When you’re working on your CPQ process in HubSpot, consider this:
42% of companies have no deal level pricing guidance for their sales reps.
The native quoting tools are powerful, and connect deeply to the deal management functionality revenue teams have built their workflows around.
But … in HubSpot, quoting process compliance can feel like the “wild west".
Discounting and bundling compliance often falls to rep discretion or one-size fits all approval processes and teams resort to duplicating products to handle complex pricing scenarios.
The impact?
- inconsistent pricing
- wasted time on manual approvals
- messy reporting from duplicate products
- … and the constant risk of quoting errors.
Tackle complex quoting and CPQ requirements natively inside HubSpot.
We'll explore the building blocks of a quoting system that’s flexible to fit your specific business requirements while still providing the guardrails you need to drive process compliance and adoption.
This guide will show you how to tackle complex CPQ scenarios using quote•hapily and HubSpot sales hub, by focusing on practical steps you can implement today.
If you like what you see, and want to get started with quote•hapily, schedule a demo or try it free for 14 days to try it for yourself.
How to evaluate CPQ software for HubSpot and find the best solution for you.
A quoting solution that integrates natively with HubSpot’s existing functionality can reduce the need for manual quoting processes and adjustments, ensure pricing consistency, and maintain clean reporting. For growing sales teams, the CPQ solution you choose impacts not just efficiency, but the scalability of your revenue driving processes.
Implementing a CPQ solution requires careful consideration of how it will enhance your existing quoting capabilities while maintaining the simplicity that makes HubSpot powerful for reps.
Avoid these common red flags when evaluating CPQ integrations for HubSpot Sales Hub
Requires leaving HubSpot to create and edit quotes
Forces duplicate product creation (or maintaining an external product library) to manage complex pricing scenarios
Limited or no approval workflow capability beyond the default all or nothing feature in HubSpot
Requires manual price calculations and rule enforcement
Replaces HubSpot quoting functionality from the ground up, requiring complex technical implementation
Ask these 5 important questions to evaluate HubSpot CPQ solutions:
1.
How complex are your pricing scenarios?
- Do you sell in multiple regions/currencies?
- Do you need different pricing for different teams/segments?
- Do you run seasonal or promotional pricing?
- Do you offer volume-based pricing?
- Do you need customer-specific pricing?
HubSpot's
Native Capabilities:
- Product catalog allows a single price per product
- Single currency per account (Enterprise enables multi currency support
- Manual product price updates
- Basic line item discounting
- Simple, manual price adjustments
PRICING STRATEGY
Additional Requirements to Consider:
1. Multi-currency management
You’re a software company that sells in both USD and EUR, needing to automatically display pricing in the correct currency based on customer region while maintaining clean reporting.
eg. Enterprise plan shows as $2,499 for US customers and €2,299 for EU customers, automatically
2. Automated price book enforcement
You have different partner tiers (Gold, Silver, Bronze) each with specific pricing.
eg. Gold partners automatically see 20% lower prices than list price across all products
3. Time-based promotional pricing
SaaS company running Q4 promotion to close year-end deals.
eg. All enterprise products automatically discounted 10% for Tier 1 accounts during Q4
2.
What level of quote control do you need?
- How are discounts currently approved?
- Do different products have different approval processes?
- Do certain products require bundling with services?
- Are there maximum discount thresholds?
- Do approval requirements vary by deal size?
HubSpot's
Native Capabilities:
- All-or-nothing quote approvals
- Manual discount applications
- No automated bundle enforcement
- Basic e-signature collection
QUOTE CONTROL
Additional Requirements to Consider:
1. Multi-level approval workflows
You have enterprise deals that require both sales manager and finance approval based on discount level and deal size.
eg. Quote with 25% discount routes to Sales Manager first, then to Finance if over $100k
2. Product bundling requirements
Your enterprise software requires implementation services with every sale.
eg. System blocks enterprise tier quotes without implementation services included
3. Discount controls
Different products have varying discount thresholds based on margin requirements.
eg. Core products capped at 15% discount while add-ons allow up to 25%
3.
How important is clean reporting?
- Do you track discounting by sales rep?
- Do you need consistent revenue reporting across regions?
- Do you analyze quote revisions and approval times?
- Are you measuring the impact of discounting on margins?
- Do you need visibility into product bundle performance?
