HubSpot Ideas

DBowers3

Associate one contact to multiple companies

Think business consultant or sales broker - We'd like to be able to have one contact associated with multiple companies in Sales CRM.

 

HubSpot Updates
Delivered
June 09, 2023 06:48 AM

Hi everyone,

I’m Maggie the Product Manager for Associations at HubSpot. I'm very pleased to announce that this feature was delivered to all customers back in April of 2022. Specifically, you can associate a contact, deal or ticket to multiple companies. Apologies for the delay in updating you all here. If you're interested in learning more, this Knowledge Base article about associating records is a great place to start. 

 

Thank you for all of your guidance and submissions about this need.

 

Maggie

In Beta
October 04, 2021 12:08 PM

Hey all, happy to report this functionality is now in public beta. To review the updates and see how to opt your portal in to the updates, please head to this post. This will also be covered from the big stage at INBOUND, so there's even more to come here.

 

This has been a long time coming, I so appreciate all of you sharing your use cases and upvotes. We review them all, and it has a big impact on prioritization. Looking forward to your feedback on this release.

Jeff

In Beta
April 28, 2021 03:52 PM

Hello all, I apologize for the radio silence on our end. Excited to share the new multiple companies on a contact functionality is now available in private beta.

 

If you're interested in what's included (and of course you are!), watch this quick overview video created by HubSpot Academy Professor Kyle Jepsen.

 

While in limited private beta, you will need to ask your HubSpot contact (CSM, Technical Specialist, Onboarding Specialist, etc.) to request access on your behalf. From there, we'll review the request and ungate your portal to the beta. In some cases, we may not be able to ungate you - we'll follow up if that's the case.

 

We plan to go public with this functionality later this year, so if you don't get access in the beta, this will still be coming your way soon.

 

Can't wait to hear your feedback!

jeff

March 15, 2021 11:55 AM

Hi all, really appreciate the enthusiasm around this functionality. We can't wait to deliver it.

 

We are still actively working on supporting multiple companies on a contact - not just within the CRM, but across all parts of the HubSpot platform. Once we are in public beta, I will send out opt-in information.

 

Thanks for your patience - this stuff may seem straightforward, but being good stewards of your data comes first for us. Nothing is worth more than your trust. Updates to come as soon as possible.

In Planning
October 14, 2020 01:27 PM

As mentioned in the previous update, we are now in development of updates to the CRM that will make adding multiple companies to a single contact possible. Not making timeline promises in this forum, but as soon as the beta is available, I'll notify this thread.

 

To those wondering about using Custom Objects for associations - I would recommend against it. Custom Objects are great for the "nouns" of your business (think inventory, shipments, appointments, real estate) but not as good for describing the relationships between things.

 

We're focused on getting this updated functionality to you soon. Stay tuned for updates.

September 08, 2020 12:46 PM

Hi there! I'm Jeff, from the HubSpot CRM team.

 

Thanks so much to everyone who has been a part of the "related companies" beta. You've given a lot of excellent feedback on how this will need to work in order to be rolled out to all.

 

At this time, we're closing the "related companies" beta so we can prep for an improved version of this functionality, built on a new infrastructure, which is coming in the near-term future.

Because this beta and the "related companies" beta are built differently, enrolling more portals in the "related companies" beta now will make it more difficult to migrate eventually. I appreciate you keeping the comments about your use case for functionality like this coming, and we'll be back soon with more updates and timelines.

 

For anyone already on the "related companies" beta: no action needed at this time, and you aren't losing any functionality right now. We'll be in touch with migration plans when they are ready.

January 21, 2020 07:33 AM

Hi all,

 

We're currently looking into why we're displaying 7 contacts or 7 companies! We hope to have this fixed soon.

 

The team has been working on deciding how to move forward with the Related Companies feature. While there are no immediate plans for this implementation, we hope in the future to allow multiple relationships between objects (ie a contact can be associated with 5 companies and these would all display on the contact record via the normal "Companies" card), and we'd also like to support custom roles for all relationship types.

 

Thank you to those who have been making use of this beta and for the feedback you've provided! We will keep you posted as developments occur.

October 22, 2019 08:22 AM

Thanks @krispag! That's exactly right. From the contact record, you would just need to check the associations of each call to see which office the call is associated with.

October 21, 2019 12:18 PM

Hi @gelflex-cc , I haven't heard much feedback about this (others, feel free to chime in!), but the feature works using a set of seven defined roles (advisor, board member, contractor, manager, owner, partner, reseller). Via the "Related companies" card that displays on the contact record, you can choose to select a company that the contact is related to and select their role in that company out of the seven listed above. The feature still allows you to keep your businesses separate, but just gives you an easy way to tie a contact with a second company based on their role there. 

October 18, 2019 07:32 AM

Hi @aminco  - there isn't any communication sent once you're ungated as I'm just manually going through all of the requests each day. You can expect to be ungated around 4PM EDT on the business day that you submitted the form, so your portal is all set. You'll see the additional "Related Companies" card on all contact records in your portal.

April 26, 2019 07:17 AM

Hi @kevinelite , the limit is 10,000 related companies.

In Beta
April 11, 2019 12:37 PM

Hi all, thank you for your interest in this feature! Please fill out this form if you would like to be ungated for our "Related Companies" beta feature.

