Great minds think alike

The introduction of the Object Library opens up a huge opportunity to become more plug-and-play for non-SaaS industries like Manufacturing. One problem I hope to alleviate with this idea thread is the fact that so many of us serving manufacturing are building and solutioning in silos right now. Without a community-led effort to support a Manufacturing Data Template in HubSpot, it will be very difficult for HubSpot to provide a template free of the need for custom objects. In my opinion, no need for custom objects is one of the biggest benefits of the new Object Library. I think we can get there. Here's how. Here are the native CRM objects that can be leveraged by most all manufacturing companies: Contact Company Product Marketing Events Lead Deal Line Item Quote Cart Payment Link Order Invoice Payment Subscription Ticket Appointment Course Service While Appointments, Courses, Services were not meant for manufacturing, it is not hard to adapt them to use cases like Field Services, Product and Application training, and Repairs and Preventative Maintenance contracts. But where does leave us for use cases like inventory, logistics, and quality management. Without templated objects like Assets, Installs, Shipments, Warranties, etc. we will still need access to custom objects to complete the customer-centric manufacturing data model. Now, I am not suggesting that we are trying to replace inventory management systems, accounting systems, and ERPs. They all have their place and have functionality that, IMO, we should not try to replicate in HubSpot. What we do need is a place in HubSpot for all of the data our customer-facing teams need to serve great customer experiences. Instead of creating object "creep" and a lack of standardization for the manufacturing industry, I think we can solve for all of these different post-sales use cases with one object.   I call it the "Deliverable".   Just like the Product object is designed in a general way to serve any product/service/experience a HubSpot customer might provide, the Deliverable object can be thought of in the same way. I think of it like this... The Product Library is the strategic, pre-planned version of what you want to sell.   Line items are the ultra-customizable version that help close the sale based on specific customer need. Not to be changed post-sale.   Deliverables are what was promised to the customer at the close AND any other deliverables needed to support that promise. (Ex. Warranty) Put simply: Product <> Line Item > Deliverable I have been working with Deliverables as a custom object and the magic is in leveraging Pipeline functionality. So, instead of easily coming up with 5-10 more CRM objects, I believe we can serve known use cases with Pipelines instead. This also allows for customized configuration for each business via new pipelines instead of new objects.   The "stage-and-gate" nature of pipelines not only unlock the rest of the HubSpot Customer Platform, they also create the perfect place for data coming from other systems that manage inventory, production, purchasing, and accouting processes. Think of Product, Item, Expense, and Order pipelines that are found in other systems. See the NetSuite Integration as an example of what I mean Let this post not be seen as the final solution, but simply a means to support the HubSpot team trying to give us a sustainable one. I'll be sharing more links and diagrams in support of this discussion and I hope the community will feel safe and motivated to do the same. Let's Build! ...read more

Currently, when creating invoices from the deal card, all contacts associated with the deal are selected by default to be associated with the invoice. This creates an inefficiency as users often need to manually deselect contacts and associate the invoice only with the designated billing contact.   The idea is to have a feature where users can set a default contact association based on the "Billing Contact" association label. This would significantly reduce the number of manual clicks and time required by allowing users to filter by association label and create invoices directly linked to the appropriate billing contact. This enhancement will streamline the workflow, improve user efficiency, and reduce the potential for errors in contact association during invoice creation.   This feature would be highly beneficial for users who regularly manage large volumes of invoices and need to ensure accurate and efficient billing processes.   ...read more

Whenever I want to select a line item from the product library in a quote, I can only see the product name and price in the "Add line item" Overview. It would be great if there was a possibilty to customize these columns, so that I can see the description when adding the line item. This is because we have product groups in which a product with one name, can have different options, which are mentioned in the description.   ...read more

Hello Team,   It would be good if Users are flexibly able to set a Column Width for the Line Items Editor when creating a Quote in-app. This is because some Columns contain more information than the others, and this requires consistently dragging and resizing it which is time-consuming. However, once exited it reverts back to standard sizing. An example is this Salesforce Feature: https://help.salesforce.com/s/articleView?id=sf.cpq_resize_column_widths_qle.htm&type=5. Thank you!     ...read more

Hiya!   It would be great if we had the option to add columns to the Quotes view page. This page is currently missing the 'Edit Columns' option, but it would be very useful to be able to see additional details, such as the associated contact.   Thanks! 😁 ...read more

It would be great if we had the option to add 'Quotes' as a section in the right side bar in the Company Record so we can see all quotes associated with the company.   This saves us time having to go into each deal to see what the latest Quote the customer has signed. ...read more

I run a small startup and recently enjoyed the 30-day trial for 3 seats. I particularly appreciated the freedom to customize quotes for my customers. However, after subscribing to the Sales Starter CRM, I was disappointed to discover that the quote customization feature is only available in the Professional subscription tier. This has been quite frustrating for me. I’m curious why such an essential feature for businesses of all sizes has been restricted for startups. As a small business, I’m primarily interested in the quoting system, and not having full access to it in the Starter CRM feels limiting. Would you consider adding the quote customization feature back to the Starter CRM? It’s a dealbreaker for me, and unfortunately, I can't afford the Professional CRM package. ...read more

It would be great to have way to limit the set of available line items based per company / contact gated based on a property like company or contact type.   ...read more

When creating a product, the user is unable to edit the internal form within HubSpot. When creating a contact, company, deal or ticket, the user can edit the form to require or show properties that are important to their business. This functionality should be enabled for all internal creation forms within HubSpot.  As can be seen above, the user is able to edit the contact creation form. The below image is the product creation form that does not have this edit feature allowed.  This will be useful to anyone who creates custom properties for their products and would like to require these fields to create a new product.    ...read more