Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:01):
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloedapartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace, lord lack, lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:22):
tool in your superhero toolbelt? Knowledge.
Never fear hub heroes. Get readyto don your cape and mask, move
into action, and become the hubhero your organization needs.
Tune in each week to join theleague of extraordinary inbound
heroes as we help you educate,empower, and execute. Hub
(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Liz Moorehead (00:53):
We're back, gentlemen.
Max Cohen (00:55):
That was the best transition you've ever done,
George.
Chad Hohn (00:57):
You like that? Mean, even when you know it's coming
somewhere, it still always getsyou by surprise, and that was
particularly good.
Liz Moorehead (01:06):
I do what I can. I do it. I'm I'm refreshed from
vacation. So that's that wasthat good intro there for you.
Chad Hohn (01:12):
Love it.
George B. Thomas (01:13):
Well, the gang is all back together again,
folks. How are
Chad Hohn (01:17):
we feeling?
George B. Thomas (01:18):
George, you saw Vacation Brain or you dialed
in?
Max Cohen (01:22):
I still have Vacation Brain.
Liz Moorehead (01:23):
Yeah. I'm I'm trying to get dialed in. It's
you know, I got back Liz andthere was 47 HubSpot updates.
There's about 4,700 emails. Andso I'm trying to get dialed in.
I I feel like Monday is like,let's let's ease my way into
trying to figure out whatHubSpot did in a week while I
(01:44):
was gone. What all the people inmy email need now that I'm back.
Yet also create some contentBecause before this, was on the
customer platform podcast, andwe're doing this podcast, and I
have two women of HubSpotinterviews I'm doing today. So
it's a content rich day, butalso a helping I better be
(02:05):
dialed in, I guess. My answeris, Liz, I'm officially dialed
in.
George B. Thomas (02:09):
Well, good news. We are easing you in with
a super simple, lightweight,very frill free conversation.
Liz Moorehead (02:17):
No. I saw the notes. No.
George B. Thomas (02:19):
No. Because see, when you left, Chad showed
up and said, I wanna talk aboutnerd stuff today.
Liz Moorehead (02:26):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (02:26):
I wanna talk about nerdy commerce hub stuff
today. But before we get intothat, George, let's pop quiz for
a second. Uh-oh. Let's dust offthe little dust bunnies from
vacation. Can you give thelisteners at home a quick recap
of what Commerce Hub is in casethey are unfamiliar with the
platform?
Liz Moorehead (02:45):
A little recap is kind of difficult because
Commerce Hub used to be to whatCommerce Hub is now is
dramatically different. But I'llsimplify the complex in saying
Commerce Hub is a way for you toget paid, And there's multiple
ways that you can get paid. Sowhen I think of Commerce Hub, I
think of quoting, I think ofinvoicing, I think of payment
(03:08):
links, I think of subscriptions.So these are like the
terminology of things that wouldbe in there. But it, but it, for
me, if I really just go highlevel, it's a Godsend because
our business runs completely onCommerce Hub, meaning the whole
CPQ, the whole, like gettingpeople to book for super admin
(03:29):
training, like every, everythingthat touches money is Commerce
Hub.
And what's nice is we literallyhave our accountants in there as
well. And so like, they can seethings and there's integrations
and like, it just, again, Godsend and think of anything that
touches money or getting paid,that's Commerce Hub.
George B. Thomas (03:50):
Chad, did he miss anything in his love letter
to Commerce Hub?
Chad Hohn (03:54):
I mean, I think that's, that's a great way to
put it. You know, there's awhole bunch of different
mechanisms. You know, we can gointo detail in any of those
types of things. But really alot of the stuff that's been
updated recently has been backend changes and the ability to
do things that you used to notbe able to do, but still with
some limitations. Commerce Hubhas always been like, unless
(04:15):
you're just gonna use HubSpotand be okay with HubSpot and
everything that it currentlyhas, it used to be a 100% like,
that's good.
Okay. I can work with CommerceHub, but if I wanna connect to
any external system, it was justlike a giant nightmare. And,
like, there are still somelimitations that make design you
have to take designconsiderations. Right? But it's
(04:39):
a lot a lot a lot better than itused to be.
And I'm really, reallyinterested in Max's take on all
this as well when we get tosubscriptions, especially.
Max Cohen (04:47):
Yeah. Can concur. I don't know if I have anything
additional to add beyond whatGeorge and Chad said. But what I
will say is it's it's anexciting time
Chad Hohn (05:00):
with,
Max Cohen (05:01):
with cash flow joining the fray and injecting
Oh, yeah. Yeah. A completelydifferent perspective on
commerce and the back end enginethat makes it all run. Mhmm.
Chad Hohn (05:13):
So Well, I think part of that's gonna be a rev rec
engine that's gonna be a littlebetter across all your stuff.
And that's one thing that peoplehave a hard time with in
Commerce Hub.
Max Cohen (05:21):
Yeah. You're gonna start seeing some really cool
stuff in the next coming months.So I mean, we already are seeing
little bits and boops here andthere.
Liz Moorehead (05:29):
Right? But Bebop boops coming.
George B. Thomas (05:32):
Beep boops. Speaking of speaking of incoming
beep bops and beep boops, Chad,you already started digging into
this a little bit, but I want toask you directly. You had a
number of updates that youwanted to specifically talk
about today with HubSpotCommerce Hub. And we may have
more on that list that we expandwith, but what makes you excited
(05:52):
overall about some of the thingsthat we're going to be
discussing today?
Chad Hohn (05:56):
I mean, I just think that, you know, overall, I I get
really excited about the factthat it's no longer just like I
mean, again, designconsiderations need to be taken
into account with what's allowedand not allowed, but it's not
just an it only works if yoursource of truth is HubSpot
anymore. Like you can actuallystart to come in and they're
(06:18):
truly trying to make paymentslike a first class object, if we
call it that way or like not asecond class object. Right? And
someday they'll do that withquotes that they're not there
yet, but it's it's very, veryexciting to see. I mean, just
like Max was saying, it's anexciting time to be alive,
right, when it comes to all thatwe can do in the realm of of
(06:43):
Commerce Hub and money andtransferring.
And I mean, can, there's reallycool stuff you can do. You can
associate subscriptions toobjects they never were
originally gonna be associatedto before, like custom objects
now, which is really cool.
Max Cohen (06:56):
Oh, is that out?
Chad Hohn (06:58):
Yeah. I I least I was able to, like, add it at one
time. I was looking at which ispretty dope. You can't do with
payments yet. I had a bone topick with a friend of mine over
at Commerce about that.
But they said it's on the roadmap. But, like, man, all the
stuff that's been on the roadmap is finally getting off the
road map and into beta or intoproduction, which is amazing.
George B. Thomas (07:19):
Phenomenal. Alright. So let's dig in. We're
starting with HubSpot payments.Correct?
Chad Hohn (07:25):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the payment write API is
huge. And I think the abilityfor you to just hit from an
external system with the API,generate a payment and associate
it to invoices, quotes, deals,basically all the commerce
objects, you're still limited towhat you can associate it to,
(07:46):
which is one of my gripes as itcurrently sits.
And there's like, when youassociate a payment to say an
invoice, it locks you fromediting some invoice properties.
And unfortunately, customproperties are still not on the
list of properties you canupdate while an invoice is
(08:09):
partially paid. But I do have iton good authority that that may
change at some point and theyultimately really want to let
you edit invoices invoiceswhenever you want just like
other accounting platforms likeQuickBooks. Right? You can just
edit an invoice in QuickBooksand like add line items like,
let's say or or or an estimateor whatever.
Right? Like you can just updateit and then show, okay, hey,
(08:32):
this is a lot and I came reallyoriginally from the construction
industry. And one of the thingsthat's huge there is I need to
be able to have a partially paidinvoice, but also add a scope of
work so that my customer trulyunderstands the total amount
including like a line for achange order or something like
(08:53):
that. But right now withCommerce Hub, if you wanna do
that even still, you have tocreate a new invoice for every
payment that you really want tobring in, right? And not
everybody in the constructionindustry likes to do it that
way.
They like to have one runninginvoice and you sign another
quote and it updates an existinginvoice, for example, with
(09:14):
another line item. But all thatto say like being able to laser
in a payment from an externalsystem and now, of course it's
already been out for a while,you can create invoices with an
API call. Like you can nowcreate a back end integration
with some kind of other systemand make what's in that other
system reflect in HubSpotagainst your deals. So if you're
(09:37):
mapping contacts, companies, youknow, for like contacts and
customer, you know, whatever,and then you're doing deals for
all of your sales or yourprojects or whatever kind of
system you're using, you canactually make all of the line
items and everything reflect,which is amazing. You've never
been able to do that before itAnd comes without manual
Liz Moorehead (10:00):
I'll throw one thing in here because I've been
hanging out with my friend ChrisCarillon for a while. You
mentioned deals, Chad. I'll evenmention in a world where you
live in orders, orders insteadof deals, right? And so this
idea of living in a world oforders and living in a world of
an external system to be able toput these things in place,
(10:21):
because that's the thing I washoping that you would get to is
like external systems to thenpush it into HubSpot, because I
already use HubSpot payments,but I use HubSpot payments in
HubSpot. So I think that's a bigdifferentiator that the
listenersviewers should beunderstanding.
