Customize the close date in deals

[Kim_GP]

When you create a deal, there is a default close date (end of current month). Every month, we have to postpone the close date of our deals to the next month.

In our industry, the time to close is more around 80 to 90 days. The deal forecast will be more accurate with a close date set 2 or 3 months after the create date. 

[Kim_GP]

Hey HubSpot Community,  

Some exciting news. We shipped close date configuration for deals. You can now configure the default close date for newly created deals. Select the end of a period (for example, the end of next month), time from deal creation (for example, 60 days from deal creation), or no default close date to better manage your deals and forecast.

In Deal Settings (Settings -> Object -> Deals -> Setup tab), admins can select the default close date to apply when creating a deal. There are three options that the customer can choose for their close date:

1. End of a period--for example, end of current month or end of next month
2. Custom rolling date--for example, weeks from deal creation.
3. No default close date (by unselecting the setting)

Thank you all for your brilliant input and your patience. HubSpot CRM is a better tool because of your feedback. 

[Kim_GP]

Hello HubSpot Community, 

Thank you as always for your continued feedback, it helps us build a great product.

We are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating our priorities and roadmap to deliver as much value to our customers as possible. At this time, customizing the close date in deals is not something our team is currently planning to build natively into HubSpot. This is certainly subject to change in the future and we will update this idea if that becomes the case.

[Kim_GP]

Hi everyone, 

My name is Sophie, I work on the team that builds HubSpot CRM. I wanted to address this idea and the frustration expressed recently at the end of this thread. The ability to set customize when the close date is set (or what is set to) for each account is something that we are interested in exploring in the future, but it's not on the immediate roadmap for this year.

We treat the deal Close Date property as the expected close date for the deal (until it is actually closed). The property is used in the Deal Forecast report to forecast revenue by month/quarter/year and so we set it automatically to ensure all deals show up in that report. While this property is given a default value, it is expected that the user will change this value to represent the expected close date when the deal is first created. If the user knows that the deal cycle is usually 80-90 days long, they should set the close date to 3 months time to reflect that (ensuring the deal forecast report is somewhat representative of the pipeline). When the deal is finally moved to a closed lost or closed won stage, we will update the deal close date to that day automatically to ensure accurate reporting and reduce the effort required to close a deal. 

In terms of why this feature request has not been addressed sooner, while it is absolutely true that the more votes an idea gets the more likely it is to be reviewed by HubSpot's product team, there is no guarantee that ideas will be implemented based on a critical mass of votes. That said, it's not our intention, ever, for customers to feel unheard and we're actively looking into means of closing the loop in a faster and more transparent way.

If you have specific feedback about the CRM that you believe will make it easier and more efficient to use, please don't hesitate to message me directly. 

Best,

- Sophie

[petercraigen]

+1 on this idea. 

Having a close date autopopulate does not make sense and creates innacuracy in our reporting + more time manually changing dates. 

Our ideal system would allow a deal to be created without a close date and require a close date only when a deal reaches a certain stage. 

Thanks. 

[LP79]

Yes, we have an average deal time from of 90 days! This customisation would save a lot of headaches in sales meetings and forecast reports

[sramlaserhubde]

Same.

We'd highly prefer setting it to be empty by default. 

[jonathan-vr]

Yes, please leave a default or automatic Close Date as a configurable, optional feature that one could activate, but don't enable it by default

[steveholley]

The auto population is causing us an issue too.  In my business (insurance) we usually do have a decent idea of expected close date (when the current policy renews).  However, having the auto population leads to won deals not showing in our standard reports until the end of the month.  That is unless my team remembers to update the date once dragged over to Sold stage.

I tried to creat an automation to change the date, for reporting purposes, to the actual date that it was moved to Sold and was unsuccessful.  😞

[MarkNungesser]

I really don't think that Hubspot reads these postings.  I believe they send us to make a posting and hopefully, we just go away.

The issue of close dates being auto-populated within the month it was opened makes no sense.  

[LeeHouse]

Yep. The way they dealt with GDPR and the fact they don’t listen to very simple feedback means that they will loose our renewal. We will go elsewhere.

[jhorrigan216]

I would like the ability to edit the default close date based on the average duration of our sales cycle.  But then have a calculated actual based on the day the deal was created and when it was moved to a closed status.  

[richardhh]

+1 to even just leave it blank. The 1 month is really a time period, which likely works for very few folks

[DJ2018]

I agree. To set the date for the end of the month does not work for our sales team especially if we want to set a closed deal for the date we did it which has to be applied manually rather than set as a default. Anyone from Hubspot willing to comment on this issue? Seems to be a long thread so the need is definitely there! 

[Kimberly]

 Agreed. Customization of close date would be remarkably helfpul. 

[karainglis]

Hi everyone, 

I am having the same request in one of the portals I manage. I see a lot of comments about whether HubSpot monitors these feeds. While I am not sure the level of monitoring that goes on, I do know that ideas like this that are popular are taken into consideration when they are submitted to the "ideas" section, https://community.hubspot.com/t5/custom/page/page-id/ideaslandingpage. I hope this helps!

Best,

Kara

[davidw803]

Close Date should be the actual close date and should be blank until that date. There should be a separate field called Projected/Expected close date. This would greatly help with forecasting. Also, it would help with generating a value for actual vs projected deal life cycle.

[LeeHouse]

Not taking this very simple thing seriously has just lost Hubspot a customer. We should renew Sales and Marketing Pro next week and this is a key reason, along with the GDPR fiscaso that we will go elsewhere. 

Ta-Ta

Lee

[gelflex-cc]

 I see this is a common thread and yet I am missing any solutions.  How high a priority is this for HubSpot? 

I would prefer the deal close date to need a date rather than an instant populate.

Thanks.

Chris

[MHales]

Auto populating a date here makes no sense. We definitely need the ability to customize how this field works.

[sophiakhan]

We would love to be able to set a default date as well. Do not want the date picker to only populate a blank field if not filled in. 

[ernopyykko]

Now you can create a deal workflow which clears the close date property, not ideal but a good enough workaround.  

[gelflex-cc]

@ernopyykko How do you create a deal workflow?

Thanks.

[rasmustoivonen]

As it is now the "Close Date" also is hidden when set to "required" when moved to, for example, the stage Closed Won. This is because it is already pre-populated from before. 

It is good for us that our Sales Reps have to estimate the Close Date before the Deal is Won or Lost. But when it becomes Lost or Won the date should be seen on the popup. That is why I set it to required in the first place.