HubSpot's
Native Capabilities:
- Basic quote tracking
- Standard deal pipeline metrics
- Simple product revenue reporting
- Manual discount tracking
- Single-currency reporting only
REPORTING
Additional Requirements to Consider:
1. Unified revenue reporting
You need to track global product performance without creating duplicate SKUs for different regions or prices.
eg. See total revenue for Product X across all regions, currencies, and price points in a single view without manual consolidation
2. Discount impact analysis
You want to understand how discounting patterns affect deal performance and profitability.
eg. Automated dashboard shows average margins by product line, highlighting impact of non-standard pricing and approval patterns
3. Quote analytics
You need to understand how quote iterations and approval times impact deal velocity.
eg. Report shows relationship between number of quote revisions, approval time, and close rates, broken down by deal type and region.
4.
How much automation do you need?
- Are you calculating taxes manually?
- Do you apply fees consistently?
- Do you have recurring billing needs?
- Are discounts calculated manually?
- How much time is spent on quote creation?
HubSpot's
Native Capabilities:
- Manual tax calculations
- Basic recurring billing
- Simple line item creation
- Manual fee application
- Basic quote templates
AUTOMATION
Additional Requirements to Consider:
1. Automated tax calculation
You sell products across multiple tax jurisdictions and need to automatically apply the correct rates.
eg. System automatically applies 20% VAT for UK customers and correct state tax rates for US customers
2. Dynamic fee application
You need to automatically add handling fees based on product type or order value.
eg. Implementation fee automatically added as 10% of license value for enterprise deals
3. Conditional pricing automation
Your pricing changes based on multiple factors like quantity, customer tier, and product mix.
eg. System automatically applies volume pricing when order quantity exceeds thresholds
5.
How will it scale with your business?
- Are you expanding to new markets?
- Will your team structure change?
- Do you anticipate new product lines?
- Are you adding new pricing models?
- Will approval processes become more complex?
HubSpot's
Native Capabilities:
- Manual product updates
- Basic team permissions
- Simple product catalog changes
- Single approval process
- Limited customization options
SCALABILITY
Additional Requirements to Consider:
1. Flexible rule engine
You need to quickly adapt pricing rules as your business expands into new markets.
eg. New regional price books can be created and automated without developer support
2. Team management
Your sales organization is growing with specialized teams needing different pricing permissions.
eg. Enterprise team has different discount thresholds than SMB team
3. Product line expansion
You're adding new product lines with different pricing models and bundling requirements.
eg. New service offerings can be automatically bundled with existing products based on rules
The best integration isn't necessarily the one with the most features, it’s likely the one that is most quickly and deeply adopted by your team.
Next, we’ll break down 7 playbooks for tackling complex quoting use cases in HubSpot that are not supported out of the box.
7 Playbooks for Advanced HubSpot CPQ Scenarios
Step-by-step walkthroughs of the most important configurations and workflows using quote•hapily and HubSpot Sales Hub that will help scale your quoting process while maintaining control and consistency across your organization.
PLAYBOOK #1
Create price Books for Specific Teams or Regions
Provide reps with pricing and product access specific to their assigned team or region. This playbook prevents unauthorized quoting while maintaining accurate pricing across different markets and currencies, ensuring clean reporting and a streamlined rep workflow.
💡 Playbook Insights
Multiple teams selling in different regions creates a common challenge in HubSpot. Today, you might be creating “hacky” price books for different currencies or teams by duplicating products and changing the price.
Using price books in quote•hapily allows you to use a single product in HubSpot (and maintain clean reporting) while showing the correct product variation and price for each scenario.
Structure your price books to match your sales team organization – whether that's by region, business unit, or customer segment – while keeping your product catalog unified for accurate reporting.
🔗 Additional Resources
→ Managing price book membership in HubSpot
→ Learn more about price books in quote•hapily
1. Create a team or region specific price book
- Navigate to price books in quote•hapily
- Create a new price book for each sales team
- Add descriptive name (e.g., "NA Sales Team Products")
- Add a description explaining usage
2. Associate your existing HubSpot products with price books
- Select the products from HubSpot library
- Add only products relevant to each specific team
3. Apply a currency based price override to price books for teams who don’t use your “standard” pricing in your company currency
- Click “Override All Prices”
- Currency: Specify the currency used by appropriate team for this price book
- Enter Percentage Increase/Decrease: Select the change for this specific team
4. Create a new quote rule
- Name: Display { region } Price Book for { region } Sales Reps
- Description: Automatically apply discounts for specific pricing tiers in Q4.
