> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.beaconrevenue.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Where a deal becomes a customer

> What happens on the day a deal closes won — which record takes over, what carries across from the pipeline, and what deliberately does not.

Closing a deal won is the only point where Beacon's two stage rails touch. It is a handover between two records, not a change of stage on one.

<Note>
  This page describes a designed model, not shipped behaviour. The handover is specified; no surface performs it on your data yet.
</Note>

## Two records, not one

The deal is one object and the account is another. Winning the deal does not turn the deal into the account — it closes the deal's rail and starts the account's.

Before the close, pipeline reporting owns where the deal has reached. From the close onward, customer reporting owns where the account has reached. **Exactly one of them owns the answer at any moment**, which is why the two rails can never disagree about the same record.

## What carries across

| Carried | What it is used for |
| - | - |
| The deal's stage history | How the deal moved, kept as history rather than re-run as a customer stage |
| The milestone record | What was completed before signature, so onboarding does not start from nothing |
| The contract structure | The close date anchors stage 1; the term and renewal date anchor stages 4 and 5 |

The account enters stage 1, **Onboarding**, on contract execution. It leaves when half or more of the activation milestones typical for its segment are complete.

## What does not carry across

Every figure Beacon publishes about a deal describes *that deal*: [deal health](/definitions/deal-health), [deal probability](/definitions/deal-probability), [days in stage](/definitions/days-in-stage), [deal velocity percentile](/definitions/deal-velocity-percentile). They stop when the deal stops. **None of them becomes a customer figure**, and a strong-closing deal does not begin its customer life with a high [health score](/definitions/health-score).

This is deliberate. A deal score answers whether a sale will happen; a customer score answers whether a relationship is progressing. Carrying one into the other would let a good sales process disguise a poor start.

## What to expect on day one

* **The stage is set immediately.** Stage 1 begins at contract execution, from the contract itself.
* **The scores are not immediate.** A per-account stage picture needs transition data to have been flowing for 30 days. Before that, only segment-level distributions exist.
* **Billing is required.** No customer stage is produced for an account without a connected billing source — not a degraded version, none. See [When a source is missing](/when-a-source-is-missing).

## Related

<Columns cols={3}>
  <Card title="How a customer moves through Beacon" href="/lifecycles/overview">
    Both rails, and the stages on each.
  </Card>

  <Card title="What changes when a stage changes" href="/lifecycles/what-changes-when-a-stage-changes">
    What moves the moment a record advances.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Lifecycle stage" href="/definitions/lifecycle-stage">
    The value itself, stage by stage.
  </Card>
</Columns>


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