If I have this thing over here,and I've always dreamed that it
(10:42):
could interact with line itemsand invoices, when somebody
places an order, or when salescloses a deal, the answer
Chad Hohn (10:49):
is yes. Yes. Yeah. It's awesome. And being able to
like bring in those line itemsis like a thing.
Like, we'll get to other stuffhere, but yeah, I'll let you go
Max. So,
Max Cohen (11:02):
and just to like clarify it, so it's not
transferring funds into yourHubSpot payment account that
then goes to your bank account.It's simply just showing the
record.
Chad Hohn (11:14):
Yes, it's creating the payment object record.
Max Cohen (11:17):
Got it.
Chad Hohn (11:18):
And so you're now able to do that. There is not a
way at this point to generatelike obviously a charge a card
via API or anything like that.Right?
Max Cohen (11:30):
This is more so like a reporting thing.
Chad Hohn (11:33):
But it's huge being able to align some external
system, like let's say you havea big ERP, some custom thing at
your company. Well, nowHubSpot's a viable option to
actually show your revenuerecognition and what line items
were sold so that your friggingsupport team actually knows what
in the holy heck was in theorder or was
Max Cohen (11:53):
Yeah. I mean, the big the big thing for me, like, I
think this was like one this andsubscriptions. Can you write
subscriptions yet?
Chad Hohn (12:02):
Yeah, dog.
Max Cohen (12:03):
Okay. So okay.
Chad Hohn (12:05):
So and they got them line items, dude. Like, they got
them line items.
George B. Thomas (12:09):
They got them line items. They
Max Cohen (12:12):
got them line the the other thing They
Liz Moorehead (12:14):
are right over there.
Max Cohen (12:16):
Yeah. Yeah. The thing is is like, I feel like that was
the last two big missing piecesof the puzzle for HubSpot to be
the the ultimate final techstack for a SaaS company.
Chad Hohn (12:32):
Mhmm. Exactly.
Max Cohen (12:33):
You think about it. We had all these awesome
marketing sales and servicetools. But, like, the thing is
most of the SaaS products,you're not sending someone money
on a HubSpot quote to goactivate your app. They've got
it hooked up to Stripe.
Chad Hohn (12:47):
Or something. Right?
Max Cohen (12:48):
They've got their back end system where someone
logs into the back end, goesinto settings, and pays with the
credit card. Right? Yeah. Butnow you could take that
subscription that's generatedand send it into HubSpot.
Chad Hohn (12:59):
And take those payments that are made. Objects.
Right?
Max Cohen (13:02):
Yeah. Exactly. Right? Like a customer account or like
a Yeah. Some inter we call themapp licenses.
We have an app license object atHapley. Right? You know? And so,
like, you could take those andmake them show up as payments
inside of there, right, whenpeople are paying in your app
through, like, whatever custompayment system that you have set
up. Right?
(13:23):
Like, I think it's fine. Like,they've they've they've gone
full certain now with how goodservice hub is. Right? To, like,
run your support team on it.It's a joke it's a joke now.
Like, it it it literally haseverything you need.
Chad Hohn (13:37):
Right? And customer really good.
Max Cohen (13:39):
Go can can make API calls to your internal system to
do stuff now.
Chad Hohn (13:43):
Exactly. Yes. With the customer agent being able to
interact with your system andyou can fire off an API call to
query something in a middle of alive chat, like, that's insane.
You know, that's also anotherthing.
Max Cohen (13:54):
It's officially to me, it officially has everything
a SaaS company needs.
Liz Moorehead (13:59):
Well, I think so. And here's the thing. I know
this is not why we're here, butI wanna throw this in because,
Max, you literally said helpdesk. This morning, there were
six updates, six differentunique updates to help desk.
Mhmm.
So,
Max Cohen (14:13):
like Can't wait to go through every single one of them
on the live show.
Liz Moorehead (14:16):
It's An hour. It's crazy.
Max Cohen (14:19):
Sweet.
Chad Hohn (14:19):
It's exciting. I'm
George B. Thomas (14:21):
excited. I understood 60%, I think, of what
was just discussed, but that'sbecause I'm a content nerd.
You'll find me in the contentmarketing hub. But, Chad, tell
us where we're going next. Whatare we talking about?
Chad Hohn (14:33):
Yeah. Well well, one more thing I forgot to mention.
Well, I guess this is kind of wewere alluding to it, Is being
able to generate subscriptionsvia API. You can mark those
subscriptions via API to eithersend invoices or not send
invoices. And so there'll beable to like actually pay for
those subscriptions or whatever.
(14:54):
And then there's like, I mean,there's some pretty advanced
functionality and now in thedata model builder, you can
actually add those subscriptionsto other objects, custom
objects, whatever. And thatgives you line item level
reporting. Like some people havedone kinda what, you know, Max
and the team have done when itcomes to what they're selling
(15:17):
and keeping track of it and putit in a custom object and run
associations. But realistically,you could actually use line
items now to see who has whatproducts more or less. Like
there is a world where peoplecoming into this who don't have
like legacy architectures and abunch of custom reports built
around this can actually havethe information they need.
(15:39):
And in addition to all of thatgood juicy delectable updated
goodness, they also give you theability to add subscription
custom properties, which issuper amazing. So you can add
any kind of property you need.It's not just the standard
HubSpot subscriptions.
Max Cohen (15:57):
It could be like what features someone has, what
Chad Hohn (16:00):
can programs have do feature that. Flags on your
subscriptions. A 100% like inyour quote, if this line item's
here, generate the subscriptionwith that feature flag. That
tells your back end system boop,or, you know, whatever after you
know, when it when your quotegoes and then it syncs back or
something like that. But you canat least make it accessible now
to your support team and helpdesk.
(16:21):
They know truly whatsubscriptions this company has
if they have multiple if youhave multiple products or
whatever. And, I mean, it can beupdated, it can be created, like
all these things can can occurnow on subscriptions. There are
some limitations, like like Isaid, with invoices, with being
partially paid, you kinda getlocked down. But luckily
(16:42):
subscriptions, you can updateover time. You can just
reinitialize the subscription,
Intro (16:46):
So
Liz Moorehead (16:47):
which is I wanna jump in here for a second
because we're throwing the wordline items around and products
around. And this is somethingthat I've had to teach people.
So let's go back to basics.We're gonna step out of
Nerdville for a second, which,by the way,
George B. Thomas (17:00):
I'm question.
Liz Moorehead (17:00):
My question's Yeah.
Max Cohen (17:01):
Oh, yeah. We're gonna step outside of Nerdville to
give a nuanced take on productsand line items.
Liz Moorehead (17:06):
So that's hilarious. So first of all,
products are line items and lineitems are products in HubSpot.
They're one and the same thing.Like, basically, you see you see
what I'm saying? Like, like, ifyou create a product and then
you go to do a quote or do whatChad's talking about, you're
basically that line item is aproduct that you've created in
(17:27):
HubSpot.
And so like, it's just crazy howwe have these two different
names for this kind of samething. Yeah. Just know that a
line item is a product and aproduct is a line item. But
also, what I wanna just doubleclick on here is, for years, for
years people have asked for lineitem reporting. And the fact
that you're gonna be able to nowhave line item reporting, but
(17:50):
line item reporting based on anexternal system that is pushing
into HubSpot.
So if you're sitting here andyou're like, well, that's
something we might wanna leaninto, then you're gonna wanna
figure out how to get yourproducts, AKA your line items in
HubSpot in a way that they canbe used for what Chad's talking
about.
Chad Hohn (18:10):
Right. Can I
George B. Thomas (18:11):
clarify something really quickly?
Because I think I understandYeah. A product is like the
thing that globally exists inyour database that can be pulled
into any invoice. A line itemexplicitly refers to product
that is listed within a specificinvoice. Like, that is that line
item in that invoice.
Max Cohen (18:28):
It's an instance it's an instance of a product being
associated to a quote.
Liz Moorehead (18:33):
Yep. Yeah. Or invoice or
Chad Hohn (18:35):
yes. Yep. It's like a product is a template. Right?
And you start from the template,but then you can customize it
while you're formatting thesubscription or you're
formatting the like invoice andany of those properties that are
changed on it, including customproperties, which you can put on
products and anything you put ona product is an option on a line
item at that, you know, itpushes down essentially.
(18:58):
Yep. And each of those are aninstance of that templated item
and they refer back to theproduct. So like when you're
doing line item level reporting,you'll know how many line items
that you sold related back tothat parent product. So if it's
like an app license for, youknow, quote happily a user or
(19:22):
something like that, then youhave four different invoices
with like quote happily user asa line item. You can sum total
the number of users that yousold, right?
