Organization when accounts are addresses?

[mjuozokas]

I provide home services and my accounts are physical addresses. The account is always tied to a physical address because if a contact moves, then the history of the services done at that address will not change or be lost. Multiple contacts with different email addresses can be associated with an account (i.e. husband and wife, employees at a business, etc.).

Right now in HubSpot, I am having to use "companies" as a stand-in for the physical address to ensure continuity of the physical address, if that makes sense. It isn't ideal because that company label can get confusing, and it prevents me from using it for actual companies. It also makes revenue attribution tracking an issue.

Has anyone had this challenge and have you found a solution for better organization?

[jolle · Accepted solution]

Hey @mjuozokas, thanks for reaching out! This is a great question.

This sounds like a great use case for custom objects, though that would require an Enterprise subscription (I'm seeing you have Professional). With custom objects, you'd be able to create an object for the residence/building and associate/disassociate contacts and companies as needed. 

Otherwise, I think that using company records like you're doing now is probably the closest you'll be able to get within HubSpot. I don't think this would be perfect, but you could also consider creating a custom ID for each unique address that could be saved in a contact/company property. That ID would be tied to the address and would be assigned to contacts/companies who are active at that address. You'd likely need to keep a log of addresses somewhere, and it likely wouldn't be scalable to build it out as a dropdown property, but it is an option to consider if you want to work within contacts/companies instead of having an entire object dedicated to the physical locations.

Hope this helps at least get you started!!

[mangelet]

@mjuozokas So, you provide services to physical addresses. Currently, you're using the company to reflect the physical address, which can change over time. However, it's unclear how you're tracking the "services" you offer (eg. deals).

In my opinion, a simpler solution would be to use contacts instead of companies. In each contact entry, include the current address.

Remember that previous versions of any updated fields or properties are always available. This way, you'll have a record of individuals who have moved and so on. And yes, I just recommend ensuring that the current address is noted in the contact.

Then for every "service" provided by your business—likely recorded as a deal or ticket—you should note down the current address at that time too. Meaning in every ticket you would add an address to answer: where exactly did this service take place?

Makes sense?

[mjuozokas]

I see what you are saying. Would that work for customers who have multiple addresses though (i.e. the same email would need to be used for say a primary home and a lake cottage)?

Appreciate the help. The more I look into this though, and especially to make the deals function more viable, I think I may need to consider upgrading to Enterprise. 

[mangelet · Accepted solution]

Sure, for clients with more than one address, this would work perfectly.

In this case, what you'd do is add to the contact object - well, one, two or three possible addresses that the client may have. Really as many as you want.

Then each time when you create the service or deal object, in that object put down the exact address where you're sending it.

That's all there is to it.

[jolle · Accepted solution]

Hey @mjuozokas, thanks for reaching out! This is a great question.

This sounds like a great use case for custom objects, though that would require an Enterprise subscription (I'm seeing you have Professional). With custom objects, you'd be able to create an object for the residence/building and associate/disassociate contacts and companies as needed. 

Otherwise, I think that using company records like you're doing now is probably the closest you'll be able to get within HubSpot. I don't think this would be perfect, but you could also consider creating a custom ID for each unique address that could be saved in a contact/company property. That ID would be tied to the address and would be assigned to contacts/companies who are active at that address. You'd likely need to keep a log of addresses somewhere, and it likely wouldn't be scalable to build it out as a dropdown property, but it is an option to consider if you want to work within contacts/companies instead of having an entire object dedicated to the physical locations.

Hope this helps at least get you started!!

[mjuozokas]

The more I look into this, I may need to consider upgrading to Enterprise. With Enterprise in relation to deals and products, does that then allow more custom pricing models?

All my pricing is based on the account's square footage and can also be affected by prepay discounts. Our products, which are our services, are broken down by packages (groups of programs and treatments), programs (groups of reoccurring treatments), and individual treatments.