How to consider previous changes on a field and check the first one in workflow

[EAzuz]

Hi guys,

I am looking for a solution where I want to consider all the previous changes in a numeric field (such as Currency Field) in a workflow. 

Here is the case, we want to track our customer's payments in a field (Let's call it "Pay amount"), and initially this field is sometimes "null" or sometimes "$0" depending on how the contact is created.

When a customer pays, the "Pay amount" field increases to X$. When the customer does not renew his payment, this field backs to 0$. So, it's a game between 0$ and some X$. (But sometimes the first time was "null")

I want to track newly acquired customers in a flow and get the "first payment date" of the customers in their lifetime.  I try to create a trigger where "Pay amount" is greater or equal to "1$", however, in this case, many people who renewed their plan also get into this workflow. 

I want to consider all the historical changes in this field and ensure that this is the first time this field gets a minimum "1$". 

Technically, I am looking for an operation called the "has never been greater than" option in the trigger. (there is just "has never been equal to")

I'm looking for a solution. Thanks

[TomM2]

Hey @EAzuz there's no way to use the historical contact property information in HubSpot unfortunately. There's a few options for a workaround but it would require some workflows knowledge and testing ideas. 

The foundation of a workaround would be to create some custom properties. I woulld say 1 to mark if a contact/deal is a renewal and another property to store the "original pay amount". 

I would create a workflow to copy the property "pay amount" into "orignial pay amount" when the pay amount is more than 0 (or 0 and more if you wish). 

Then you can either manually or through a workflow (if you have specific criteria) to mark that the deal/contact is renewed. 

There's definitely a lot more to this to get this exactly as you wish, but I would start with this as a base as it will allow you to keep an original pay amount and if a contact is renewed and report/segment based on this. 

[EAzuz]

Hi @TomM2 ,

Thanks for the answer, but ironically, my goal is to keep a record (static) for the "original pay amount" in a different field. That's the reason I want to create this workflow. So, even if the customer renews the deal after X amount of time since I have value in the "original pay amount", I will understand that is not a new customer. 

So we are doing here which comes first, either chicken or egg 🙂