Hi everyone! We’re an MSP currently evaluating HubSpot Commerce Hub Enterprise as part of a CPQ tool selection process, and I’d love to hear from anyone who’s tackled a requirement we’re struggling with.
A core need for us is that both sales reps and approvers can see gross profit margin on a quote before it’s sent to the customer. Our approval workflow is margin-driven, so this information needs to be visible internally at the quoting stage — not just in reporting after the fact.
We’ve looked at a couple of avenues but keep hitting walls:
Calculated/rollup properties on the deal — these would work great for approvals, but line items aren’t committed to the deal until the quote is published (i.e. sent to the customer), so the margin data simply isn’t there at the point it’s needed.
Custom calculations within the quote template — these are possible, but anything added to the template is visible to the customer, which isn’t appropriate for internal margin and cost data.
Margin visibility at the quoting stage is pretty standard in the CPQ tools we’ve used previously in the MSP space, so I’m wondering whether I’m missing a setup option, or whether others have found a creative workaround.
I should caveat that I’m relatively new to Commerce Hub specifically, so entirely possible there’s something I haven’t discovered yet — any pointers gratefully received!
Using the advanced approval workflow, you should be able to make this happen. If you can at least get the property (margin) to populate on the deal or the quote, you can include that property on the approval note that is sent when the quote is ready for approval.
In the above screenshot, it’s pulling margin from the deal level, but you could pull from the quote just as well. Line items are also an option, but if you have more than one line item per quote it wouldn’t work as you need it to. You will only have this option with the advanced workflow, not the basic setting in the quote approval settings area.
Thanks Josh, that’s really helpful — the rollup approach will definitely get overall margin in front of our approvers, so that’s a great step forward!
We do have one remaining challenge though. Our approval workflow is also triggered at the line item level, specifically when an individual product falls below its minimum margin threshold. So we need approvers to be able to see GP per line item, not just the blended quote total.
I think this highlights a broader gap — the lack of any concept of “internal only” fields within the quote editor. Custom properties are genuinely powerful, but it seems like an obvious and much-needed feature to be able to flag certain fields as visible to internal users only, without them surfacing on the customer-facing quote. Hopefully something the product team picks up!
Hi @MarkCP and thanks so much for your valuable feedback, we really appreciate it!
For new feature suggestions, I’d recommend first to search and check if this idea is already present on our Ideas Forum here . If you find a similar idea, give it an upvote and share your unique use case in the comments.
If the idea doesn’t exist already, please consider posting and creating a new Idea on our Ideas Forum here .
Sharing here the Idea that @MarkCP created (thank you!) “Cost-Plus Pricing on Quotes — Calculate Unit Price from Cost + Margin %” so that others can add their upvotes and specific use cases.
Thank you for being part of the discussion!
Bérangère
Hi @MarkCP. Have you looked into Quotivity (my company)? We’re built right into HubSpot and offer advanced approvals, sophisticated quote rules, and support for complex pricing. Margin visibility and incorporating that into your process is built into the product. One recent blog post highlights that: The New Quote Review Screen: Faster Approvals, Better Decisions
If you’re still evaluating, come check us out. We’d love to show you a demo.