But you know that it's relatedback to that product template.
Liz Moorehead (19:39):
Yeah. And it really does speed up things
because again, you might thinkabout, and by the way, we're now
leaning into where Max isprobably gonna show for, you
know, who he should show for.But, like, you have multiple
products, aka multiple lineitems, which means you're also
creating kinda like this bundlescenario Mhmm. Inside of, you
(20:01):
know, your quote, your invoice,your whatever it is. So, yeah.
Max Cohen (20:05):
Good luck building that bundle.
Liz Moorehead (20:07):
There you go. See, I've I served it up for
you. I served it up for you. Youcan do that, by the way, with
quote happily
Max Cohen (20:14):
bundling. Right.
Liz Moorehead (20:15):
Yeah. Anyway, back to Chad and the nerdiness.
Chad Hohn (20:18):
Max is just very modest.
Liz Moorehead (20:20):
Mhmm. Yes. Typically, he's the most modest
on the podcast.
Max Cohen (20:23):
Hey. Listen. Listen, George. You you you you set that
ad up all on your own.
Liz Moorehead (20:28):
I did. I did.
Max Cohen (20:28):
Yeah. You did.
Liz Moorehead (20:29):
I kinda did it on purpose.
Max Cohen (20:31):
You did.
George B. Thomas (20:31):
Shilling for big popsicle.
Liz Moorehead (20:33):
I mean, listen, the team at quote happily have
been killing it for like two ofour clients who are using the
product recently. So I gottagive them some love. I gotta
give them some love.
Max Cohen (20:42):
Yeah. Alright. Back to chips. That's good.
Chad Hohn (20:44):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. So the other, one other
thing that's really, reallyhelpful is now not not unlike
the ability to have customproperties on pay or on,
subscriptions, you can do it onpayments now. So the ability to
store additional metadata aboutyour payment, like, I mean, one
thing at roofing businesspartner that would do happen all
(21:07):
the time is we would have tocreate a, like, QBO payment
custom object because they wouldneed to keep track of is this
like a deposit payment, like apayment that happened for
material delivery and they wannalike sum total or like is this
payment related to, you know,like a material invoice or
(21:29):
something like that.
They needed to store additionalmetadata so you could run
calculated properties to sumtotal up like, I have a sum
total of all of the depositpayments that are related to
this. And then so you could takethe amount invoice, the amount
received in payments andregardless of how that payment
got in there, whether it's, youknow, a it manually added
(21:53):
payment, it synced over from QBOto HubSpot using the QBO sync.
It was created via HubSpotpayments or created via your
bring your own Stripe HubSpotpayments or whatever, right? All
of that functionality then well,it still wasn't enough because
we didn't know what type ofpayments they were for. And so
(22:14):
now you have the capacity toactually put in additional
metadata about whatever thatpayment is, which allows you to
create roll up properties ordifferent things that you might
need really, really, really,really helpful.
And then people can ditch theirwhatever payment custom object
now and free up a custom object,right, which is great on people
(22:37):
who have enterprise portals.Which is actually like becoming
more and more of a problem thatI'm noticing. People are getting
a lot of custom objects in theirportals depending on their
ambitions, and not everythingreally needs to be a custom
object anymore like it may haveonce used to be. Right? I mean,
not everything even needs to bea pipeline stage.
(22:57):
Some of the pipeline stagespeople have could be properties,
but that's a diatribe we canthink about.
Liz Moorehead (23:02):
Well, if not properties, they could be tasks.
Right. That's forever. I'mbeating the drum of like deal
stages or whatever stages. Theythey're they are not tasks.
They're milestones Like Yeah.
Chad Hohn (23:14):
Anyway It's a send whatever is a deal stage.
Liz Moorehead (23:18):
Yeah. Well,
Chad Hohn (23:22):
you know what's amazing is, this is, like, kind
of just an update that happeneda while back, but a task based
workflow. So like for example,if you're storing now
information about whether or notyou did a thing, well you could
have a task based workflow thatsays like, hi, I'm a task, I'm
related to a deal that haswhatever property filled in auto
(23:42):
complete myself. And that waylike if somebody does it, at
least the task cleans itself upand then it's not on somebody's
list of junk to do. Like stealthat workflow, it's amazing. It
like is such a quality of lifeimprovement for people with
complex business processes butmay end up going into one deal
for one task and doing like fourthings that they were all tasked
(24:04):
just so nobody forgets.
Right? But No.
George B. Thomas (24:08):
Question for you guys. We've talked about
three really great new featuresfor HubSpot Commerce Hub, but
what's still missing? What doour greedy, sprocket loving
little hearts want more of orless of?
Chad Hohn (24:22):
Oh, Max, I wanna know what you want.
Max Cohen (24:25):
I mean, are we are we are we rolling quotes into
Commerce Hub or are we keepingthat Sales Hub? It's both. I
mean
Liz Moorehead (24:35):
yeah. I would say it's both.
Max Cohen (24:37):
Man, we need a much better way to edit those
templates.
Chad Hohn (24:40):
Oh, yeah.
Max Cohen (24:42):
That is Awful. So stuck in the past. It's
terrible. And, like, hopefully,this is something we'll see with
with the the cash flow teamcoming on board. Yeah.
Right? But that's the to me,that is the biggest hindering
factor of
Chad Hohn (24:59):
Oh, yeah.
Max Cohen (24:59):
Commerce Hub is the just horrific experience of
editing a quote template.
Liz Moorehead (25:07):
So here's here's a question, Max. Because we've
seen where email got drag anddrop, right? And we know landing
pages and website pages aredrank. When you think about
that, when you say that, do youenvision, by the way, think
knowledge bases, they're stillworking on it last time I
(25:27):
checked, but I was on vacationlast week, maybe they fixed it.
Like, can migrate knowledge baseto a new Mhmm.
Customizing experience as well.But are you envisioning, like,
quotes eventually having, like,a drag and drop? Or when you say
a better entity experience, whatdo you mean?
Max Cohen (25:43):
Yes. But it can't be it can't be, as free form as the
CMS builder. It has to besomething more in line with like
a PandaDoc, right, where it'slike drag and drop on rails.
Yeah. Where the end result isyou're still building a quote.
Right? So it's gotta haveinformation on it. It's gotta
(26:04):
have a line item table or lineitem tables. Right? And a lot of
configuring, but then, like, youknow, you have full control,
like easy control over the
Chad Hohn (26:13):
Yeah. The bad Yeah. Like, if it had multiple line
items. Yeah. You'd be able to,like, filter these line items go
in this table, those line items,so this property go in that
table.
Yeah. Right? Like Something likethat.
Max Cohen (26:24):
And we we can do that. We'll quote happily, but
it's because we built an insaneamount of quote modules that are
still a nightmare to put ontothe quote itself. Yeah. Right?
Because they for anyone whodoesn't know is, like, a lot of
like the stuff you know aboutlike coding stuff in HubSpot
CMS, you throw a lot of thatknowledge out the window when
(26:45):
you go into quote templates.
Like it's bad.
Chad Hohn (26:48):
Right? It's its own animal. So
Liz Moorehead (26:51):
you it's almost I hear you saying it needs be to a
little bit of a unifiedexperience with the rest of what
dev deals with.
Max Cohen (26:57):
What I'm what I'm saying is HubSpot, it needs to
get really, really serious aboutdocument generation.
Liz Moorehead (27:02):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (27:03):
Right? That's the next step here because quotes
also lead into contracts, whichlead into this, that, the other
thing. Right? It's all related.They need to make a big take a
big swing at Panadol.
Right? Yeah. And cash
Chad Hohn (27:17):
flow had tech to do that.
Max Cohen (27:19):
Like, I they are gonna go into contracts because
I remember doing the Mondaymorning briefing Yeah. And them
showing screenshots of somestuff, and I saw contracts as an
object somewhere. I saw a thing.Right? And and
Liz Moorehead (27:34):
I don't know if was supposed to say anything
about that thing.
Max Cohen (27:36):
It's public. It's public. They put it
George B. Thomas (27:37):
up publicly.
Chad Hohn (27:38):
Oh.
Liz Moorehead (27:38):
They put
Max Cohen (27:38):
it up publicly. Right? They they haven't said
anything about it, but someoneaccidentally leaked a screenshot
just like they did with, like,the navigation. Whoopsie. Yeah.
Broke that on the show. Like,you know what I mean? It's
they're I I I hope that's whatthey're doing. Right? They they
do they they they've they'vethey're getting real serious
about payments, but the nextnatural step is to get real
(28:00):
serious about the documentgeneration because that still
can, like, really screw up anexperience when it's like, oh,
yeah, you're gonna build yourquote through here.
But then when you gotta gogenerate the kind, oh, we gotta
go to PandaDocs. Oh, why are weusing PandaDocs for a quote? Or
why are we using DocuSign for aquote? Why are we using and then
it just it muddies the water.Right?
