Cloning a Deal

[cfleishman]

Need to be able to clone an individual deal. This is helpful for recurring revenue organizations and building MRR. Please! 

Update from @JoeMayall: Due to a technical error on HubSpot’s end, this thread has an inflated upvote count. As of June 10th, 2020, we estimate this thread has around 500 upvotes. I'll continue to update this count as the thread receives upvotes."

[cfleishman]

Hey HubSpot Community,
Here to share an un-fun update. We explored Cloning Deals in the second half of 2023 but are not ready to execute yet. Projects like this seem easy on the surface, but both technical and customer experience implications really matter. We're committed to providing the best experience, and sometimes that means taking extra time to do so. I know this is still a pressing need, and plan to make strides this year. In the meantime, as folks on this thread have mentioned, either using a workflow or an app like Deal Duplicator are your, admittedly not perfect, best options.
-Maggie

[cfleishman]

Survey permissions have been updated! Please try here and let me know if you're encountering issues: https://forms.gle/7RRi8jUMTnLqP9M38. 

[cfleishman]

Hi HubSpot Community great news! Our product team is prioritizing this feature and actively working on a solution. To help us better understand what exactly you'd like to clone (e.g. properties, associations, activities), could you please take this short survey? Thank you!

*Update: Survey link has been fixed, please let me know if you're still not able to access it.

[cfleishman]

Hello HubSpot Community, 

Thank you all for your incredible patience. We reckon an update is warranted. 

Unfortunately, this idea remains unplanned. The team is currently planning some really valuable, high-impact features (e.g. team goals, deal overlays, color coding the deals board) that fall higher on the priority list. We can't take this on. But we understand the need and see the value in a cloning feature. 

Fortunately, there's a workaround. You can use workflows to create a new deal and copy data from the existing deal. 

Thank you for making HubSpot CRM a better tool. 

[cfleishman]

Hello HubSpot community,

Thank you for your continued feedack here. I wanted to provide an update on the status of this idea. Cloning a deal is absolutely on a list of things we’d like to do. However, the list is long and time and resources are limited, so building this functionality is ultimately a question of priorities, and this is a lower priority compared to some of the other things we’re working on right now. We're continuing to keep an eye on the use cases provided in this idea and are always re-evaluating our top priorities, I'll be sure to update this thread when this is a more near-term priority. 

- Dylan 

[cfleishman]

Hello HubSpot community, 

Thank you for your continued input on this idea. As I mentioned in a previous post, saving reps time is squarely in the realm of things we are thinking about on the HubSpot Product Team. 

To help us continue to deliver a product that helps your business grow better, could you answer this 3 question (only 1 required) survey about your detailed needs for cloning deals? 

Thank you in advance! 

[cfleishman]

Hello HubSpot community,  

Thank you all for your continued input on this idea. I'm a product manager on our CRM team and wanted to provide you all with a status update here as the status of this issue is a bit complicated.

For starters, @JoeMayall recently made an update to the core idea. There was a technical error on our end that increased the number of votes on this issue by about 300.

When it comes to cloning deals, we hear you! We've been steadily looking into all of the context provided here and its clear there is product pain in a few areas.

Recurring revenue - the ability for HubSpot to support a recurring revenue model can be painful due to the fact that deals need to be re-created month over month, or quarter over quarter.

Saving reps time - sometimes deals are created that are very similar to a previous deal and the rep creating the deal wants to use the same data. Re-typing this data is inefficient.

Regarding recurring revenue: We're currently working on several aspects of the product that will help recurring revenue models. This includes invoices, reports, and even forecasting.

Regarding saving reps time: Our entire product is shaped to help you grow better. When reps are doing duplicative tasks, this slows you down and hurts growth. However, different businesses have different needs around "cloning". Some want just the deal name, others want the same deal amount, others want to copy the entire contents of the deal (including activities and emails), some want the deal to be included in the same reports as other deals. Since there are such vast requirements amongst our user base - this would inherently create the need for "settings" to allow admins to choose exactly how a deal cloning would work.

Both of these things are goals that we have our eye on. The problems that are expressed here are likely to be solved in many ways. There is not a "clone deal" silver bullet. We plan on working continually towards solving all of this pain, every day. However, at this time we do not have immediate plans to build or launch a "clone deal" button and have our energy focused on solving other problems that help our customers grow better.

[PChaveriat]

Hi all, agree HubSpot should build this vary basic function.

