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

[TGold]

We used a company called cloudbi. Www.cloudbi.com.au

[MatHil]

Why do we have to constantly delete these Close date. Wouldn't it make sense to not include a Close Date till the Deal is closed?

[SRenwick]

I asked Hubspot about this on Twitter and they actually replied. Not sure why they don't bother explaining their product decisions here:

https://twitter.com/Major_Grooves/status/1447834890209271808

[MBarnes]

The fact that you can't customize default properties such as close date is very frustrating. As others have mentioned various industries have very different avg times to close deals. This would be great if we could set the default close date to something other than the end of the current month. 

[SThurlow]

Hey Hubspot - can you please just change this so it's blank?

We can add it as a mandatory field if it has to be populated.

Thanks.

[SGast]

We would need this function aswell ! Thank you 🙂

[LMichael]

I don't mind that deals HAVE to be a default close date, but it's frustrating that we can't change the date or time frame to suite our business needs. It's odd that HubSpot is determing how long it should take for my business to close a deal without knowing my business' needs.

[paulschmidt]

Hi Everyone,

Not sure why this thread hasn't been updated, but one can update their close date by making 'close date' a default property in the deal creation screen. You can even make it a required property that your reps need to set every time they create a deal.

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/manage-your-properties

This thread can closed with this solution.

@Dylan @Sophie_Higgs @Kim_GP 

[JReinhard]

@paulschmidt - when I try to follow your steps, I see a message that certain fields cannot be edited:

@Dylan @Sophie_Higgs @Kim_GP 

[paulschmidt]

Do you have admin access in the portal? Close date is an editable field on
the deal record.

[LMichael]

@paulschmidt 
I'm a super admin and I also get the message that "This property is provided by HubSpot and cannot be edited." Same as @JReinhard .

While the date can be edited on the deals, I'd like to be able to change the default. We'd like our deals closed in 5 days and it would be nice to be able to change the default amount of time and not have to change it for every deal as they're created.

[davidw803]

@LMichael same. Our cycle is roughly 30 days so I would like the close date to be +30 from create date instead of the end of the month.

[paulschmidt]

True, you can't set a default close date to be X days out (when manually creating a deal). When manually creating a deal, you can only update the close date to an exact date. You may need to add 'close date' as a default property in your deal property settings if it's not showing up in your portal.

You can set the close date to be X days out using deal-based workflows (which I think is in Pro + enterprise portals only).

@LMichael @JReinhard I'm not suggesting you edit the actual property there. This is a default date property that can be added within the 'deal create' flow. If you go to your deal settings, you'd go to this section and this is where you can add 'close date' as a default property. 

[lukecro]

Yeah, I used to have Close Date set up as a required field, but requiring that every rep edit that for every deal was a source of ongoing complaints as yet another repetitive data-entry step...

As others in this thread have stated, what would be ideal would be having the ability to change the default value... e.g., My teams' typical sales take 90+ days to close, so just being able to auto-set the default "90 days after deal creation" would be a better default for the majority of my team... While other companies of course have their own default time-line needs.

So "make the close date a required field" is not the solution I was hoping for on this thread.

However, the workflow-automation listed by @paulschmidt sounds like a great compromise...

RE: "Set the close date to be X days out using deal-based workflows."

A workflow like that could theoretically be set up to auto-adjust the close-date value right after a deal is created, so the rep creating the deal wouldn't need to worry about setting or changing the initial value themselves....

I mean, that'd be great if that "Set the close date to be X days out" field can be used in a workflow that updates existing deals vs. only being available for deals that are auto-generated by a workflow in the first place. I'll have to dig into the workflow settings to see if that's actually possible (the screenshot above is showing a workflow that's creating a deal, I think, rather than updating existing deals)... 

If that option is only available for workflow-created deals rather than existing deals, then it's not so useful for reps that are focused on manually-created deals.

However, for situations were it was applicable, then additional cool stuff could be done in conjunction with this -- e.g., with branching logic, this could conceivably be customized per-rep or team, if different people in an organization are working on different close-date timelines.

[paulschmidt]

@lukecro for updating the existing deals close date, the only method I see in doing this now is through Ops-Hub professional, which allows you to add # of days to a date property.  The only issue with going this route is that if you set a close date (by default), and then automate it to be 90 days later (via Ops hub pro), then this affects your 'deal push' reports as this type of automation would push every deal based on your requirements. 

So like others have said in this thread the ability to set the default close date (during deal creation) would be optimal to eliminate these 'deal push' issues and broader forecast reporting issues.

[hannahflat]

There should also be the option for this to not be set when a deal is created. We don't run reports by this because it can take us anywhere from 1 day to 1 year to close our deals due to the nature of our business. Having this set automatically also affects reports run based on close date. 

[hellowinter]

We need this function too. PLEASE consider adding this to development. This causes internal frustration as less than 30 days it not even remotely a realistic default close date for our business model and sales cycle.

[Jtucke6]

This needs to be changed ASAP. Our deal close dates can be anywhere from 1 day to 1 year.  The close date should be left blank until it is actually closed. This seems like an easy change. It has caused A LOT of confusion for our management team and continues to mislead the data in our monthly reporting. 

[ybaptiste]

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. 

[herodotuseduc]

Regarding the Custom rolling date, we cannot set it to 0 days from deal creation. This is frustrating for companies who sell items online and have no deal stages. They either sell or they dont make a sale. It seems that the minimum days is "1". It should be able to be set to "0" so that when a deal with only 1 deal stage (closed won 100%) is created, the deal closed date is set as that date.