Chad Hohn (28:19):
Yeah. I just finished building a crazy, like, contract
generation integration with theplatform, and it's like, man,
I've never been so lawyered inmy whole life. Like, it's
insane. I've never lawyered uplike so much, you know. And
Yeah.
It's like that is a world of itsown and it's all like word docs
and junk, you know. And and youalso need to support like third
(28:42):
party contracts because lot oftimes yeah. Redlining. They're
not gonna wanna sign yourcontract. They're gonna wanna
sometimes make you sign theircontract, you know, through
their system because reasons.
So there's like so much toconsider when it comes to that.
Like mind blowing amount ofdynamacy that needs to be
(29:02):
involved because what you soldalso needs to feed into the
generation of your desiredcontract template.
Max Cohen (29:09):
Correct.
Chad Hohn (29:10):
And so, like, you need to have a good document
that comes out of your quote,and then all those data points
need to be able to turn intosomething more legally binding
than we just, you know, flip thelittle signature bop on the
contract or on, like, a quote.Right?
Max Cohen (29:25):
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (29:26):
I approved the quote. That's all that means to
anybody. It's not in law. Like,there's no legal weight.
Max Cohen (29:32):
And, also, let me be clear.
Chad Hohn (29:33):
I have faith.
Max Cohen (29:33):
I think if any company out there can build a
killer doc gen tool that kindof, like, disrupts industry at
HubSpot.
Chad Hohn (29:41):
I'd I mean, end to end. Like, that's amazing having
an end to end. That's that's thebeauty of it. You know? Because
otherwise, you're not making anyou you have to make an
integration.
Right?
Liz Moorehead (29:51):
Yeah. Can I go totally not nerdy for mine?
Yeah. I was, I don't know howmany times but I on vacation
last if you hadn't heard yet,was on vacation last week.
George B. Thomas (30:02):
Wait, where were you?
Liz Moorehead (30:03):
Were you? I was trying to get some sun on some
beach somewhere and I was tryingto go into my mobile app. I
wanted to just manage someinvoices that had came through
while I was on vacation. And youknow what you can't do on the
mobile app?
Chad Hohn (30:22):
Yeah, none of that.
Liz Moorehead (30:23):
You can't get to, none of that. You can't get to
invoices. You can't like closethem. You can't say it was paid
by ACH or, you know, if it
Chad Hohn (30:31):
was It's like about sales and marketing is about all
you can do in there. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (30:35):
So I wanna see Commerce Hub inside of my mobile
device because then if I'm likeusing that on my phone or my
iPad, then I can and and as abusiness owner, have to like
impact some of those thingsthose things are impacting me
where I'm at away from my desk,I actually don't feel like I'm
(30:56):
handcuffed. Because I did, Iliterally was like, okay, so now
what do I have to do? I gotta goback on the ship, and I gotta go
bug in my laptop, you know, fireit up and freaking, I don't
know. I wanna do work rightwhere I'm at. And, and the
reason I'm saying this isbecause they've done a massive
(31:17):
job of actually bringingmarketing into the app.
What because it just used tokinda be like a sales app that
you could put on your phone. Nowit is literally a sales and
marketing app that you can haveon.
Chad Hohn (31:29):
They need support in there too, though. Like, that's
one of like, help desk is sogood on desk desktop, but you're
you're ball and chain to youryour desk. Like, if you wanna
step away to go grab a cheeseboogie or something, like, you
know, you're toast. Right?
Liz Moorehead (31:42):
I don't know about a cheese boogie, but I'll
take a cheeseburger. I'd eat oneof those. I wouldn't eat the
prior one. But here's what I'llsay. And I think this is really
important for HubSpot to hear.
Like there should be a good iPadversion of the app. There should
be a good phone version of theapp. They can be one and the
same if we're smart. But withAI, okay, I'm throwing it out
(32:05):
there, that's not what theshow's about. We are going to be
living in a completely differentworld where you won't
necessarily need to be or wantto be chained down to an office
or a desk or, or what we'vecalled for years, you know, a
computer.
And so, hopefully HubSpot canget us app wise into a place
(32:27):
where we can do businessanywhere, anytime. And I think
Commerce Hub in the app for thisepisode is my choice of things
that I wish would be happeningdown the line.
Chad Hohn (32:39):
I think for me, it's just being able to edit
partially paid invoices. Like,please just allow us to do that.
That'd be great. Or at minimum,like, custom properties can be
edited even if an invoice ispartially paid. Thanks.
That's all I want for Christmas.Thanks.
Liz Moorehead (33:00):
That's a very simple Christmas list.
Chad Hohn (33:02):
I mean, it is, but it's been, like, two years
that's been on my Christmaslist. So, you know, you can put
custom properties on invoicesnow. But once the invoice is
partially paid, even if thosecustom properties are
calculated, they stay at whatthey were at the time that it
got partially paid. Even if thedata is updated in the object
data table itself, it does notrerender the, like, little web
(33:27):
page thingy that the invoice ishosted on.
George B. Thomas (33:29):
It is bad, man. Yeah. Why can't we be
happy?
Max Cohen (33:34):
Alright. Brutal.
George B. Thomas (33:35):
Any other wish list items, folks? You guys
aren't asking for much.
Liz Moorehead (33:40):
No. Not at the time.
Max Cohen (33:42):
I mean, it's I'm trying to think of anything else
that would actually lead pastthat.
Liz Moorehead (33:47):
I I mean, my first response to the question
was gonna be like, I don't knowif I need anything. Like, how I
use it. Yeah. Right? How I useYeah.
Chad Hohn (33:57):
It suitable for you?
Liz Moorehead (33:58):
Yeah. Other than the mobile app gripe that I
have, like, I don't know if Ineed anything else. And those
that did need a lot, Chad justfreaking kinda knocked it out
the park with like, hey, forthose of you that you couldn't,
now you can.
Chad Hohn (34:14):
Mostly. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (34:15):
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (34:17):
We're we're very, very, very, very close to, like,
truly everything. I mean, wedon't have the end to end, you
know, if you're doing biggerproducts and contracting and
stuff, but we're really, reallyclose.
Max Cohen (34:29):
I mean, may this okay. So maybe some of the like,
I guess, I don't know if I'mbegging for this yet, but maybe
the the next horizon they shouldexplore, right, is some of the
more like complicated, you know,payment structure. Is it or
subscription types? I can'tremember that Stripe does.
Chad Hohn (34:49):
Yeah. Usage based subscriptions would be amazing.
Liz Moorehead (34:53):
Cool would
Max Cohen (34:53):
that pricing, graduate pricing, tier pricing,
package pricing, that kind ofstuff.
Chad Hohn (34:58):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (34:58):
Right? All things are pretty easy to do with another
app. But, like, this issomething that should be built
in and and natively supportedby, you know, HubSpot payments.
Right? So we'll get there.
Chad Hohn (35:13):
Yeah. Don't wait for it too fast.
George B. Thomas (35:16):
Yeah. Well, George, take us home. Land the
plane. What's the one thing youwant us to walk away with from
today's conversation between oneand seventeen things?
Liz Moorehead (35:25):
I yeah. No. I feel like it should be Chad's
one thing that he wants peopleto walk away
George B. Thomas (35:30):
wanna do it?
Chad Hohn (35:31):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I I would just say likethe the future is here, you
know? And if you have a complexneed, I mean, you can start
exploring, you know, just getyour postman out, start testing
some API calls, start makingsome, you know, objects, start
creating some custom properties.You know, the features here, you
(35:52):
can really start to see wherethe limitations are. And the
Commerce Hub team absolutelyloves feedback and making sure
that they're gonna account foreverybody's needs. So don't be
afraid to reach out to people onLinkedIn from Commerce Hub.
You know, they they'd love tohear what issues you're running
into to make sure that they addthe number of people who want
(36:12):
the thing that they can't do,you know, especially like
partially paid invoices neededitable functionality. Let's
set them up with that. Woah.Yeah. But yeah.
Like, I mean, that's it. Like,the future's here and start
testing it. You know, give it awhirl. You know, there is there
is still like, there's still alot to do, but so much more is
(36:36):
possible than it was before.
Liz Moorehead (36:38):
Yeah. That's I I would I love what you're saying,
Chad. Listen, ladies andgentlemen, at the end of the
day, if you had given CommerceHub a shot previously and was
like, not yet, I would say toyou, maybe now's the time.
Chad Hohn (36:54):
Yeah. Okay,
Liz Moorehead (36:57):
Hub Heroes. We've reached the end of another
episode. Will Lord Lack continueto loom over the community or
will we be able to defeat him inthe next episode of the Hub
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(37:20):
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(37:42):
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Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
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(00:22):
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(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Liz Moorehead (00:53):
We're back, gentlemen.
Max Cohen (00:55):
That was the best transition you've ever done,
George.