Meanwhile we have started using Clone Attack plugin and it works very well
so far.

[Levi]

Upvoted! 

[pajvitamin]

CLI    SHARES ACROSS ALL SOCAL MEDIA WITH ALL PLANT 

[MBarnes]

The fact that notes cannot be copied over from deals has caused a lot of internal issues and is a large concern with our leadership. We include important deal-specific attachments in our notes since the attachment feature pulls in attachments across multiple deals. This needs to be fixed asap. A deal should be able to be fully cloned; it isn't very beneficial if you can't pull over all your data from a deal to one pipeline to another. A lot of HubSpot's development seems to be built around a standard use case rather than considering different ways companies would be utilizing the CRM in its entirety. Not all companies have a simple sales cycle. 

[TSCWC]

I totally agree with this feature. Any CRM tool that respects itself and wanted to be counted into the playfield of the big guys needs to have this feature. It exists any serious software tool for invoicing or CRM purposes.

[RoSabandar]

Cloning of copying a deal is necessary for my customers (annually recurring revenue). It now takes me ages 😉 to create mostly the same deals every year. This should of course be possible with 1 mouseclick and to me it's a mystery why this functionality doesn't exist yet?!

[SusanH]

Seems the last time we heard from Dylan (product manager)  on this topic was March of 2021.   Dylan if you're listening, can you please provide a good reason why this simple CRM basic functionality cannot be done in Hubspot.  All that is being asked is to have the ability to 'clone' a deal with the current fields which we can easily update after cloning.  Why is it that we have to use an external app to provide this feature?   AGAIN, THIS IS A SIMPLE ASK AND IS BASIC CRM FUNCTIONALITY.  COME ON PEOPLE .....

[Elsystems]

Given the necessary nature of duplicating deals and the lack of support from Hubspot - I have been following this thread for years after upvoting.  It strikes me that Hubspot may have a deal with the third-party providers NOT to add this ability.  I don't know how else to explain that this feature has not been implemented after so many upvotes - whether it is 1,400 or 500 as Hubspot claims. 

This has been one of the most requested feature additions for four years.

[TSCWC]

Dear ElSystems, Can you explain how this feature is helping third party providesr? What benefit would they have?

[SusanH]

To Elsysems:  Very good thought.  They could be getting a cut of that revenue... who knows, but does offer an explanation since Hubspot has not given us one in 5 years on this topic.

[Elsystems]

The other companies providing the solution for duplicating deals are making money - $10 or $20 per month per user. Not sure if Hubspot is getting a cut of that income but I cannot imagine another reason that Hubspot would ignore this or place this feature as such a low priority.

[TSCWC]

to me it is a reason to consider leaving hubspot? Maybe this can help

[SusanH]

Well, it seems that Hubspot doesn't care if they lose customers ... obvious from their lack of attention on this issue.   They mentioned 'other priorities' over a year ago .. but from what I can see from any CRM updates/changes ... there has been NOTHING that really served any value on efficiencies. 

[tabb]

Agree – for about the 1,00th time……

[SPotgieter]

https://twitter.com/irlsimon/status/1478739513237250054?s=20

taking it to social media...

[aalthaus_revriv]

As a "third-party provider," I can very much assure you that we do not have any kind of deal with HubSpot nor do we have any information about their plans regarding this feature. We simply saw a need and created a simple widget to address it. We charge a small fee to try to cover our costs (which we haven't). 

[SusanH]

And I thank you ... as I've been using your widget for years now! 

[Daxchemist]

Similar to @aalthaus_revriv , our duplicating app Clone Attack is in no way related to HubSpot. We simply charge a fee for the development, maintenance, and support of the app. Our goal is to fill in the gaps that HubSpot has, duplicating items being one of them. 

Our dupilcation via workflow support comes out next week, and hopefully that will round out the needs of the community!

[SPotgieter]

Bravo to the app makers for stating the above...

It kind of makes things worse, as there is now not even a commercial "excuse" for HS to have not addressed this.

I will however look into the abovementioned solutions!

[Elsystems]

We use Rev River, they are very nice, and it works well.  I hear very good things about Clone Attack also.  I don't want them to necessarily lose business but it is mystifying that such a basic function is missing in Hubspot and is ignored by the folks making product development decisions. 

The Hubspot reps can duplicate deals but from what I understand they have special coding or modules that allows them to copy the deals.