Configuring Distribution Stages

Distribution Stages give you an ordered pipeline that every accepted lead runs through. Each stage tries to sell, route, hold, or transform the lead, and leads that aren’t taken move on to the next stage. This guide walks you through assembling a working pipeline end-to-end. For the conceptual rundown (what each method does, what “terminal” means, how distribution flows are recorded), see the Distribution feature page. This guide is the hands-on counterpart.

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Prerequisites

• A role with access to distribution stages. If Distribution Stages doesn’t appear in your sidebar, ask an admin on your account.
• At least one lead category and lead type configured, so stages have something to match against.
• A rough sketch of how you want leads to move, including which buyers go first, where aged leads land, and what the final fallback is.

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1. Open Distribution Stages

Click Distribution Stages in the sidebar. The list shows every stage in order with its Name (and description), Method, a filter icon under Has Filters when it has eligibility conditions, and its Status (Active or Paused). Use the search box or the Method filter to find a stage quickly. Order runs top-to-bottom. The first stage gets the lead first, then the second, and so on until a terminal stage takes it or it falls off the end as unassigned.

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2. Create a stage

Click New stage in the top-right. Every stage starts with a Stage section that holds four settings.

• Name is required. It’s shown in the list and in your logs.
• Method is required. Pick one of seven methods (covered below). The form swaps in method-specific settings as soon as you choose.
• Description is optional. It’s plain text that describes what this stage does, which is useful when you end up with ten stages and need to remember why one of them exists.
• Paused stages are skipped during distribution but stay in the pipeline, so you can turn them back on without recreating them.

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3. Pick a method

Each method has its own settings. Pick the one that matches the role this stage plays in your pipeline.

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Highest Price

This is the classic auction, where the lead goes to whoever offers the most.

• Recipients → Deliveries per lead sets how many recipients can receive each lead at this stage. Deliveries also respect the lead type’s sell limit.
• Bid Settings → Enable Bids lets customer bids compete. Bidding Scopes limits them to specific scopes (Nationwide, State, County). Leave all three unchecked to allow any scope.
• Partner Settings → Enable Partners lets partner offers compete alongside bids, and reveals two more settings.
  • Minimum Price is the floor for partner offers. Bids have their own minimums, so this only gates partners.
  • Partner Filter offers All Partners, Only Selected Partners, or All Except Selected, with a list to pick from.

The highest acceptable offer wins. Highest Price is terminal, so a winning stage assigns the lead and stops the pipeline.

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Round Robin

Rotate leads evenly across a set of customers and/or partners at a flat price.

• Rotation Scope sets which past distributions count toward who’s “next”, either All Leads Ever Distributed or Only Leads Distributed via This Stage.
• Price is the flat price charged per lead, the same for everyone in the rotation.
• Deliveries per lead sets how many recipients get each lead.
• Customer Settings → Enable Customers includes customers. Customer Filter picks all, only selected, or all except selected customers.
• Partner Settings → Enable Partners offers the same choice for partners.

Round Robin is terminal when it finds an eligible recipient.

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Marketplace

Place the lead on the marketplace for a reverse auction. There are no recipient settings on the stage itself. Marketplace stages answer pings using the fallback prices configured on each source. If the source has a fallback price for the ping’s lead type, the ping is accepted at that price. Otherwise it’s rejected. The auction itself (starting price, ending price, and timing) is set per lead type. See Setting up the marketplace. Marketplace is terminal, so once the lead is listed, the pipeline stops while buyers consider it.

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Club

Park the lead in your Club so customers with Club access can claim it for free.

• Unlimited claims lets any number of customers claim each lead.
• Default claim cap sets how many customers can claim each lead routed through this stage when claims aren’t unlimited.

Club is terminal. It’s a natural last stage for leads nobody bought.

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Audit

Hold matching leads for manual review. Audit stages have no settings of their own. When a lead matches the stage’s eligibility conditions, it’s set to Audit status and distribution stops. See Audits for how to review and release held leads.

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Alter Data

Change the lead before it moves to the next stage. Under Operations, click Add Operation for each change.

• Set Lead Type reassigns the lead to a different lead type. A common pattern is to switch a “fresh” lead to an “aged” variant after the first marketplace pass fails.
• Set Field Value sets a field to a Static Value you type, or uses Copy From Field to copy another field’s value.

Alter Data is not terminal. Leads continue to the next stage after the changes apply, which is what makes it useful for aging and rewriting between auction passes.

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Real Estate API

Enrich the lead with property data and, optionally, skip-traced owner contacts before later stages run. This method shows as “(integration required)” until your Real Estate API integration is connected, and you can have one Real Estate API stage per lead category. The Real Estate API Configuration section has four settings.

• Lead Category is required. Only leads in this category are enriched, and the category scopes which lead fields you can map to.
• Turn on Property Data Enrichment to call the property data endpoint.
• Turn on Skip Trace Owner Contacts to call the skip-trace endpoint. It requires a Skip Trace API key in the integration settings.
• Under Field Mappings, check the API fields you want, map each one to a lead field, and decide whether to Overwrite Existing values on the lead.

Real Estate API is non-terminal, so the lead continues through the pipeline with its new data.

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4. Add eligibility conditions (optional)

Scroll to Eligibility Conditions and click Add filters to restrict this stage to a subset of leads. Conditions use the same builder as lead types. Each group says Match all of the following, Add "AND" condition adds a rule to the group, and Add "OR" group adds an alternative group. Pick a property from Metadata (Lead Category, Lead Type, Source) or from your lead Fields. If a lead doesn’t match, the stage is skipped for that lead and the pipeline continues to the next stage. For Real Estate API stages, the selected lead category is enforced automatically.

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5. Save and order the stage

Click Create stage. On an existing stage, edits are saved from the bar at the bottom of the page, and Delete is in the page header. Back on the list, drag the handle on any row to reorder, then click Save changes in the Unsaved order changes bar. Clear any search or method filter first, because reordering only works on the full list. A typical pipeline looks like this.

1. Direct auction (Highest Price) sells to the top bidder first.
2. Round robin (Round Robin) distributes to a partner or customer rotation for leads that didn’t auction.
3. Marketplace (fresh) lists on the marketplace at full price.
4. Age the lead (Alter Data) switches it to the aged lead type.
5. Marketplace (aged) relists at a lower price.
6. Club pool (Club) lets Club members claim whatever’s left.

Your own pipeline can be shorter or longer. The point is that each stage is responsible for a single decision, and the order reflects your preference.

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6. Pause stages without deleting them

Use Pause / Resume in a row’s actions on the list, or the Paused switch on the edit page, to temporarily take a stage out of the pipeline. Paused stages keep all their settings, so you can flip them back on any time without reconfiguring.

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7. Verify leads are flowing through

Open Incoming logs under Entries in the sidebar to see every distribution flow. Each log shows the stages a lead ran through, what happened at each (accepted, filtered out, skipped because paused, errored, held for audit), and the final outcome. See Reading distribution logs for a walkthrough. For an individual lead, open it from Leads and choose View Log from its More actions menu.

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What happens next

Once your pipeline is running, here’s what to expect.

• New leads automatically run through your stages in order.
• Incoming logs record the full history for auditing and debugging.
• Paused stages show up in a lead’s log as skipped, so you can see they were bypassed.
• Reordering takes effect on the next lead, and in-flight flows are not replayed.
• Leads that need another try can be reprocessed from any stage you choose.

From here, the natural next steps are setting up partners as recipients, wiring up webhooks for downstream systems to react to distribution events, and reviewing the marketplace configuration so fallback stages have buyers waiting.