Chad Hohn (00:57):
You like that? Mean, even when you know it's coming
somewhere, it still always getsyou by surprise, and that was
particularly good.
Liz Moorehead (01:06):
I do what I can. I do it. I'm I'm refreshed from
vacation. So that's that wasthat good intro there for you.
Chad Hohn (01:12):
Love it.
George B. Thomas (01:13):
Well, the gang is all back together again,
folks. How are
Chad Hohn (01:17):
we feeling?
George B. Thomas (01:18):
George, you saw Vacation Brain or you dialed
in?
Max Cohen (01:22):
I still have Vacation Brain.
Liz Moorehead (01:23):
Yeah. I'm I'm trying to get dialed in. It's
you know, I got back Liz andthere was 47 HubSpot updates.
There's about 4,700 emails. Andso I'm trying to get dialed in.
I I feel like Monday is like,let's let's ease my way into
trying to figure out whatHubSpot did in a week while I
(01:44):
was gone. What all the people inmy email need now that I'm back.
Yet also create some contentBecause before this, was on the
customer platform podcast, andwe're doing this podcast, and I
have two women of HubSpotinterviews I'm doing today. So
it's a content rich day, butalso a helping I better be
(02:05):
dialed in, I guess. My answeris, Liz, I'm officially dialed
in.
George B. Thomas (02:09):
Well, good news. We are easing you in with
a super simple, lightweight,very frill free conversation.
Liz Moorehead (02:17):
No. I saw the notes. No.
George B. Thomas (02:19):
No. Because see, when you left, Chad showed
up and said, I wanna talk aboutnerd stuff today.
Liz Moorehead (02:26):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (02:26):
I wanna talk about nerdy commerce hub stuff
today. But before we get intothat, George, let's pop quiz for
a second. Uh-oh. Let's dust offthe little dust bunnies from
vacation. Can you give thelisteners at home a quick recap
of what Commerce Hub is in casethey are unfamiliar with the
platform?
Liz Moorehead (02:45):
A little recap is kind of difficult because
Commerce Hub used to be to whatCommerce Hub is now is
dramatically different. But I'llsimplify the complex in saying
Commerce Hub is a way for you toget paid, And there's multiple
ways that you can get paid. Sowhen I think of Commerce Hub, I
think of quoting, I think ofinvoicing, I think of payment
(03:08):
links, I think of subscriptions.So these are like the
terminology of things that wouldbe in there. But it, but it, for
me, if I really just go highlevel, it's a Godsend because
our business runs completely onCommerce Hub, meaning the whole
CPQ, the whole, like gettingpeople to book for super admin
(03:29):
training, like every, everythingthat touches money is Commerce
Hub.
And what's nice is we literallyhave our accountants in there as
well. And so like, they can seethings and there's integrations
and like, it just, again, Godsend and think of anything that
touches money or getting paid,that's Commerce Hub.
George B. Thomas (03:50):
Chad, did he miss anything in his love letter
to Commerce Hub?
Chad Hohn (03:54):
I mean, I think that's, that's a great way to
put it. You know, there's awhole bunch of different
mechanisms. You know, we can gointo detail in any of those
types of things. But really alot of the stuff that's been
updated recently has been backend changes and the ability to
do things that you used to notbe able to do, but still with
some limitations. Commerce Hubhas always been like, unless
(04:15):
you're just gonna use HubSpotand be okay with HubSpot and
everything that it currentlyhas, it used to be a 100% like,
that's good.
Okay. I can work with CommerceHub, but if I wanna connect to
any external system, it was justlike a giant nightmare. And,
like, there are still somelimitations that make design you
have to take designconsiderations. Right? But it's
(04:39):
a lot a lot a lot better than itused to be.
And I'm really, reallyinterested in Max's take on all
this as well when we get tosubscriptions, especially.
Max Cohen (04:47):
Yeah. Can concur. I don't know if I have anything
additional to add beyond whatGeorge and Chad said. But what I
will say is it's it's anexciting time
Chad Hohn (05:00):
with,
Max Cohen (05:01):
with cash flow joining the fray and injecting
Oh, yeah. Yeah. A completelydifferent perspective on
commerce and the back end enginethat makes it all run. Mhmm.
Chad Hohn (05:13):
So Well, I think part of that's gonna be a rev rec
engine that's gonna be a littlebetter across all your stuff.
And that's one thing that peoplehave a hard time with in
Commerce Hub.
Max Cohen (05:21):
Yeah. You're gonna start seeing some really cool
stuff in the next coming months.So I mean, we already are seeing
little bits and boops here andthere.
Liz Moorehead (05:29):
Right? But Bebop boops coming.
George B. Thomas (05:32):
Beep boops. Speaking of speaking of incoming
beep bops and beep boops, Chad,you already started digging into
this a little bit, but I want toask you directly. You had a
number of updates that youwanted to specifically talk
about today with HubSpotCommerce Hub. And we may have
more on that list that we expandwith, but what makes you excited
(05:52):
overall about some of the thingsthat we're going to be
discussing today?
Chad Hohn (05:56):
I mean, I just think that, you know, overall, I I get
really excited about the factthat it's no longer just like I
mean, again, designconsiderations need to be taken
into account with what's allowedand not allowed, but it's not
just an it only works if yoursource of truth is HubSpot
anymore. Like you can actuallystart to come in and they're
(06:18):
truly trying to make paymentslike a first class object, if we
call it that way or like not asecond class object. Right? And
someday they'll do that withquotes that they're not there
yet, but it's it's very, veryexciting to see. I mean, just
like Max was saying, it's anexciting time to be alive,
right, when it comes to all thatwe can do in the realm of of
(06:43):
Commerce Hub and money andtransferring.
And I mean, can, there's reallycool stuff you can do. You can
associate subscriptions toobjects they never were
originally gonna be associatedto before, like custom objects
now, which is really cool.
Max Cohen (06:56):
Oh, is that out?
Chad Hohn (06:58):
Yeah. I I least I was able to, like, add it at one
time. I was looking at which ispretty dope. You can't do with
payments yet. I had a bone topick with a friend of mine over
at Commerce about that.
But they said it's on the roadmap. But, like, man, all the
stuff that's been on the roadmap is finally getting off the
road map and into beta or intoproduction, which is amazing.
George B. Thomas (07:19):
Phenomenal. Alright. So let's dig in. We're
starting with HubSpot payments.Correct?
Chad Hohn (07:25):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the payment write API is
huge. And I think the abilityfor you to just hit from an
external system with the API,generate a payment and associate
it to invoices, quotes, deals,basically all the commerce
objects, you're still limited towhat you can associate it to,
(07:46):
which is one of my gripes as itcurrently sits.
And there's like, when youassociate a payment to say an
invoice, it locks you fromediting some invoice properties.
And unfortunately, customproperties are still not on the
list of properties you canupdate while an invoice is
(08:09):
partially paid. But I do have iton good authority that that may
change at some point and theyultimately really want to let
you edit invoices invoiceswhenever you want just like
other accounting platforms likeQuickBooks. Right? You can just
edit an invoice in QuickBooksand like add line items like,
let's say or or or an estimateor whatever.
Right? Like you can just updateit and then show, okay, hey,
(08:32):
this is a lot and I came reallyoriginally from the construction
industry. And one of the thingsthat's huge there is I need to
be able to have a partially paidinvoice, but also add a scope of
work so that my customer trulyunderstands the total amount
including like a line for achange order or something like
(08:53):
that. But right now withCommerce Hub, if you wanna do
that even still, you have tocreate a new invoice for every
payment that you really want tobring in, right? And not
everybody in the constructionindustry likes to do it that
way.
They like to have one runninginvoice and you sign another
quote and it updates an existinginvoice, for example, with
(09:14):
another line item. But all thatto say like being able to laser
in a payment from an externalsystem and now, of course it's
already been out for a while,you can create invoices with an
API call. Like you can nowcreate a back end integration
with some kind of other systemand make what's in that other
system reflect in HubSpotagainst your deals. So if you're
(09:37):
mapping contacts, companies, youknow, for like contacts and
customer, you know, whatever,and then you're doing deals for
all of your sales or yourprojects or whatever kind of
system you're using, you canactually make all of the line
items and everything reflect,which is amazing. You've never
been able to do that before itAnd comes without manual
Liz Moorehead (10:00):
I'll throw one thing in here because I've been
hanging out with my friend ChrisCarillon for a while. You
mentioned deals, Chad. I'll evenmention in a world where you
live in orders, orders insteadof deals, right? And so this
idea of living in a world oforders and living in a world of
an external system to be able toput these things in place,
(10:21):
because that's the thing I washoping that you would get to is
like external systems to thenpush it into HubSpot, because I
already use HubSpot payments,but I use HubSpot payments in
HubSpot. So I think that's a bigdifferentiator that the
listenersviewers should beunderstanding.
