Why Your Business Needs a HubSpot Financial Hub

Let's face it, communication between sales and finance teams can sometimes feel like trying to bridge two separate continents. Sales is focused on closing deals and building pipelines, while finance is all about tracking payments, reconciling accounts, and keeping the financial ship sailing smoothly. Often, these departments operate in silos, with their own systems, data, and priorities. This can lead to:

• Frustrating discrepancies in numbers
• Time-consuming back-and-forths to reconcile data
• A lack of visibility into the complete customer picture

But what if there was a way to bridge this gap and create a unified financial ecosystem where sales and finance could work together seamlessly? Enter Commerce Hub – it's much more than just an e-commerce platform; it's the financial command centre your HubSpot portal needs.

HubSpot's Commerce Hub: More Than Just E-Commerce

When you hear "Commerce Hub," it's easy to think, "Oh, cool, I can build an online shop!" But you're only scratching the surface of what this powerful tool can do. Think of it this way: Commerce Hub is your central hub for managing all things money-related within HubSpot, bringing together functions like:

• Processing payments
• Generating invoices
• Creating quotes
• Issuing payment links

Commerce Hub moves beyond the customer-facing transactions of e-commerce and steps into the realm of financial management. It's the tool that empowers your finance team to gain a comprehensive view of all transactions happening within the company, while simultaneously giving sales, marketing, and customer success teams valuable financial insights into their customers.

It's easy to fall into the trap of associating HubSpot Commerce Hub solely with ecommerce. However, Commerce Hub extends beyond a simple online shopping cart and payment platform. In fact, it is a powerful financial management tool that integrates payments, invoicing and payment links, offering a more complete view of your customer.

Commerce Hub allows companies to streamline their quoting and payment processes in one place, whether you handle low-cost products or high-value equipment. This not only reduces the time and resources spent on creating quotes, but also improves the efficiency of sales and administration teams, who previously may have missed business opportunities due to slow processes.

Building Bridges with Data: How Commerce Hub Unites Sales & Finance

Here’s where the magic happens – Commerce Hub breaks down those pesky data silos that often divide sales and finance:

• Single Source of Truth: No more battling over conflicting spreadsheets or reports! Commerce Hub provides a single, unified view of financial data that everyone can access and trust.
• Real-Time Visibility: Sales teams can instantly see which deals have been invoiced, paid, or are overdue, empowering them to manage their pipelines more strategically.
• Improved Forecasting & Reporting: Finance gains greater control and accuracy over forecasting and reporting, as they can now track revenue, costs, and profitability in a more granular and reliable way.
• Streamlined Communication: Commerce Hub creates a common language and platform for sales and finance to communicate about money matters, minimizing confusion and errors.

Beyond the Numbers: Commerce Hub Enables a Holistic Customer View

The impact of a unified financial hub extends far beyond just smoother operations between sales and finance. By connecting financial data with other customer interactions, Commerce Hub allows everyone in the organization to gain a more complete picture of the customer:

• Marketing can personalize campaigns and segment customers based on purchase history and value.
• Customer success can identify at-risk customers based on payment patterns and proactively intervene to prevent churn.
• Sales can have more data-driven conversations with clients and understand their needs better.

Commerce Hub transforms how businesses manage their financials, moving from a fragmented, siloed approach to a connected, data-driven ecosystem. This shift empowers teams to collaborate better, make smarter decisions, and ultimately drive more revenue and customer satisfaction.

Financial management simplified with HubSpot

Commerce Hub's real strength lies in its ability to centralize key administrative functions. From issuing invoices to tracking payments, the platform provides a complete view of financial transactions within HubSpot. This is particularly useful for finance teams looking for more detailed, real-time control of operations.

As someone who comes from the accounting and finance world, I find it remarkable that, while Commerce Hub continues to be in development, it already represents a significant advancement for many companies. It provides unprecedented visibility into financial operations, facilitating strategic planning and decision making. Imagine realizing that your "best customer" hasn't actually paid you for three months. This is crucial for organizations looking to unify their financial information with their CRM to get a holistic view of the customer.

My most frustrating memory is how difficult it was to reconcile sales with billing with collections, they almost never matched (and it wasn't always the fault of taxes eh!) The hours I spent in excel doing calculations and creating magic formulas and Macros that made the job a little easier to get to the bottom line.

If you want to watch our full live conversation about Commerce Hub with Chris Carolan, check it out here: 

Integration and Visibility: Unifying customer and financial views

The ability to integrate financial information with customer data is a game changer in terms of visibility. HubSpot Commerce Hub allows you to see companies along with all interactions from business, quotes, invoices and payments, in one place. This not only improves transparency, but also enables marketing and sales teams to make more informed decisions.

For organizations, this means being able to cross-reference sales information with financial data, optimizing account management and improving the customer experience. In addition, teams can quickly identify customers who might be at risk of defaulting, enabling proactive intervention, starting with a simple automated payment reminder email.

Benefits and challenges for global companies

While HubSpot Commerce Hub offers numerous benefits, it is not without its challenges, especially for companies with international operations. Differences in payment methods and tax requirements between countries can complicate the implementation of the platform. However, for subscription-based companies or those with recurring revenue models, Commerce Hub can be a very effective solution.

The key is to customize Commerce Hub's integration with external tools such as QuickBooks to meet the specific needs of each country or region. This allows international companies to properly manage their financial operations and maintain consistency of information across markets. While in these cases the performance of accounting tasks would happen outside of HubSpot, thanks to integrations you would be able to view it within contact or company records seamlessly.

HubSpot's role in automation and process improvement

Automation is a core element of HubSpot Commerce Hub. By reducing the need for manual processes, companies can minimize errors and increase efficiency.

In addition, we can leverage advanced automation tools like Operations Hub to support the partnerships and scheduled actions we need to execute.

In addition, Commerce Hub provides advanced tools for financial analysis and forecasting, enabling companies to identify trends and make proactive adjustments to their business strategies. This is especially useful for sales and finance teams looking to maximize ROI and optimize cash flow.

What's coming up: New features expected

With each year, HubSpot continues to improve and expand the capabilities of Commerce Hub. HubSpot acquired B2B Billing Management and CPQ Solution, Cacheflow. to further enhance the platform's financial functionality. This will allow companies to handle everything from quotes to invoicing with greater accuracy and compliance, including AI assistance in the process.

As more companies adopt Commerce Hub, we are likely to see an increase in customisable features that meet the unique needs of different industries. Ultimately, HubSpot is positioning itself as a leader in bringing together customer and finance data, providing businesses with the tools they need to thrive in a digital and competitive marketplace.

HubSpot Commerce Hub is not only redefining financial management, it is also providing organizations with a platform to improve the visibility and efficiency of their processes.

With its focus on integration and automation, Commerce Hub is equipping marketing, sales, administration and customer success teams to meet tomorrow's challenges starting with greater visibility for right-on-time decision making.

Think of Commerce Hub as the bridge that connects your sales and finance teams, creating a unified financial landscape where everyone can work together towards shared goals.

If you need to explore the possibilities of Commerce Hub for your company, we can help. Just schedule a time with us here: