A pipeline waterfall starts with the open pipeline on the first day of a period. It steps to the open pipeline on the last day, one movement at a time. The bars cover new deals, pull-ins, pushes, amount changes, wins and losses. Each bar is a change in stage, close date or amount, so you build it from snapshots.
A pipeline report shows where your deals stand today. A pipeline waterfall shows how they got there. It starts with the pipeline on the first day of a period and ends with the pipeline on the last day. Every movement in between gets its own bar.
That difference matters for a forecast. The state of the pipeline tells you a lot. The movement in the pipeline often tells you more.
What is a pipeline waterfall?
A pipeline waterfall is a chart that walks from starting pipeline to ending pipeline, one type of movement at a time. It works like an ARR waterfall, but for open deals instead of booked revenue. The first bar is the open pipeline dated into the period on day one. Bars that go up add value. Bars that go down take it away. The last bar is what is still open.
The math has to tie. Add the up bars to the starting bar and take away the down bars. The result has to equal the ending bar. If it does not, a change is missing, and the chart is telling a story it cannot back up.
What goes in each bar?
Each bar holds one kind of change, and every change is something that happened to a stage, a close date or an amount. ORM counts changes to those three fields as meaningful activity.
| Bar | What it counts | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Starting pipeline | Open deals dated into the period on day one | The base the period began with |
| Created | New deals dated into the period | Pipeline made inside the period |
| Pulled in | Deals whose close date moved into the period | Timing bought early, often with a discount |
| Amount up | Deals whose value went up | Scope grew, or the first number was low |
| Amount down | Deals whose value went down | Price or scope under pressure |
| Pushed out | Deals whose close date moved past the period | Slippage |
| Won | Deals closed won | Revenue that landed |
| Lost | Deals closed lost | Deals decided against you |
| Ending pipeline | Deals still open and dated into the period | What is left to close |
Why does the change matter more than the total?
A change tells you what people did, and a forecast is trying to predict what they will do next. A deal sitting in Proposal is useful to know. Knowing it moved into Proposal yesterday is more useful.
The same is true for amount. The amount matters, but the fact that it just changed can be an even stronger signal. Did it go up or down? By how much? How late in the sales cycle did the change happen?
Stage moves, amount changes and close date moves show how a deal is progressing. That gives a machine learning model a much richer set of signals than a static CRM record. A waterfall is the same idea, drawn for people to read.
How do you build a pipeline waterfall?
Build it from snapshots: save a copy of every open deal each day, then compare the first copy of the period with the last. ORM snapshots pipeline every day, which is how it sees exactly what changed and when. A CRM record shows the current value of each field, so the history has to be saved on purpose.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1 | Save a daily snapshot of every open deal, with its stage, amount, close date and owner |
| 2 | Fix the starting line with the snapshot from day one of the period |
| 3 | Match each deal across snapshots by its record ID |
| 4 | Sort every change into one bar, in the order it happened |
| 5 | Check that the chart ties from the first bar to the last |
What does a normal quarter look like?
Expect most of the starting bar to leave without closing. Across ORM customers, about 20% of the pipeline with close dates in the quarter on day one usually closes in that quarter. That means 80% of the value in the quarter on day one is not realized in it. See how much day-one pipeline closes.
Slippage makes one of the larger down bars. Ebsta reports that 36% of deals slipped past their close date in 2025, down from 44% in 2024. So a large push bar is normal. The question is whether yours is larger than your own history says it should be.
Timing matters too. A waterfall run in week six will show a small won bar, and that is expected. ORM breaks each quarter into a 13-week seasonality for each customer. In one example, the first seven weeks are weighted below an average week, and week 13 carries a weight of 2.27. See the 13-week quarter.
Which bars should worry you?
Watch the push bar first. A deal that slips from one quarter to the next is less likely to close, even if it is in commit. A growing push bar means the next quarter starts with more deals that are less likely to close.
Then check the pull-in bar. Pulled deals are usually discounted, so price erodes. They also shrink the starting pipeline for the next quarter. Pipeline for a future quarter is often built 6 to 12 months before the quarter begins, so the gap is hard to refill in time. See the real cost of pulling deals forward.
Read the size bars against the created bar. Pressure on deal size or win rate is usually a sign of competition in the market, and it shows up as larger amount down and lost bars. A low deal count points to pipeline generation, and it shows up as a small created bar. Marketing or the BDR team is the place to look.
Give late amount drops a look of their own. How late in the cycle a value changes is part of the signal.
How does a waterfall feed the forecast?
It turns movement into inputs a model can learn from. Each bar is made of changes to single deals, and each change has a date. With that history, a model can learn how long deals of each type sit in each stage. It can also learn how often close dates move and how far.
ORM builds its forecast on that history. It targets 95% accuracy on new and expansion revenue, from day 1 to day 90 of the quarter, with no manual adjustment. The waterfall is the part a person reads: a picture of what moved, which the forecast has already taken into account.
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Pete Furseth is COO of ORM Technologies. ORM builds custom revenue forecast models on a company's own CRM data.Frequently Asked Questions
What is a pipeline waterfall?
It is a chart that starts with the open pipeline on day one of a period and steps to the open pipeline on the last day. Each bar is one kind of change, such as new deals or pushes. Together they show how the pipeline got from one number to the other.
How is a pipeline waterfall different from an ARR waterfall?
An ARR waterfall tracks the recurring revenue you already have, from beginning ARR to ending ARR. A pipeline waterfall tracks open deals before they close. One explains your revenue base, and the other explains the deals that will feed it.
How often should you snapshot pipeline for a waterfall?
ORM snapshots pipeline every day. A daily copy shows the day each change happened. It also catches a change that is made and then undone inside a week. Keep every copy, because a history that gets written over is no longer a history.
What share of day-one pipeline usually closes in the quarter?
Across ORM customers, about 20 percent of the pipeline with close dates in the quarter on its first day usually closes in that quarter. The other 80 percent of that value does not land in the period, and the waterfall shows where it went.
Which bar in a pipeline waterfall needs the closest watch?
The push bar. A deal that slips from one quarter to the next is less likely to close, even if it is in commit. After that, look at pull-ins, since pulled deals usually come with a discount.
Do you need clean CRM data to build a pipeline waterfall?
No. Every business settles into a steady pattern in how it records pipeline, and data that is imperfect in a consistent way still shows movement. Start saving snapshots now and let the history build.
See how ORM turns these insights into action
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