If I have this thing over here,and I've always dreamed that it
(10:42):
could interact with line itemsand invoices, when somebody
places an order, or when salescloses a deal, the answer
Chad Hohn (10:49):
is yes. Yes. Yeah. It's awesome. And being able to
like bring in those line itemsis like a thing.
Like, we'll get to other stuffhere, but yeah, I'll let you go
Max. So,
Max Cohen (11:02):
and just to like clarify it, so it's not
transferring funds into yourHubSpot payment account that
then goes to your bank account.It's simply just showing the
record.
Chad Hohn (11:14):
Yes, it's creating the payment object record.
Max Cohen (11:17):
Got it.
Chad Hohn (11:18):
And so you're now able to do that. There is not a
way at this point to generatelike obviously a charge a card
via API or anything like that.Right?
Max Cohen (11:30):
This is more so like a reporting thing.
Chad Hohn (11:33):
But it's huge being able to align some external
system, like let's say you havea big ERP, some custom thing at
your company. Well, nowHubSpot's a viable option to
actually show your revenuerecognition and what line items
were sold so that your friggingsupport team actually knows what
in the holy heck was in theorder or was
Max Cohen (11:53):
Yeah. I mean, the big the big thing for me, like, I
think this was like one this andsubscriptions. Can you write
subscriptions yet?
Chad Hohn (12:02):
Yeah, dog.
Max Cohen (12:03):
Okay. So okay.
Chad Hohn (12:05):
So and they got them line items, dude. Like, they got
them line items.
George B. Thomas (12:09):
They got them line items. They
Max Cohen (12:12):
got them line the the other thing They
Liz Moorehead (12:14):
are right over there.
Max Cohen (12:16):
Yeah. Yeah. The thing is is like, I feel like that was
the last two big missing piecesof the puzzle for HubSpot to be
the the ultimate final techstack for a SaaS company.
Chad Hohn (12:32):
Mhmm. Exactly.
Max Cohen (12:33):
You think about it. We had all these awesome
marketing sales and servicetools. But, like, the thing is
most of the SaaS products,you're not sending someone money
on a HubSpot quote to goactivate your app. They've got
it hooked up to Stripe.
Chad Hohn (12:47):
Or something. Right?
Max Cohen (12:48):
They've got their back end system where someone
logs into the back end, goesinto settings, and pays with the
credit card. Right? Yeah. Butnow you could take that
subscription that's generatedand send it into HubSpot.
Chad Hohn (12:59):
And take those payments that are made. Objects.
Right?
Max Cohen (13:02):
Yeah. Exactly. Right? Like a customer account or like
a Yeah. Some inter we call themapp licenses.
We have an app license object atHapley. Right? You know? And so,
like, you could take those andmake them show up as payments
inside of there, right, whenpeople are paying in your app
through, like, whatever custompayment system that you have set
up. Right?
(13:23):
Like, I think it's fine. Like,they've they've they've gone
full certain now with how goodservice hub is. Right? To, like,
run your support team on it.It's a joke it's a joke now.
Like, it it it literally haseverything you need.
Chad Hohn (13:37):
Right? And customer really good.
Max Cohen (13:39):
Go can can make API calls to your internal system to
do stuff now.
Chad Hohn (13:43):
Exactly. Yes. With the customer agent being able to
interact with your system andyou can fire off an API call to
query something in a middle of alive chat, like, that's insane.
You know, that's also anotherthing.
Max Cohen (13:54):
It's officially to me, it officially has everything
a SaaS company needs.
Liz Moorehead (13:59):
Well, I think so. And here's the thing. I know
this is not why we're here, butI wanna throw this in because,
Max, you literally said helpdesk. This morning, there were
six updates, six differentunique updates to help desk.
Mhmm.
So,
Max Cohen (14:13):
like Can't wait to go through every single one of them
on the live show.
Liz Moorehead (14:16):
It's An hour. It's crazy.
Max Cohen (14:19):
Sweet.
Chad Hohn (14:19):
It's exciting. I'm
George B. Thomas (14:21):
excited. I understood 60%, I think, of what
was just discussed, but that'sbecause I'm a content nerd.
You'll find me in the contentmarketing hub. But, Chad, tell
us where we're going next. Whatare we talking about?
Chad Hohn (14:33):
Yeah. Well well, one more thing I forgot to mention.
Well, I guess this is kind of wewere alluding to it, Is being
able to generate subscriptionsvia API. You can mark those
subscriptions via API to eithersend invoices or not send
invoices. And so there'll beable to like actually pay for
those subscriptions or whatever.
(14:54):
And then there's like, I mean,there's some pretty advanced
functionality and now in thedata model builder, you can
actually add those subscriptionsto other objects, custom
objects, whatever. And thatgives you line item level
reporting. Like some people havedone kinda what, you know, Max
and the team have done when itcomes to what they're selling
(15:17):
and keeping track of it and putit in a custom object and run
associations. But realistically,you could actually use line
items now to see who has whatproducts more or less. Like
there is a world where peoplecoming into this who don't have
like legacy architectures and abunch of custom reports built
around this can actually havethe information they need.
(15:39):
And in addition to all of thatgood juicy delectable updated
goodness, they also give you theability to add subscription
custom properties, which issuper amazing. So you can add
any kind of property you need.It's not just the standard
HubSpot subscriptions.
Max Cohen (15:57):
It could be like what features someone has, what
Chad Hohn (16:00):
can programs have do feature that. Flags on your
subscriptions. A 100% like inyour quote, if this line item's
here, generate the subscriptionwith that feature flag. That
tells your back end system boop,or, you know, whatever after you
know, when it when your quotegoes and then it syncs back or
something like that. But you canat least make it accessible now
to your support team and helpdesk.
(16:21):
They know truly whatsubscriptions this company has
if they have multiple if youhave multiple products or
whatever. And, I mean, it can beupdated, it can be created, like
all these things can can occurnow on subscriptions. There are
some limitations, like like Isaid, with invoices, with being
partially paid, you kinda getlocked down. But luckily
(16:42):
subscriptions, you can updateover time. You can just
reinitialize the subscription,
Intro (16:46):
So
Liz Moorehead (16:47):
which is I wanna jump in here for a second
because we're throwing the wordline items around and products
around. And this is somethingthat I've had to teach people.
So let's go back to basics.We're gonna step out of
Nerdville for a second, which,by the way,
George B. Thomas (17:00):
I'm question.
Liz Moorehead (17:00):
My question's Yeah.
Max Cohen (17:01):
Oh, yeah. We're gonna step outside of Nerdville to
give a nuanced take on productsand line items.
Liz Moorehead (17:06):
So that's hilarious. So first of all,
products are line items and lineitems are products in HubSpot.
They're one and the same thing.Like, basically, you see you see
what I'm saying? Like, like, ifyou create a product and then
you go to do a quote or do whatChad's talking about, you're
basically that line item is aproduct that you've created in
(17:27):
HubSpot.
And so like, it's just crazy howwe have these two different
names for this kind of samething. Yeah. Just know that a
line item is a product and aproduct is a line item. But
also, what I wanna just doubleclick on here is, for years, for
years people have asked for lineitem reporting. And the fact
that you're gonna be able to nowhave line item reporting, but
(17:50):
line item reporting based on anexternal system that is pushing
into HubSpot.
So if you're sitting here andyou're like, well, that's
something we might wanna leaninto, then you're gonna wanna
figure out how to get yourproducts, AKA your line items in
HubSpot in a way that they canbe used for what Chad's talking
about.
Chad Hohn (18:10):
Right. Can I
George B. Thomas (18:11):
clarify something really quickly?
Because I think I understandYeah. A product is like the
thing that globally exists inyour database that can be pulled
into any invoice. A line itemexplicitly refers to product
that is listed within a specificinvoice. Like, that is that line
item in that invoice.
Max Cohen (18:28):
It's an instance it's an instance of a product being
associated to a quote.
Liz Moorehead (18:33):
Yep. Yeah. Or invoice or
Chad Hohn (18:35):
yes. Yep. It's like a product is a template. Right?
And you start from the template,but then you can customize it
while you're formatting thesubscription or you're
formatting the like invoice andany of those properties that are
changed on it, including customproperties, which you can put on
products and anything you put ona product is an option on a line
item at that, you know, itpushes down essentially.
(18:58):
Yep. And each of those are aninstance of that templated item
and they refer back to theproduct. So like when you're
doing line item level reporting,you'll know how many line items
that you sold related back tothat parent product. So if it's
like an app license for, youknow, quote happily a user or
(19:22):
something like that, then youhave four different invoices
with like quote happily user asa line item. You can sum total
the number of users that yousold, right?
But you know that it's relatedback to that product template.
Liz Moorehead (19:39):
Yeah. And it really does speed up things
because again, you might thinkabout, and by the way, we're now
leaning into where Max isprobably gonna show for, you
know, who he should show for.But, like, you have multiple
products, aka multiple lineitems, which means you're also
creating kinda like this bundlescenario Mhmm. Inside of, you
(20:01):
know, your quote, your invoice,your whatever it is. So, yeah.
