Introduction
The HubSpot Customer relationship management (CRM) and Xero integration simplify how companies manage and track their invoices, payment and billing processes. Choosing a CRM that works with your accounting software allows you to capture leads and create deals effectively to provide an accurate overview of your sales and sales process in your CRM dashboard. This article looks at the benefits of integrating Xero with your HubSpot CRM and how your company can benefit.
No man is an island, and neither is a CRM. A good CRM must be capable of exchanging data with your website, accounting system and other databases. So when you choose a CRM application, you must be sure that it integrates with your other systems. When a company considers integrating Xero with a CRM, the primary consideration is usually the ability to send invoices without the need to record payments in both your accounting software and CRM. But the HubSpot Xero integration goes beyond the basics of more streamlined accounting practices. This is why we look at several other factors businesses need to consider when integrating accounting software with a CRM, including a platform that supports third-party integrations.
Why Use HubSpot With Xero?
HubSpot CRM has come a long way as a superb CRM option for both sales and marketing automation. Even with the free plan, you can set up chatbots on your website, track emails you send to prospects, and utilise sales templates via email integrations. More importantly, HubSpot does have a native (albeit limited) integration with Xero. Some of the benefits of using the HubSpot CRM with Xero are:
- Once you integrate Xero and HubSpot, all your existing contacts will be automatically added to your CRM, and any existing contacts will be updated and not duplicated.
- If any of your contacts are updated in Xero after the integration, your HubSpot CRM will reflect the changes. However, the connection between Xero and HubSpot is one-way, so any changes must be made in Xero.
- You can use HubSpot and Xero to ensure your accounts are up to date. You can set reminders and tasks to a preferred cadence and assign them to team members, ensuring you keep on top of all your existing and potential customers.
- Xero and HubSpot integrate for an end-to-end view into your customer’s journey from a new lead (stranger) to a paid customer invoice, all in one place.
- Your contacts can be segmented into HubSpot using your Xero data with a simple search using filters. You can filter customers that have an overdue invoice that is 7 Days overdue, 30+ days outstanding, haven’t purchased from you yet, or those that have purchased from you in the last 12 months. You can use this information to assist your sales team in pursuing inactive leads or accounting to keep track of outstanding invoices.
- You can create an automated workflow that sends an internal email to yourself, any of your team members or the entire organization if you like when a client hasn’t paid an invoice for a set number of days (7 or 30)
How Does The Integration Work?
When you integrate Xero with HubSpot, HubSpot uses the email address associated with your client/customer/supplier in Xero as an identifier to create a new contact in HubSpot or update an existing contact.
Once this initial integration (see below) is completed, any changes you make for a contact in Xero will automatically be reflected in the HubSpot CRM, including the primary contact phone number and if the contact is a customer or a supplier. A set of default mappings ensures that the information contained within your Xero contacts is set to the correct place in HubSpot.
Integrating Xero & HubSpot Is Easy
The HubSpot CRM has a user-friendly direct integration with Xero. As long as you have a Xero paid plan, your Xero integration will work with all HubSpot plans (including Free).
- Make sure you have a starter, standard or premium Xero Account and a free HubSpot CRM subscription.
- In the Xero App Marketplace, go to Connect and enter your HubSpot login details.
You can find the complete guide on how to connect Xero and HubSpot here.
How Does An Integration Improve Your Business Process?
In most businesses, marketing hands off to sales to close the deal and then to finance or operations to make sure the payment is processed. But in reality, a deal isn’t closed until the sales invoices have been paid. What many companies are missing is a shared revenue goal.
Combined revenue goals are proving more and more successful in many organizations implementing this as best practice. By setting revenue goals for both marketing and sales you’re aligning efforts to upscale. Sales traditionally have revenue goals, but marketing doesn’t. You can use something as simple as a Xero integration to align revenue goals and create a scenario where both parties have to work together as they are now both accountable. Revenue goals are an excellent way of aligning sales and marketing by breaking down walls and creating a common goal.
With HubSpot and Xero, unpaid invoices are reflected and updated once they’ve been processed and paid. So marketing, sales, accounting and operations all have eyes on a deal and the payment status. The sales team can easily track their deals right through to payment, but everyone is (or should be) involved in the process, which ensures a team works together as a unit and not as separate departments. A Xero integration can be the perfect way to kickstart the process on top of all the other benefits of integrating your CRM and accounting software. If you’re considering Xero as your accounting software you can Contact FastLane to speak to a Xero advisor about your specific needs.
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