I would appreciate some help to clarify how to properly “tag” deals for the new (Beta) “Reports>Analytics suites > Forecast & revenue > Revenue” feature.
I followed the YouTube video “Track Your Recurring Revenue With HubSpot - Including How To Set This Up” created by “HubSpot Excellence”…and triple-checked my work; however, I am not getting the same results for “linking” multiple ARR deals.
According to HubSpot documentation here, deals will remain in the revenue report until both the Recurring Revenue Inactive Date and Recurring Revenue Inactive Reason properties are marked as churned.
Regarding my situation, I have a specific customer with three (sequential) annual 1-year Term deals.
Initial NEW BUSINESS order for 2022-2023 (which was RENEWED to #2 below)
Second-year RENEWAL order (of the Initial Order) for 2023-2024 (which was eventually DOWNGRADED to #3 below)
DOWNGRADE Order of the above (second-year) RENEWAL order for 2024-2025 (which finally CHURNED at the “Recurring Revenue Inactive Date”
So…even though the final deal (#3) churned, the ARR Analytic “Reports>Analytics suites > Forecast & revenue > Revenue” is still showing the Initial NEW BUSINESS Order for 2022-2023. When I would expect NO deals to show since the final active deal CHURNED for this customer.
The documentation states:
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"If the deal leads to a churn:
In the Recurring revenue inactive date property, select the date.
In the Recurring revenue inactive reason property, select Churned.
Click Save.
Please note: to exclude such churned deals from the Existing recurring revenue column in the analytics, you need to enter values in both their Recurring revenue inactive date property and the Recurring revenue inactive reason property."
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Does this mean I need to go back and mark ALL THREE prior-year DEALS as churned? Or should it only be for DEAL #3? Which was the ONLY deal that churned?
If so, it seems odd that if I have a “recurring” ARR customer, who renews, downgrades, upgrades annually over many years, and then eventually churns…That I would need to go back in time to change ALL DEALS for ALL TIME to “churned”?
Seems like I would ONLY need to mark the LAST DEAL (#3 above) in the sequence to “churned”.
I haven’t tested the churn option yet, but I am having some issues too and have reached out to support in the hope of getting connected with the product manager for this BETA. As of right now, I like the thinking behind the feature but:
it doesn’t take into account that a deal can be a renewal and a downgrade/up-sell at the same time. In my test I have a renewal that also has a price increase, for reasons I can not fathom only the old price shows in the reporting
it only reports/show MRR and not ARR - ideally we should be able to have that as a filter option
to me all revenue from 12month deal should show as net-new revenue, not just the first month
the reports in the revenue reporting section can’t be saved or added to dashboard, which makes it immmediately a lot less relevant / practical
You’re thinking about this the right way, and I agree—what you’re describing does feel counterintuitive at first.
In the Forecast & revenue > Revenue report, it’s important to understand how the system identifies “active” recurring revenue. It looks at each deal’s Recurring revenue inactive date and Recurring revenue inactive reason to determine if that revenue stream should still be counted.
To your question:
Does this mean I need to go back and mark ALL THREE prior-year DEALS as churned?
No—you should only need to mark the most recent deal (Deal #3) as churned, assuming it’s the last active revenue source for that customer. That deal essentially tells HubSpot: “This customer has stopped paying us.” Once Deal #3 has both the inactive date and the inactive reason = churned, the system should treat the entire customer as churned moving forward.
Note:
If your initial or earlier deals are still being counted in the report, it might be because:
They don’t have inactive dates/reasons set (so HubSpot assumes they’re still “live”)
Or they’re configured in a way that HubSpot sees them as independent, ongoing revenue streams
So while you shouldn’t have to mark all deals as churned, you might need to go back and set inactive dates for earlier deals that were replaced by renewals. That way, the Revenue Analytics report understands the full lifecycle.
For example:
Deal 1 (2022–2023): Set the Recurring revenue inactive date = 1/1/23, and reason = “Renewed”
Deal #2 (2023–2024): Set inactive date = 1/1/24, reason = “Renewed”
Deal #3 (2024–2025): Set inactive date = 1/1/25, reason = “Churned”
That tells HubSpot when each revenue stream ended.
Some of this can and probably should be automated based on the follow-up deals and whether or not they actually renew, which you could do with workflows vs requiring the team to update.