Max Cohen (20:05):
Good luck building that bundle.
Liz Moorehead (20:07):
There you go. See, I've I served it up for
you. I served it up for you. Youcan do that, by the way, with
quote happily
Max Cohen (20:14):
bundling. Right.
Liz Moorehead (20:15):
Yeah. Anyway, back to Chad and the nerdiness.
Chad Hohn (20:18):
Max is just very modest.
Liz Moorehead (20:20):
Mhmm. Yes. Typically, he's the most modest
on the podcast.
Max Cohen (20:23):
Hey. Listen. Listen, George. You you you you set that
ad up all on your own.
Liz Moorehead (20:28):
I did. I did.
Max Cohen (20:28):
Yeah. You did.
Liz Moorehead (20:29):
I kinda did it on purpose.
Max Cohen (20:31):
You did.
George B. Thomas (20:31):
Shilling for big popsicle.
Liz Moorehead (20:33):
I mean, listen, the team at quote happily have
been killing it for like two ofour clients who are using the
product recently. So I gottagive them some love. I gotta
give them some love.
Max Cohen (20:42):
Yeah. Alright. Back to chips. That's good.
Chad Hohn (20:44):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. So the other, one other
thing that's really, reallyhelpful is now not not unlike
the ability to have customproperties on pay or on,
subscriptions, you can do it onpayments now. So the ability to
store additional metadata aboutyour payment, like, I mean, one
thing at roofing businesspartner that would do happen all
(21:07):
the time is we would have tocreate a, like, QBO payment
custom object because they wouldneed to keep track of is this
like a deposit payment, like apayment that happened for
material delivery and they wannalike sum total or like is this
payment related to, you know,like a material invoice or
(21:29):
something like that.
They needed to store additionalmetadata so you could run
calculated properties to sumtotal up like, I have a sum
total of all of the depositpayments that are related to
this. And then so you could takethe amount invoice, the amount
received in payments andregardless of how that payment
got in there, whether it's, youknow, a it manually added
(21:53):
payment, it synced over from QBOto HubSpot using the QBO sync.
It was created via HubSpotpayments or created via your
bring your own Stripe HubSpotpayments or whatever, right? All
of that functionality then well,it still wasn't enough because
we didn't know what type ofpayments they were for. And so
(22:14):
now you have the capacity toactually put in additional
metadata about whatever thatpayment is, which allows you to
create roll up properties ordifferent things that you might
need really, really, really,really helpful.
And then people can ditch theirwhatever payment custom object
now and free up a custom object,right, which is great on people
(22:37):
who have enterprise portals.Which is actually like becoming
more and more of a problem thatI'm noticing. People are getting
a lot of custom objects in theirportals depending on their
ambitions, and not everythingreally needs to be a custom
object anymore like it may haveonce used to be. Right? I mean,
not everything even needs to bea pipeline stage.
(22:57):
Some of the pipeline stagespeople have could be properties,
but that's a diatribe we canthink about.
Liz Moorehead (23:02):
Well, if not properties, they could be tasks.
Right. That's forever. I'mbeating the drum of like deal
stages or whatever stages. Theythey're they are not tasks.
They're milestones Like Yeah.
Chad Hohn (23:14):
Anyway It's a send whatever is a deal stage.
Liz Moorehead (23:18):
Yeah. Well,
Chad Hohn (23:22):
you know what's amazing is, this is, like, kind
of just an update that happeneda while back, but a task based
workflow. So like for example,if you're storing now
information about whether or notyou did a thing, well you could
have a task based workflow thatsays like, hi, I'm a task, I'm
related to a deal that haswhatever property filled in auto
(23:42):
complete myself. And that waylike if somebody does it, at
least the task cleans itself upand then it's not on somebody's
list of junk to do. Like stealthat workflow, it's amazing. It
like is such a quality of lifeimprovement for people with
complex business processes butmay end up going into one deal
for one task and doing like fourthings that they were all tasked
(24:04):
just so nobody forgets.
Right? But No.
George B. Thomas (24:08):
Question for you guys. We've talked about
three really great new featuresfor HubSpot Commerce Hub, but
what's still missing? What doour greedy, sprocket loving
little hearts want more of orless of?
Chad Hohn (24:22):
Oh, Max, I wanna know what you want.
Max Cohen (24:25):
I mean, are we are we are we rolling quotes into
Commerce Hub or are we keepingthat Sales Hub? It's both. I
mean
Liz Moorehead (24:35):
yeah. I would say it's both.
Max Cohen (24:37):
Man, we need a much better way to edit those
templates.
Chad Hohn (24:40):
Oh, yeah.
Max Cohen (24:42):
That is Awful. So stuck in the past. It's
terrible. And, like, hopefully,this is something we'll see with
with the the cash flow teamcoming on board. Yeah.
Right? But that's the to me,that is the biggest hindering
factor of
Chad Hohn (24:59):
Oh, yeah.
Max Cohen (24:59):
Commerce Hub is the just horrific experience of
editing a quote template.
Liz Moorehead (25:07):
So here's here's a question, Max. Because we've
seen where email got drag anddrop, right? And we know landing
pages and website pages aredrank. When you think about
that, when you say that, do youenvision, by the way, think
knowledge bases, they're stillworking on it last time I
(25:27):
checked, but I was on vacationlast week, maybe they fixed it.
Like, can migrate knowledge baseto a new Mhmm.
Customizing experience as well.But are you envisioning, like,
quotes eventually having, like,a drag and drop? Or when you say
a better entity experience, whatdo you mean?
Max Cohen (25:43):
Yes. But it can't be it can't be, as free form as the
CMS builder. It has to besomething more in line with like
a PandaDoc, right, where it'slike drag and drop on rails.
Yeah. Where the end result isyou're still building a quote.
Right? So it's gotta haveinformation on it. It's gotta
(26:04):
have a line item table or lineitem tables. Right? And a lot of
configuring, but then, like, youknow, you have full control,
like easy control over the
Chad Hohn (26:13):
Yeah. The bad Yeah. Like, if it had multiple line
items. Yeah. You'd be able to,like, filter these line items go
in this table, those line items,so this property go in that
table.
Yeah. Right? Like Something likethat.
Max Cohen (26:24):
And we we can do that. We'll quote happily, but
it's because we built an insaneamount of quote modules that are
still a nightmare to put ontothe quote itself. Yeah. Right?
Because they for anyone whodoesn't know is, like, a lot of
like the stuff you know aboutlike coding stuff in HubSpot
CMS, you throw a lot of thatknowledge out the window when
(26:45):
you go into quote templates.
Like it's bad.
Chad Hohn (26:48):
Right? It's its own animal. So
Liz Moorehead (26:51):
you it's almost I hear you saying it needs be to a
little bit of a unifiedexperience with the rest of what
dev deals with.
Max Cohen (26:57):
What I'm what I'm saying is HubSpot, it needs to
get really, really serious aboutdocument generation.
Liz Moorehead (27:02):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (27:03):
Right? That's the next step here because quotes
also lead into contracts, whichlead into this, that, the other
thing. Right? It's all related.They need to make a big take a
big swing at Panadol.
Right? Yeah. And cash
Chad Hohn (27:17):
flow had tech to do that.
Max Cohen (27:19):
Like, I they are gonna go into contracts because
I remember doing the Mondaymorning briefing Yeah. And them
showing screenshots of somestuff, and I saw contracts as an
object somewhere. I saw a thing.Right? And and
Liz Moorehead (27:34):
I don't know if was supposed to say anything
about that thing.
Max Cohen (27:36):
It's public. It's public. They put it
George B. Thomas (27:37):
up publicly.
Chad Hohn (27:38):
Oh.
Liz Moorehead (27:38):
They put
Max Cohen (27:38):
it up publicly. Right? They they haven't said
anything about it, but someoneaccidentally leaked a screenshot
just like they did with, like,the navigation. Whoopsie. Yeah.
Broke that on the show. Like,you know what I mean? It's
they're I I I hope that's whatthey're doing. Right? They they
do they they they've they'vethey're getting real serious
about payments, but the nextnatural step is to get real
(28:00):
serious about the documentgeneration because that still
can, like, really screw up anexperience when it's like, oh,
yeah, you're gonna build yourquote through here.
But then when you gotta gogenerate the kind, oh, we gotta
go to PandaDocs. Oh, why are weusing PandaDocs for a quote? Or
why are we using DocuSign for aquote? Why are we using and then
it just it muddies the water.Right?
Chad Hohn (28:19):
Yeah. I just finished building a crazy, like, contract
generation integration with theplatform, and it's like, man,
I've never been so lawyered inmy whole life. Like, it's
insane. I've never lawyered uplike so much, you know. And
Yeah.
