Completing, cancelling and archiving are three different actions used at different points in an opportunity's life. The simplest way to choose is to ask what actually happened to the opportunity.
Mark complete
Use this when the work actually happened. If anyone has logged hours against the opportunity, this is the right close-out - you shouldn't cancel or archive an opportunity that already has real logs on it.
📝 Note: You can only mark complete in-progress opportunities.
Cancel
Use this for an opportunity that was going to run but didn't go ahead. Cancelled is a status: the opportunity stays in your list alongside Open, In progress and Completed, just marked Cancelled, so you keep a record that it was planned. Any real hours logged before it fell through stay and continue to count.
📝 Note: You can only cancel in-progress opportunities.
Archive
Use this for an opportunity that shouldn't exist at all - created by mistake or a duplicate - normally before anything has been logged. Archiving is the closest thing to a soft delete: it moves the opportunity out of the active list into the archived view (the record is kept). If it happens to have logged hours, archiving removes them from your totals.
At a glance
Did the work happen? → Mark complete.
Was it planned but didn't run? → Cancel (stays in the list as a status; preserves any real hours).
Should it never have existed? → Archive (soft delete; moves to the archived view).
📝 Note: Cancel and Archive aren't mutually exclusive. You can cancel an opportunity and then archive it later just to tidy your active list.
What's next
👉 See How and when to cancel an opportunity as an opportunity lead and How and when to archive an opportunity as an opportunity lead.
💬 Need more help? Contact us anytime at support@goodsted.com.