Creating and processing subfiles

RJCampbell · ‎jul 3, 2020

Hi. My name is Bob Campbell, and my company is using the free version of HubSpot. While I have years of CRM experience, I am new to Hubspot. My task is to migrate from another CRM and I have a question, The old software-the one we are migrating from-has 10 columns that store rates (dollar values) for previous years, one value to a year. Obvioulsy, because of the limited number of columns, any years over 10 are lost. My desire is to create a subfile containing unlimited number of records for a company, and have those values availble on the company view as a drill-down. Is that possilbe in Hubspot, and were do I go to see how it can be done?

DAnaGuiloff · ‎jul 7, 2020

Hey @RJCampbell,

Looks like you already have some great technical advice on how to setup the properties themselves.

Have you considered using Deals and just backloading deals in a closed stage for each year?

If Deals don't make sense for what you are trying to do...

Depending on whether you need to use the property to segment your view or just for historical purposes you can make use of a multi-line text property to store some info.

If you need it to segment, how you structure your data is going to be super important. You can use the "if contains" to include a company in a view, for example.

So if your data looked like this:

Yearly Store Rates Historical:

2010 $1000; 2011 $1100; 2012 $1200; 2013 $1300; 2014 $1400; 2015 $1500; 2016 $1600; 2017 $1700; 2018 $1800; 2019 $1900; 2020 $2000...

You could simply update it each year with the new value, then when creating your view, use the filter "contains any of" and the year to find companies that have this information in your Yearly Store Rates Historical property field.

In the link that @AdamLPW shared there is a "Bonus Fun Fact" that explains a lesser-known superpower that text properties have. Makes searching MUCH easier.

If you purely need a historical record, you could make use of the file attachments on the company record and just update it yearly. If you got creative with the naming convention with the file, you could even use it to store those values. "2010 1000 - Company A", though these won't be searchable, so it would be just for when viewing the record itself.

I would say whatever you do, consider it as a stop-gap measure until you invest more into your data management and HubSpot Portal. Once you see how powerful it is to support your business, you'll be able to expand how you manage your data and be able to make more use of the information you store on each object (Contact, Company & Deal).

Obviously there are many ways you could achieve what you are looking to do (likely some I didn't list as well). Hope something above helps you figure out how you'd best like to make use of your system.

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DAnaGuiloff · ‎jul 7, 2020

Hey @RJCampbell,

Looks like you already have some great technical advice on how to setup the properties themselves.

Have you considered using Deals and just backloading deals in a closed stage for each year?

If Deals don't make sense for what you are trying to do...

Depending on whether you need to use the property to segment your view or just for historical purposes you can make use of a multi-line text property to store some info.

If you need it to segment, how you structure your data is going to be super important. You can use the "if contains" to include a company in a view, for example.

So if your data looked like this:

Yearly Store Rates Historical:

2010 $1000; 2011 $1100; 2012 $1200; 2013 $1300; 2014 $1400; 2015 $1500; 2016 $1600; 2017 $1700; 2018 $1800; 2019 $1900; 2020 $2000...

You could simply update it each year with the new value, then when creating your view, use the filter "contains any of" and the year to find companies that have this information in your Yearly Store Rates Historical property field.

In the link that @AdamLPW shared there is a "Bonus Fun Fact" that explains a lesser-known superpower that text properties have. Makes searching MUCH easier.

If you purely need a historical record, you could make use of the file attachments on the company record and just update it yearly. If you got creative with the naming convention with the file, you could even use it to store those values. "2010 1000 - Company A", though these won't be searchable, so it would be just for when viewing the record itself.

I would say whatever you do, consider it as a stop-gap measure until you invest more into your data management and HubSpot Portal. Once you see how powerful it is to support your business, you'll be able to expand how you manage your data and be able to make more use of the information you store on each object (Contact, Company & Deal).

Obviously there are many ways you could achieve what you are looking to do (likely some I didn't list as well). Hope something above helps you figure out how you'd best like to make use of your system.

AdamLPW · ‎jul 7, 2020

Hi @RJCampbell,

You may be able to achieve some of what you're looking for using Custom Properties. This blog explains more.

You could set up e.g. "2019 Rate", "2018 Rate", etc., as custom properties with a dollar value, then choose to show these custom properties in the About section.

It's worth noting that there are limitations to the number of custom properties you can set up in HubSpot free... however once you've set this up you can import from a spreadsheet containing historic data and map the columns to your custom properties.

Does that sound like it might work for you?

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