Forecast for invoicing

Revenue Commerce Tools
1

Shouldn’t invoices be the source information for forecasting? I mean, what better proof of a sale is there than an invoice? It is frustrating not to see the forecast goals attainment populated with invoice totals.

2

Hi @PGarcesLamber,
Thank you for reaching out to the HubSpot Community! I’m sorry to hear about your experience regarding this.
I’d like to thank you for sharing your valuable feedback! This means a lot to us.
I have shared it internally to bring more visibility to it.
Also, I’d love to put you in touch with some of our Top Experts: Hi @Jonno_Price, @Petter, @Phil_Vallender and @danmoyle do you have workarounds to share with @PGarcesLamber, please?
And please @PGarcesLamber, let me know if there is anything else I can help with. I’ll be delighted to do so!
Have a great weekend and thanks so much in advance to our amazing Experts and their continued help! :heart:
Best,
Bérangère

3

Dan:

I am truly grateful you taking the time to explain my invoicing concern, I will check your suggestions and hopefully find ways to work it around

4

Happy to help, @PGarcesLamber :blush:

5

Hi @PGarcesLamber, I hope that you are well!
I have checked internally for you and as long as you are marking deals as ‘closed won’, you should see goal attainment reflect closed won deals in the forecast tool.
Also, please know that after I shared your feedback internally, there is no plans for an upcoming feature to accomplish this yet, but your request had been logged by our Team.
Thank you again and have a great day!
Best,
Bérangère

6

Hi @PGarcesLamber.

I understand that invoices could be a strong indicator of sales, in my research and experience the way HubSpot uses Deals as the primary indicator makes a lot of sense.

First, timing in the sales process. From what I’ve seen over the years, Deals are typically closed before invoices are generated, allowing for more forward-looking predictions.

Also, I’m thinking abiout pipeline visibility. Forecasting based on Deals provides insight into potential future revenue, including opportunities still in progress, not just invoiced.

And what about sales process alignment? Deal stages in HubSpot correspond more closely to the sales process, which is what forecasting aims to predict.

But the thing is, there’s no one answer to how businesses “do sales.” You’re not alone in wanting to incorporate invoice data into forecasting. I’ve seen others express similar concerns and have sought ways to integrate invoice information with HubSpot’s forecasting tools.

So here’s what I’ve seen as suggestions.

  • Custom Properties
    • Create custom deal properties to track invoice status and amounts, then use these in your forecasting reports.
  • Integration with Accounting Software or Other Third-Party Tools
    • It’s not the most popular answer, but you may need another tool. You could use integrations like Invoice Stack to sync invoice data from your accounting platform to HubSpot, allowing you to track invoice status within deals.
    • Consider using specialized forecasting tools that can incorporate both deal and invoice data, such as Invoicera, which can generate financial projections based on existing customer invoices.
  • Manual Adjustments
    • Probably my least favorite since we want more automation, not less… but you could manually adjust forecast submissions based on invoice data to provide a more accurate picture.

Hopefully these workaround ideas will help inspire a solution for your specific needs. But I’d defintely add it to an ideas post to see if HubSpot would make it a feature option!

Thanks for the tag @BérangèreL this was a fun one to think about!

7

Dan, coming back to this post and saw I didn’t mark as a solution, how do I do that?

regards

8

thanks Berangere!