Hi everyone,
I’m looking for some advice on the best way to manage recurring retainer clients in HubSpot.
Currently, we manually create a new deal every month for each retainer client. Each month we add the relevant line items and amounts, as these details then flow through our integration with ClickUp.
What we would like to achieve is:
- Create one deal that can continue recurring indefinitely until we manually turn it off.
- Automatically generate the monthly deal activity so we can maintain our ClickUp integration.
- Have visibility of expected revenue in future months.
- Avoid manually recreating deals and adding line items every month.
I know HubSpot allows us to store a recurring amount and potentially use workflows to create/reopen deals, but we are running into a few challenges:
- The recurring deal workflow does not appear to carry over the line items.
- If we create a new deal from the recurring setup, we may end up with duplicate deals (the original recurring deal plus the monthly deals created by the workflow).
Has anyone found a good way to handle recurring retainers while keeping line items, revenue forecasting, and integrations working correctly?
Would love to hear how others are managing this setup.
Hi @NatDinsdale,
If the the main challenge is carrying over line items, you could look at LineNer: HubSpot Marketplace - I have yet to test it but it may solve your issue.
For your second challenge, if you work with association labels (main deal / recurring deal, for example), you can apply these during deal creation via workflow and easily distinguish them. Create and use association labels - besides of course simply using a custom property to flag a deal as main / recurring.
Depending on which subscription level you’re on, you might want to look at HubSpot’s default recurring revenue tracking: Track recurring revenue in HubSpot
Below Sales and Service Hub Enterprise, the best exact approach depends on the existing setup and detailed requirements. There is however still no setup that feels entirely clean, in my opinion. It’s not one of HubSpot’s strengths.
Best regards!
Hi @NatDinsdale, I hope that you are well and thanks for sharing these details with the HubSpot Community!
To add to what Karsten shared (thank you!), in this context you could keep one main retainer deal for the client and use recurring revenue properties for forecasting, instead of creating a brand new deal every month, as @Emmytech mentioned also (thank you!). That gives you better visibility into expected future revenue without relying on duplicate deals.
The tricky part here is line items: Line items are tied to the individual record, so recurring deal creation/workflows generally don’t behave like a reusable monthly retainer template, as you have seen.
So if your ClickUp integration needs a monthly object/event, you could treat that as a separate operational workflow:
- One master retainer deal for forecasting and relationship tracking
- Standardized products in the product library
- A workflow or custom integration that creates the monthly downstream record only for fulfillment/integration purposes
I’d love to have additional perspectives: Hi @danmoyle and @jforte can you think of othr ways to achieve this to help @NatDinsdale, please?
Thanks so much and have a lovely weekend!
Bérangère
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Hi @NatDinsdale. Solid advice from @karstenkoehler, @Emmytech, and @Berangere so far.
In addition to the scenario they’ve painted, I’m wondering if other HubSpot objects might also help. If you have the primary Deal record as the source of truth for recurring revenue, could that spin off either a Services record, or maybe Project? These could move through stages just like Deals, and trigger workflows. It doesn’t measure revenue in the same place as Deals, but you could add revenue properties. That way forecasting is done in Deals, and other tracking in those objects where progress can also be tracked.
No clear step-by-step plan here, just a thought to use other objects. You may need to brainstorm with someone on this to formulate a clearer path. But hopefully it gets some thoughts sparked.