SharePoint 13 Alerts

Hello,
Somehow we convinced someone to give us access to addons for SharePoint, so now I have Designer!  Do you recommend a particular tutorial for multi-stage workflows, or a place where we might be able to download templates?  If not, would you have any recommendations on how to start stage 1 of the workflow?

We need to have it enter stage 1 upon creation of the item.  It must then send an email to GroupA.  EmployeeA then goes in and reviews it, and manually sends it to stage 2.  Then, we need an email to go to GroupB.  This is a discussion and approval segment, which either passes (and goes to stage 3) or fails (and goes back to stage 1 for reassignment).   There are a couple of stages after that, but it follows a similar pattern.   Any particular recommendations for this scenario? 

Thanks for all the help, I am definitely such a noob