Control timeline activity associations to associated objects (contacts/ companies/ tickets/ deal

[catan]

Currently, according to this KB article, there are certain set rules for activity associations: 

• Generally, activities logged on a contact record will be automatically associated to the record's associated company and the associated five most recent open deals. 
• Generally, activities logged on a company record will be automatically associated to the record's associated five most recent open deals.
• Generally, activities logged on a deal record will be automatically associated to the record's associated company.
• Generally, activities logged on a ticket record will be automatically associated to the record's associated company.

There are a few exceptions to the above. For example, an exception is that emails sent and calls made from any object record will also be associated to the relevant contacts that were being emailed or called.

These rules are not very intuitive for many users. For example, see this thread https://community.hubspot.com/t5/CRM/Associating-contact-activity-to-specific-deals/m-p/308086#M1171...

It would be awesome if we could have a toggle that allows users to be able to toggle automatic association of all activities for the associated contact/ company, or specific associated deals/ tickets.

[Hildegaard]

I don't understand why the configuration you have in "Email Log and Track Settings" doesn't apply to the who platform. For now it is only the add-on you have installed in the email client.

[Welho]

Same problem here... The assumption of 5 associated objects makes no sense at all.

We have a partner sales team where just one single partner can have 100+ contacts and 50+ open deals... When a sales rep creates a meeting with a number of partner representatives it randomly creates deal associations to whatever happens to be the last 5 open deals without any way for us to control it. This creates a lot of work for our sales reps to clean up the mess afterwards.
If nothing else, then decreasing the automated association to only the last open deal would be a whole lot more rational solution than 5 latest open deals.

Hubspot team, please fix this ASAP!

[TMyers9]

This a great idea and something a number of users have been asking for. Unfortunately, Hubspot either can't or won't make the change.

[JMoraes6]

Testing the current beta it seems like it is only available for natively created activities. It would be perfect if we could automate associations for activities logged via API as well, such as notes or observations

[ADam80]

It would be great to have an addition to the current custom settings: Lead object associations.
Especially, when logging an activity on a Lead, right now it is necessary to manually associate the company to the activity. It will save multiple clicks when the activity is automatically associated to the companies that are associated to the Lead.

[AGran]

Finally! It is configurable. No one updated that thread, but I can tweak it here:
https://knowledge.hubspot.com/object-settings/configure-automatic-activity-associations

[GEiselt1]

Bumping up this idea. While it's great timeline activity is updated when activity is logged in HubSpot, this update misses out on the most-often used channels for us: emails logged from Outlook and meetings logged via meeting links. Please update so that automatic association settings are applied to these channels as well!

[MKnoedgen]

5 years later and still this hasn't been solved. I have a whole team of people complaining about this. It can't be that we're the only ones? 🙂

[AGran]

You can now configure the behaviour somewhere in the settings. Hubspot
finally implemented that, but didn't bother to inform here.

[MortenU]

Not being able to handle and control default associations is highly problematic. The core functionality of a CRM system - providing a clear overview - is compromised. Associating contacts across five deals, or even just the last open deal, makes no sense at all. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this severely limits HubSpot's usability as a CRM.

Association clutter is the exact opposite of what a sales team needs.

From my side, my recommendation to our admins and management is to reconsider the overall use of HubSpot. As things stand, I will have to revert to my previous tool, Podio, for CRM usage, which would disrupt the company's roadmap and strategy—simply because HubSpot's current functionality prevents me from maintaining a clear and structured overview of communications and deals.

[TMyers9]

Agreed. While I like Hubspot in general, the associations nightmare negates any of the positives. Had this been known prior to implementing, we probably would've reconsidered our direction.

[RebeccaMudler]

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/object-settings/configure-automatic-activity-associations - this was posted back in Nov 2024 on this thread. You can now manage your associations moving forward but would need to cleanup historical associations.

[NDeArmas]

+1! 

[PaalFrei]

When a company is involved in multiple deals with different contacts, HubSpot currently auto-associates activities (like meetings) with all deals linked to the associated company. This leads to incorrect activity logging across unrelated deals.

Use Case:

We work with “The Company,” which has two contacts:

• George (primary contact on one project/deal)

• Cosmo (primary contact on another)

We have:

• Deal George – associated with George and The Company

• Deal Cosmo – associated with Cosmo and The Company

When I book a meeting with Cosmo, that activity ends up associated with both deals, simply because they share the same company – even though George has no involvement in the meeting. This breaks the contextual accuracy of our CRM and creates noise in timelines and reporting.

The Problem:

• Activities should only appear on deals where they're truly relevant.

• Automatic association via the company causes "activity leakage" across parallel but unrelated deals.

• This reduces trust in deal records and creates unnecessary cleanup work.

Current Workarounds (all suboptimal):

• Manually removing incorrect deal associations from each activity.

• Using custom objects to model “Projects” and bypass native deal structure.

• Tagging activities with custom fields and filtering in reports (does not fix associations).

Proposed Solutions:

1. Add settings to disable or limit auto-association via company links.

2. Introduce rules to determine which deals are eligible for activity association based on context (e.g., shared contact only).

3. Allow manual selection of deal associations when logging or editing activities.

This would dramatically improve accuracy for companies working on multiple projects/deals with different stakeholders under the same organization.

Thank you for considering this improvement.

[laurabren]

Hey @PaalFrei -- you can already do this! Please review this KB article: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/object-settings/configure-automatic-activity-associations

[RebeccaMudler]

@PaalFrei - please see this article from Nov 2024. You can now control what associations you want/don't want automatically: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/object-settings/configure-automatic-activity-associations 

[ELeong]

+1 for my customer here! 

even with the option to set-up automatic associations for records & activities setting (KB here), it does not apply to all / any kind of activities. For example, if its a meeting that is created on the contact because of API/integration apps, it will follow the default association settings instead. This is not ideal as the customer may not want the most recent open deals to be associated to the meeting activitiy and they may only want the contact to be associated to the meeting activity. 

[AWells47]

The fact that you cannot easily associate an Email Engagement on a Contact to a specific Deal on a Sales Hub Pro plan is rediculous. It is such a common use case for businesses. Is it not critical for us to see email/ SMS/ call engagements that pertain to a specific deal on that Deal's record?

The account setting to automatically associate Contact emails to the "most recent deal" leaves too much room for error. I literally have all the info I need to take full control over making Accurate 1-to1 associations, but HubSpot does not provide a way to do it.

So many downsides to HubSpot limitations when you really start getting deep into setting up an account, and I am afraid a lot of those limitations are being hit because of how HubSpot focuses on limiting plans to force you to upgrade to Enterprise plans on Multiple Hubs.

HubSpot is Great, but it's also terrible. I think the company should re-evaluate how to give small businesses core functionality on it's Pro Plans. There are too many limitations being set that are "obviously needed" just to put a person in a tight spot to choose to either Upgrade, deal with the limitations, or find an alternative option. So many businesses that could use HubSpot are likely forced to improvise because they are not yet ready to go on multiple Pro Hubs (such as marketing pro hub) stacked with sales pro, operations hub etc.

[AWells47]

The fact that this idea (which is obviously critically needed for any business both small and large) was submitted Jan 30, 2020 and as of today in the end of 2025, nothing has been done about it for the Sales Pro plan at least. SAD hubspot