same breath that this affects reporting in Insights: deal progress reports only reflect movements within the current pipeline ( [Pipedrive: move deals to another pipeline](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/how-can-i-move-a-deal-to-another-pipeline)). Every move is a small seam in the the report. The same page adds that if you often move deals between pipelines, you should review your pipeline structure. We would put it more bluntly: frequent moves are the symptom that the split was a field all along.

A disclosure, since this is where the review pain lives: we build SalesBond, a sales management layer on top of the CRM a team already uses; we started with Pipedrive. Deal Health checks every deal in the connected CRM against the same set of rules, so a deal with no next activity gets flagged whichever pipeline it sits in, and the manager gets one list instead of a board per pipeline. It does not repair comparability you gave up by splitting a process in two; nothing does except merging it back. If you want to see how many pipelines your account has grown and which deals go unseen in them, [check your CRM with SalesBond](https://salesbond.app/).

## What belongs in a field, filter or Projects instead

Most reasons people give for a second pipeline are reasons for a column. Here is where each one goes.

| What you want to separate | Where it goes in Pipedrive | Why not a pipeline |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Region, country, industry | A custom field on the deal, plus a saved filter | Pipedrive’s own recommendation; the stages are identical, only the segment changes |
| Which rep works the deal | The owner field | Already there, already filterable, already in Insights |
| Inbound vs outbound, partner vs direct | One single-option “Lead source” field, with “Partner” as one of its values | You want to compare these inside one baseline, not across boards |
| A second product with the same buying steps | A product or a custom field | Same exit criteria, so the same pipeline; a filter gives you the per-product view |
| What happens after Won: onboarding, delivery, installation | Projects | Pipedrive points post-sale work to Projects; a pipeline stage after Won is not a sales stage |
| Deal size (“SMB” vs “Enterprise”) | A filter on value, unless large deals pass through stages small ones never see | Size alone is a number; a security review or procurement stage is a process |

The three rows that quote Pipedrive directly, location or industry, salesperson, and delivery after Won, are from [the multiple pipelines article](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/how-can-i-have-multiple-pipelines). The rest is our reading of the same rule.

The enterprise row is the one teams argue about so here is our position. If your larger deals go through a legal review and a security questionnaire that your smaller deals never touch, those are real stages with real exit criteria, and a second pipeline is defensible. [RFP deals](https://salesbond.app/blog/rfp-bid-no-bid-pipedrive/) pass the same test only when they arrive often; a few a year fit in a Deal type field instead. If “Enterprise” means the same five stages with a longer wait in each, it is a filter on deal value and a longer expected cycle, and the pipeline would only hide the fact that the process is identical. If the real difference between the two pipelines is a handful of fields, [hide them per pipeline](https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-custom-fields-cleanup-data-fields/) and keep one.

## How to merge back when you over-built

Say you have “Direct” and “Partners” with matching stages and you want one pipeline. Everything below is a Pipedrive setting or a bulk edit; nothing needs an export.

1. Pick the survivor and map the stages. Write down which stage in the pipeline you are closing equals which stage in the one you keep. Do this on paper first, because the move itself is not something Insights will reconstruct for you later.
2. Decide which field replaces the pipeline. If you already track lead source the way we describe in [inbound vs outbound for a small team](https://salesbond.app/blog/inbound-vs-outbound-sales-small-team/), the “Lead source” field has a “Partner” option and that is your field; do not create a second one. If you have no such field, create a single-option deal field with “Direct” and “Partner” as values. Add it as a column in the deals list view.
3. Fill the field before you move anything. In the deals list view, filter to the pipeline you are closing, select the deals and set the field on all of them at once; Pipedrive calls this bulk editing ( [Pipedrive: list view](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/list-view) ). After the merge these deals will be indistinguishable from the others except by this value, so it has to be set first.
4. Move the deals. Pipedrive gives three routes: drag a card to “Move to” in the pipeline view and pick the pipeline and stage, select deals in the list view and update pipeline and stage with the bulk edit tool, or open a single deal and click the current pipeline and stage under the deal progress bar ( [Pipedrive: move deals to another pipeline](https://support.pipedrive.com/en/article/how-can-i-move-a-deal-to-another-pipeline) ). For a merge, the list view is the one you want, stage by stage, following the map from step one.
5. Note the merge date for whoever reads reports. Deal progress reports only reflect movements within the current pipeline, per the same article, so stage movements the merged deals made before the move are not part of the survivor’s progress report. Conversion for the merged pipeline is clean from the merge date forward; read it from there.
6. Leave the old pipeline empty for a month. When nobody has opened it in that time, retire it.

On step one: if the surviving pipeline also needs a stage added or renamed, do that first and check the order of a safe edit [before you touch the stages](https://salesbond.app/blog/pipedrive-edit-pipeline-stages-live/).

The whole thing is an afternoon for a few hundred deals, and most of the afternoon is step three. The temptation is to skip the field and “just remember” which deals were partner deals. Nobody remembers by the next quarterly review.

One last thing we tell teams who have merged and miss the tidy second board. The board was never the report. The field is the report, and it was there the whole time, waiting to be filled in.