A flow is a row of stages. Each one is a kind of waiting: waiting for documents, waiting for a signature, waiting for the work to be done, waiting to be paid. Building a flow is deciding which of those a job goes through and in what order.

The kinds of stage

• Document collection — the client owes you files, and the checklist is what you are waiting on.
• Signature — something has to be signed before the job goes further.
• Proposal — the client has to say yes before anything else runs.
• Questionnaire — you need answers, not files.
• Payment — an invoice, and possibly a wait for it to clear.
• Work — your own preparation. Nothing external is holding it up.
• Review — a second pair of eyes before it goes out.
• Completed — the end.

The kind is not decoration. It decides what the stage is allowed to do when it starts and what it is allowed to wait for, which is why a preparation stage does not offer to wait for an invoice to be paid.

Ordering and repeating

Drag a stage to move it. Order is the running order, so what you see across the top of the automation is exactly the path a job will take.

Stages can repeat where repeating makes sense. A flow that bills a deposit up front and the balance at the end has two payment stages, in two different places, and Vylan keeps them straight.

Skipping without deleting

Every stage has Skip this stage. A skipped stage stays in the flow, shows as Skipped, and is stepped straight over.

Use it rather than deleting when a stage is off for now but not gone for good — a review step you drop in March and want back in May. Deleting loses everything hanging off it; skipping keeps it intact.

Saving

Changes are held until you press Save changes. Nothing is written stage by stage as you drag, deliberately — a half-rearranged flow that saved itself as you went would exist, briefly, in an order nobody chose, and briefly is long enough if an engagement is created in that moment.

If a flow cannot be saved, Vylan says why instead of quietly dropping the change. An arrangement that would break the job — a stage that could never be reached, more billing stages than a flow can carry — is refused at the save.