Teams might be able to see what happened to a deal or a lead, but not why. For example, if a deal moves from “in progress” to “closed lost,” or a lead gets marked “unqualified.” But without additional context, sales leaders are left guessing at trends they should be able to see clearly.
That’s the issue many teams come up against within their CRMs. When a status can be changed quickly and without feedback, sales leaders don’t understand what happened to specific leads.
But when you have better context, you’re able to refine future outputs, which drives better decision-making. These decisions then produce better outcomes that can further sharpen the context — it’s a cycle that can compound without the right content.
Column validation in monday.com lets you set rules on a status column, so a status can’t be changed unless certain conditions are met, or unless the right person is making the change.
At a Glance
Column validation lets you set rules directly on a status column, so a status can’t change unless certain conditions are met.
There are two types of rules you can apply:
Once the rule is set, the system enforces it. If a rep tries to close a deal as lost without giving a reason, a pop-up prompts them to fill it in. Teams no longer have to rely on people remembering to log the details—the board simply won’t let the status change until they do.
Column validation in action
We recently worked with a client where, on the surface, their monday.com setup looked like it was doing its job—they could see how many deals were closed won, and track the revenue coming in.
But anything marked “closed lost,” or opportunities that stalled part-way through the pipeline, told them nothing. With 20 salespeople all making changes across the system, there was no consistent way to capture why deals were falling through. Was it price? A competitor? The wrong solution? Nobody could say for certain.
By setting column validation on their status column, every closed lost deal now requires a reason before it can be logged. That single change gave the business a much clearer view of where and why they were losing business. And because the data was being captured consistently, they could build a dashboard directly off those reasons to spot patterns over time.
This is part of a broader pattern we see across monday.com: the platform’s value compounds when the data behind it can actually be trusted. We’ve written before about what monday CRM’s AI actually does to keep that data current automatically — column validation tackles the same problem from the other direction, making sure the data is right at the moment it’s entered in the first place.
Shauna Riordan, Senior Solutions Consultant at Provident CRM, walks through how to successfully set up column validation.
No. One of the most useful things about column validation is how accessible it is. There’s no enterprise tier requirement and no need for a developer. Anyone who owns a board can go into the settings of a status column and set the rule themselves.
It’s also proving to be one of the more welcomed changes we’ve introduced to clients. Rather than pushback, the usual reaction is enthusiasm once people see how much more they can get out of a board they already use every day.
Q: Can column validation stop someone selecting a particular status?
Yes. A validation rule can restrict who is allowed to set a status to a specific label, such as limiting who can mark a deal as “closed won.”
Q: Can column validation force other fields to be completed?
Yes. A conditional rule can require another column, such as a loss reason, to be filled in before a status change goes through.
Q: Does column validation help with reporting?
Yes. Because the data is captured consistently at the point of change, it can be used to build dashboards and reports directly off that information, rather than relying on manual follow-up.
If your team already has monday.com, there’s a good chance you’re only using a fraction of what it can do. Column validation is a good example: a small configuration change can turn a status column into the source of real business insight.
If you’d like help identifying where these kinds of quick wins are hiding in your own setup, contact us today.