 

This feature will add a secondary card to your Contact records called "Related Companies". From this card, you can add a related company and choose the contact's role at that company from a pre-set list: Board Member, Contractor, Manager, Owner, Partner, Reseller. These roles cannot be modified at this time.

 

Please note that this is the extent of the feature at this time - contacts can not be segmented based on their related companies, and the related company and role cannot be imported at this time.

379 Replies
jsg121
HubSpot Product Team

Hi @aminco  - there isn't any communication sent once you're ungated as I'm just manually going through all of the requests each day. You can expect to be ungated around 4PM EDT on the business day that you submitted the form, so your portal is all set. You'll see the additional "Related Companies" card on all contact records in your portal.

gelflex-cc
Key Advisor

@jsg121  I would love to know exactly how this is working. Any feedback?

 

I am currently using an alternate method for this. Each person has an id number at the end of their last name that corresponds to the business. I am likely to stick with this as each business is separate and I like to know which one I have contacted.

jsg121
HubSpot Product Team

Hi @gelflex-cc , I haven't heard much feedback about this (others, feel free to chime in!), but the feature works using a set of seven defined roles (advisor, board member, contractor, manager, owner, partner, reseller). Via the "Related companies" card that displays on the contact record, you can choose to select a company that the contact is related to and select their role in that company out of the seven listed above. The feature still allows you to keep your businesses separate, but just gives you an easy way to tie a contact with a second company based on their role there. 

gelflex-cc
Key Advisor

@jsg121  Thanks for responding. So let's see if I get this. My target is doctors.

 

Dr Chris is the owner and works between the offices.

office A

office B

office C

office D

Office E

 

The title for each office is owner.

 

When I call office A and reach the receptionist, I leave a call record under dr. chris/office a.  next i go to office b and leave a call record under dr chris/officeb.

 

Now its a week later and I go to Dr Chris contact record. How do I distinguish on the contact record which offices were contacted when?

 

Thanks.

 

 

krispag
Top Contributor

Ideally, you have a company record created for each physical location, and a contact record related to each of the respective companies. For every activity, you can choose which company(s), contact(s), and deal(s) to relate an activity to. In the doctor example, you would have company records for Office A, Office B, Office C, Office D, and Office E, and the doctor is related to each of those company records. When you log the call activity, either before or after saving the activity, you would choose the record association. Then, the activity would be visible from all the record timelines the activity is related to.

jsg121
HubSpot Product Team

Thanks @krispag! That's exactly right. From the contact record, you would just need to check the associations of each call to see which office the call is associated with.

Jedi
Member

Add these roles:

Client

Customer

Vendor

 

and allow us to add and remove roles

krispag
Top Contributor

Once again, this property should be FULLY customizable. 

Vartika
Member

In our business use case , the multiple companies don't relate to each other so is there a way we can associate multiple unrelated companies to a contact in hubspot ? Also please suggest the APIs required for the same as I wasn't able to see it in any documentation available.

khamer
Participant | Partner

@jsg121 I just filled out the form.  Looking forward to testing and getting you feedback.

 

Benoit88
Member

This is crucial for us. We deal with clinics that have multiple contacts within the same clinic (company) and we sell to them directly or by dropship througt one of our distributors. A lot of time I need to be able to associate some of my contacts to their own company (clinic) and also associate them to the distributors they can also get our products from.

Need this ASAP.

 

Thank you,

Benoit

jabbar1959
Member

+1 for this!! we really need this in our current company

 

thanks!

TarynR
Participant | Elite Partner

@jsg121 We are working with a client that has this beta active and would love to understand what additional functionality is on the roadmap for this feature and also if there is somewhere specific we can give our feeedback on the feature.

 

We are specifically wanting the ability to import contacts with multiple associated companies and also have the ability to segment contacts based on the related companies they are asscoiated with. It would also be good to have related company info exposed in the workflow tools. These things are crucial for this feature to be a workign solution for this client.

 

Thanks

Taryn

felix-provi
Member

This would be great! We could use the company as our partners with our clients acquire services. But every user can uses more than one partner.

swhit
Member

This is so important for us - any time frame yet?

Thomas_BBike
Member

Hi  @jsg121 , with regard to the beta "Associate one contact to multiple companies": Is the option planned to modify the pre-set seven roles (advisor, board member, contractor, manager, owner, partner, reseller) individually? 

 

Basically, the option as realized in the beta is already great. If I could modify the roles an name them as we use them in our business, I could use it even better. 

 

Hope to get some positive feedback on this from you!

Best, Thomas

krispag
Top Contributor

@Thomas_BBike I have been asking for this. The contact related role property should be customizable. I also do not understand the logic of a limit to a single directly related contact and multiple indirectly related contacts. Why not just have contacts period, all in one card? Here are all the contacts related to X company record. It is impossible to explain to users that they started with a limit of one contact relationship to one company, and now we have beta, and instead of retooling the database, it was easier to add a new table. It is less than efficient design.

GChris
Participant

How's everyone that needs this feature get around this at the moment? Is there another solution that works?

khamer
Participant | Partner

@GChris I have it in m instances.  Have you requested it get turned on for your hubs

ErikGron
Participant

Hi all,

 

Is it possible to change the names of the 7 defined roles for related companies? 

 

Thanks

Erik