Billing frequency and terms on HubSpot Quotes

[LMeier61]

Our usual billing frequency is annually.

But from time to time we also have customers who wants to use the license for 18 months. 

HubSpot doesn't allow me to save/create quotes with an annual billing frequency and a term not equal to 12 or a multiple of it in month. But the ARR calculation is correct. Why? 

This is also relevant for existing customers who do an in-year upsell. 

E.g. adding an extra modul for the rest of the contract duration.  (8 month). 

Changing the billing frequency to monthly wouldn't work for us, because the Totals in the quote would be in monthly subtotals and not annual subtotals. 

Any idea? How do you solve it? 

[ktfritchen]

This is driving me insane. We typically sell annual deals, but frequently use term deals to get the customer to their budget cycle. Additionally, many choose to purchase 18, 24, etc. month deals. 

It should be relatively simple to allow the sales rep to change the term in the line item to the number of months the customer wants and have that calculate over in the net price field. But NO. The net price stays the same no matter how I set it up. I can't even create a custom calculated field to accomplish this, because that's arbitratily not allowed for the line item object.

Separate, but related. WHY is the deal amount related to the line items vs. the quote?? Sales will frequently have 2+ quotes when they're working a deal, one would be for the term (example: 3 months), one for the full 12 months, and sometimes another for a multi-year deal. But we can't report on that information unless they're putting multiple different line items on the deal. So, we have to have a different line item for each month for each product? And there's no way to tell the deal which one you want to have in the forecast? There has to be a better way...

This is making my revenue and leadership teams re-think moving sales ops to HubSpot. After years of slow transition and change management, we're probably going to have to back track to Salesforce because we can't accurately report on our pipeline per product due to this. So much wasted time and effort.... 

[KGielen]

Jumping into this discussion, does this mean that services that we charge per hour can not be added in Hubspot as a line item? Similar for services that we charge on a daily basis e.g.?

[LMeier61]

Hi @courtney_hickey, 

Thanks for your reply. This is helpful. 

I'll try it now. 

Could you share an example on how the TCV looks like in your comments section? 😊
Thanks,
laura

[courtney_hickey]

I call TCV "Full Contract Total" to avoid confusion that there is a value which is different from a price. (Often times in marketing we see ex: $50 value at the cost of $30 etc.)

[courtney_hickey · Accepted solution]

Overall notes - I would recommend working via Line Items on the deal record (adding, updating, etc.), then creating a quote. (Do not recommend creating a quote, then adding or updating line items during the quote creation process.)

First part - HubSpot does not allow for custom billing terms outside of what is in the Billing Frequency drop down. What I have done is switch to Billing Frequency Monthly w/ Term (Months) 18 but add a personalization token of the TCV into the comments section of the quote with formatting to make it extremely noticable (not beautiful but, until HubSpot allows customization on quote total source, the only way I have found). This is tricky because line items on the deal must be updated prior to quote creation for this personalization token to update correctly as changes are made. 

Second part - I would add one line item for a full year of the new module cost (ex: $12) w/ Billing Frequency Annually and one line item for a one-time discount given in this particular year (ex: $4) w/ Billing Frequency One-Time. This will make the quote total equal to what the customer needs to pay ($8) to add the module this year, but ensure ARR is correct for future years. (Important not to add discounts and fees on the quote creation page because they will not calculate into Revenue Field updates on the deal record).

Falls ich weiter erklaeren kann, lass mich bitte wissen! 🙂

[MiaSrebrnjak]

Hi @LMeier61,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community!

Adding a couple of Quote-pros to the conversation to see if they have any advice: 

hi @eliot_martin, @courtney_hickey, @himanshurauthan, do you have any tips for @LMeier61? Thank you!

Cheers
Mia, Community Team