It's like that is a world of itsown and it's all like word docs
and junk, you know. And and youalso need to support like third
(28:42):
party contracts because lot oftimes yeah. Redlining. They're
not gonna wanna sign yourcontract. They're gonna wanna
sometimes make you sign theircontract, you know, through
their system because reasons.
So there's like so much toconsider when it comes to that.
Like mind blowing amount ofdynamacy that needs to be
(29:02):
involved because what you soldalso needs to feed into the
generation of your desiredcontract template.
Max Cohen (29:09):
Correct.
Chad Hohn (29:10):
And so, like, you need to have a good document
that comes out of your quote,and then all those data points
need to be able to turn intosomething more legally binding
than we just, you know, flip thelittle signature bop on the
contract or on, like, a quote.Right?
Max Cohen (29:25):
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (29:26):
I approved the quote. That's all that means to
anybody. It's not in law. Like,there's no legal weight.
Max Cohen (29:32):
And, also, let me be clear.
Chad Hohn (29:33):
I have faith.
Max Cohen (29:33):
I think if any company out there can build a
killer doc gen tool that kindof, like, disrupts industry at
HubSpot.
Chad Hohn (29:41):
I'd I mean, end to end. Like, that's amazing having
an end to end. That's that's thebeauty of it. You know? Because
otherwise, you're not making anyou you have to make an
integration.
Right?
Liz Moorehead (29:51):
Yeah. Can I go totally not nerdy for mine?
Yeah. I was, I don't know howmany times but I on vacation
last if you hadn't heard yet,was on vacation last week.
George B. Thomas (30:02):
Wait, where were you?
Liz Moorehead (30:03):
Were you? I was trying to get some sun on some
beach somewhere and I was tryingto go into my mobile app. I
wanted to just manage someinvoices that had came through
while I was on vacation. And youknow what you can't do on the
mobile app?
Chad Hohn (30:22):
Yeah, none of that.
Liz Moorehead (30:23):
You can't get to, none of that. You can't get to
invoices. You can't like closethem. You can't say it was paid
by ACH or, you know, if it
Chad Hohn (30:31):
was It's like about sales and marketing is about all
you can do in there. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (30:35):
So I wanna see Commerce Hub inside of my mobile
device because then if I'm likeusing that on my phone or my
iPad, then I can and and as abusiness owner, have to like
impact some of those thingsthose things are impacting me
where I'm at away from my desk,I actually don't feel like I'm
(30:56):
handcuffed. Because I did, Iliterally was like, okay, so now
what do I have to do? I gotta goback on the ship, and I gotta go
bug in my laptop, you know, fireit up and freaking, I don't
know. I wanna do work rightwhere I'm at. And, and the
reason I'm saying this isbecause they've done a massive
(31:17):
job of actually bringingmarketing into the app.
What because it just used tokinda be like a sales app that
you could put on your phone. Nowit is literally a sales and
marketing app that you can haveon.
Chad Hohn (31:29):
They need support in there too, though. Like, that's
one of like, help desk is sogood on desk desktop, but you're
you're ball and chain to youryour desk. Like, if you wanna
step away to go grab a cheeseboogie or something, like, you
know, you're toast. Right?
Liz Moorehead (31:42):
I don't know about a cheese boogie, but I'll
take a cheeseburger. I'd eat oneof those. I wouldn't eat the
prior one. But here's what I'llsay. And I think this is really
important for HubSpot to hear.
Like there should be a good iPadversion of the app. There should
be a good phone version of theapp. They can be one and the
same if we're smart. But withAI, okay, I'm throwing it out
(32:05):
there, that's not what theshow's about. We are going to be
living in a completely differentworld where you won't
necessarily need to be or wantto be chained down to an office
or a desk or, or what we'vecalled for years, you know, a
computer.
And so, hopefully HubSpot canget us app wise into a place
(32:27):
where we can do businessanywhere, anytime. And I think
Commerce Hub in the app for thisepisode is my choice of things
that I wish would be happeningdown the line.
Chad Hohn (32:39):
I think for me, it's just being able to edit
partially paid invoices. Like,please just allow us to do that.
That'd be great. Or at minimum,like, custom properties can be
edited even if an invoice ispartially paid. Thanks.
That's all I want for Christmas.Thanks.
Liz Moorehead (33:00):
That's a very simple Christmas list.
Chad Hohn (33:02):
I mean, it is, but it's been, like, two years
that's been on my Christmaslist. So, you know, you can put
custom properties on invoicesnow. But once the invoice is
partially paid, even if thosecustom properties are
calculated, they stay at whatthey were at the time that it
got partially paid. Even if thedata is updated in the object
data table itself, it does notrerender the, like, little web
(33:27):
page thingy that the invoice ishosted on.
George B. Thomas (33:29):
It is bad, man. Yeah. Why can't we be
happy?
Max Cohen (33:34):
Alright. Brutal.
George B. Thomas (33:35):
Any other wish list items, folks? You guys
aren't asking for much.
Liz Moorehead (33:40):
No. Not at the time.
Max Cohen (33:42):
I mean, it's I'm trying to think of anything else
that would actually lead pastthat.
Liz Moorehead (33:47):
I I mean, my first response to the question
was gonna be like, I don't knowif I need anything. Like, how I
use it. Yeah. Right? How I useYeah.
Chad Hohn (33:57):
It suitable for you?
Liz Moorehead (33:58):
Yeah. Other than the mobile app gripe that I
have, like, I don't know if Ineed anything else. And those
that did need a lot, Chad justfreaking kinda knocked it out
the park with like, hey, forthose of you that you couldn't,
now you can.
Chad Hohn (34:14):
Mostly. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (34:15):
Yeah. Yeah.
Chad Hohn (34:17):
We're we're very, very, very, very close to, like,
truly everything. I mean, wedon't have the end to end, you
know, if you're doing biggerproducts and contracting and
stuff, but we're really, reallyclose.
Max Cohen (34:29):
I mean, may this okay. So maybe some of the like,
I guess, I don't know if I'mbegging for this yet, but maybe
the the next horizon they shouldexplore, right, is some of the
more like complicated, you know,payment structure. Is it or
subscription types? I can'tremember that Stripe does.
Chad Hohn (34:49):
Yeah. Usage based subscriptions would be amazing.
Liz Moorehead (34:53):
Cool would
Max Cohen (34:53):
that pricing, graduate pricing, tier pricing,
package pricing, that kind ofstuff.
Chad Hohn (34:58):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (34:58):
Right? All things are pretty easy to do with another
app. But, like, this issomething that should be built
in and and natively supportedby, you know, HubSpot payments.
Right? So we'll get there.
Chad Hohn (35:13):
Yeah. Don't wait for it too fast.
George B. Thomas (35:16):
Yeah. Well, George, take us home. Land the
plane. What's the one thing youwant us to walk away with from
today's conversation between oneand seventeen things?
Liz Moorehead (35:25):
I yeah. No. I feel like it should be Chad's
one thing that he wants peopleto walk away
George B. Thomas (35:30):
wanna do it?
Chad Hohn (35:31):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, I I would just say likethe the future is here, you
know? And if you have a complexneed, I mean, you can start
exploring, you know, just getyour postman out, start testing
some API calls, start makingsome, you know, objects, start
creating some custom properties.You know, the features here, you
(35:52):
can really start to see wherethe limitations are. And the
Commerce Hub team absolutelyloves feedback and making sure
that they're gonna account foreverybody's needs. So don't be
afraid to reach out to people onLinkedIn from Commerce Hub.
You know, they they'd love tohear what issues you're running
into to make sure that they addthe number of people who want
(36:12):
the thing that they can't do,you know, especially like
partially paid invoices neededitable functionality. Let's
set them up with that. Woah.Yeah. But yeah.
Like, I mean, that's it. Like,the future's here and start
testing it. You know, give it awhirl. You know, there is there
is still like, there's still alot to do, but so much more is
(36:36):
possible than it was before.
Liz Moorehead (36:38):
Yeah. That's I I would I love what you're saying,
Chad. Listen, ladies andgentlemen, at the end of the
day, if you had given CommerceHub a shot previously and was
like, not yet, I would say toyou, maybe now's the time.
Chad Hohn (36:54):
Yeah. Okay,
Liz Moorehead (36:57):
Hub Heroes. We've reached the end of another
episode. Will Lord Lack continueto loom over the community or
will we be able to defeat him inthe next episode of the Hub
Heroes podcast? Make sure youtune in and find out in the next
episode. Make sure you head overto the hubheroes.com to get the
latest episodes and become partof the league of heroes.
(37:20):
FYI, if you're part of theleague of heroes, you'll get the
show notes right in your inboxand they come with some hidden
power up potential as well. Makesure you share this podcast with
a friend. Leave a review if youlike what you're listening to
and use the hashtag hashtag hubheroes podcast on any of the
socials and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
(37:42):
to listen into next. Until nexttime, when we meet and combine
our forces, remember to be ahappy, helpful, humble human,
and of course, be looking for away to be someone's hero.
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