Summary
It's easy to create a new Deal for a new business opportunity
Once you've created the Deal, you add Line Items (Subscriptions/Fees) to it, typically via Products from your Product Catalog
At the end of your sales process, use the system (standard) "Stage" field on the Deal to mark it as "Closed Won" or "Closed Lost"
Who is this article for?
All Planhat Users
This article refers to new revenue features in Planhat, launching in early 2026, so you may not have access to them yet. Please speak with your Planhat CSM if you would like to discuss the rollout.
Introduction
In Planhat, following changes rolled out in early 2026, the main "parent" model for revenue is Deal. Attached to an individual Deal record, you'll likely have one or more "child" Line Items records, which are either Subscriptions (recurring revenue) or Fees (non-recurring revenue).
Deals are used for both potential revenue (opportunities), and revenue that is confirmed as won or lost.
In this article, we'll go through the scenario of manually creating a new Deal record and assigning Line Items to it. We'll also cover how to manually close a Deal.
📚 Further reading
In this specific article we won't cover the process of progressing a Deal along stages in a pipeline in Planhat. For details of that, see our separate article here
We also won't concentrate on creating renewal Deals in this article - to learn about processing renewals in Planhat, see here
In additional to these articles, you can also go through a tutorial on the "New business Deal lifecycle" here
📌 Definitions
"Data models" - also called simply "models" - are the Planhat equivalent of the "objects" you may be familiar with from other tools. Data is organized into these models - we go through some key examples below. Within these models, individual examples of data are called "records"
"Company" is the model for organizations that are your prospects and customers - e.g. Company records could be "Apple" and "Zoom". Company is at the top of the Planhat data model structure
"Deal" is the "parent" revenue model for both potential sales (opportunities), confirmed sales and lost opportunities. Deals can have one or more (or no) Line Items associated with them. Each Deal is associated with a specific Company - e.g. a Deal record could be "Renewal Deal for Gong"
"Line Item" is a "child" model to the Deal model. Each Line Item corresponds to a specific unit of revenue - a "Subscription" (recurring revenue) or a "Fee" (non-recurring revenue). Each Line Item corresponds to a specific Deal, so that means it's (forecasted/actual/lost) revenue for a specific Company. An example Line Item record could be "Advanced Data on Deal with Scribe"
"Product" records act as (optional) templates for Line Items, e.g. "Advanced Data". They are housed in the "Product Catalog" within the "Settings" Global Tool
Creating a new Deal
Let's take a look at the process of a manually creating a new Deal - a new business opportunity. (This is opposed to selecting an existing Deal and creating a renewal Deal from it, which we go over in a separate article here.)
Create a new Deal (i.e. create a Deal record)
You can create a new Deal in the same way as records of other models - starting by clicking "+ Deal" on a Deal-based Page, or in Data Explorer with Deal selected
Fill in the Create Form and click "Create Deal"
🚀 Tip: As with other models, you can customize which fields are included in the Create Form for Deal - for further details, see here
You can (optionally) set the default "Stage" field (located in the top-right of the Deal Preview) to an appropriate value. You can customize the available field values via the "Data Model" Global Tool for admins. In the example screenshot below, the field value "Open" has been added as a custom value option to select here
Initially, the Deal won't have any associated Line Items
During this time when you don't have Line Items attached to the Deal, you can manually set ARR/MRR and Total Contract Value if desired
Add Line Items
When viewing the Deal (via its Preview), in the "Line Items" part, you will see buttons to either add a single Line Item, or add Line Items in bulk
If you click "+ Line Item", it will prompt you to select a Product (from your Product Catalog), although this isn't mandatory. If you select a Product, relevant details will be automatically filled in for this Line Item. If you don't select a Product, you will need to enter revenue information manually before you can click "Create Line Item"
Or, if you click on the Deal to "+ Add in bulk", you have the following options for adding Line Items in bulk:
Line Items inherit data from their Products (i.e. the templated information in the Product Catalog)
Currency converts via current exchange rates to match the Deal currency, as all Line Items must share the Deal currency
Once you've added one or more Line Items to the Deal, ARR/MRR and Total Contract Value on the Deal are automatically calculated based on its Line Items. (ARR and TCV will be identical for 12-month Subscriptions.) You will see that these fields become locked on the Deal
Once your Deal has been set up with its Line Items, you can then carry out your sales process, whether that involves taking the Deal through a pipeline of multiple stages, as we describe in a separate article here, or something more simple where you just progress to marking the Deal as either "Closed Won" or "Closed Lost".
Closing a Deal
When you're ready to mark a Deal as "Closed", you use the system (standard) field "Stage", located in the top-right of each Deal Preview. There are separate default values for "Closed Won" and "Closed Lost".
Marking a Deal as "Closed Won" means that the revenue is counted/recognized as confirmed/actual revenue in Planhat, so it's a really crucial process. This affects revenue reporting in System Reports, as well as the revenue shown elsewhere for the Company.
🚀 Tip
If you are using custom fields for custom pipelines (e.g. "Sales Stage" and "CS Stage" as documented here), you can set up a simple Automation in Planhat that sets the Planhat system "Stage" field to "Closed Won" / "Closed Lost" when custom stage fields are updated to the same values, to ensure that the revenue is correctly recognized in the system. Speak with your TDS if you would like to discuss this further.
📌 Important to note
Deleting a Deal (not recommended) also deletes any attached Line Items.
This is because Line Items can't exist in isolation - only as part of a Deal.