5. Add conditions to the quote rule
- Any of the conditions below
- “Team” IS “{Region} Sales Team”
💡 Alternatively, use a company property to match the region using:
- Any of the conditions below
- “Company” > “Country/Region” > “Contains” > “United States”
6. Select quote rule outcome
- Set price book (Choose the Price Book to apply to quotes that trigger this rule.)
- Choose "Price Book Name" eg. “EU Product Catalog”
7. Verify your price books by creating a test quote
- Create test quote using different companies
- Confirm correct pricing and currencies are visible
- Validate that incorrect products are hidden
💡 Playbook Insights
Time-based pricing strategies are a powerful tool for driving specific business outcomes, but managing them in HubSpot previously meant creating duplicate products or manual price adjustments – both of which create reporting headaches.
Common Use Cases:
- End-of-period pricing promotions
- Seasonal industry-specific discounts (e.g., education customers in August)
- Limited-time product launch pricing
- Customer segment-specific promos
Consider the full lifecycle of deals in your pipeline. Set date ranges to account for quotes should remain valid beyond the promotional period.
🔗 Additional Resources
→ Learn more about discounting in quote•hapily
1. Create a price book for your promotional pricing
- Create a new price book in quote•hapily
- Add a descriptive name (e.g., "Q4 Tier 1 Promo Pricing")
- Add a clear description explaining usage
2. Add the relevant products to your new price book
- Click “Add Product” and select from your existing HubSpot products to add them to your price book
3. Add price overrides to apply discounts
- Click “Override All Prices”
- Override by: “Price Decrease”
- Enter Percentage Decrease: “10%”
💡 In this example we are overriding the price of all products in the price book by the same amount but you can also select products individually to customize your overrides.
4. Review your overrides
- You should now see adjusted prices in the price book table based on your overrides.
5. Create a new quote rule
- Name: Q4 Pricing Promo
- Description: Automatically apply discounts for specific pricing tiers in Q4
6. Create a new quote rule
- All of the conditions below
- “Companies” > “Ideal Customer Profile Tier” > “Is Any Of” > “Tier 1”
- “Today’s Date” > “Is On or After” > “10/01/2024”
- “Today’s Date” > “Is On or Before” > “12/31/2024”
7. Select a rule outcome
- Select: Set Price Book
- Price Book: “Q4 Tier 1 Promo Pricing”
- Quote rule priority: 1
8. Verify your quote rules by creating a test quote
- Create test quote that includes a line item discount of more than 25%
- Confirm correct pricing and currencies are visible
- Validate that the quote cannot be published
PLAYBOOK #3
Automatically prevent unauthorized discounting
Implement protective guardrails to prevent unauthorized discounting, out-of-stock sales, and other risky quoting behaviors. This playbook helps maintain pricing consistency and reduce errors across your sales organization through proactive rule enforcement.
💡 Playbook Insights
Unconstrained discounting not only impacts margins but creates inconsistency in how your products are valued in the market.
Instead of relying on post-quote approvals or manual oversight, automated quote rules prevent unauthorized discounts from being quoted in the first place, saving time and avoiding awkward customer conversations.
Consider creating a tiered approval system (see Playbook #4 below) where smaller discounts can be automatically approved while larger ones trigger your approval workflow.
🔗 Additional Resources
→ What are quote rules?
1. Create a new quote rule
- Name: Guardrail: Block Discounts > 25%
2. Add conditions to the quote rule
- Any of the conditions below
- “Line Items” > “Discount Percentage” > “Greater Than Or Equal To” > “25”
3. Add conditions to the quote rule
- Select: Block
- Message: Discounts over 25% aren't allowed.
4. Verify your quote rules by creating a test quote
- Create test quote that includes a line item discount of more than 25%
- Confirm correct pricing and currencies are visible
- Validate that the quote cannot be published
PLAYBOOK #4
Implement Multi-Level Quote Approvals
Create sophisticated approval workflows based on quote characteristics like discount level, deal size, or product mix. This playbook ensures proper oversight while maintaining efficient quote processing through automated approval chains and notifications.
💡 Playbook Insights
The approval process in quote•hapily can automatically route quotes based on specific triggers like discount levels or deal size.
The system has built in checks for tracking multiple pending approvals and only publishes quotes once all required approvers have signed off, ensuring proper oversight without creating unnecessary delays.
Start with your most common approval scenarios and gradually add complexity as your team adapts to the new process.
🔗 Additional Resources
→ What are quote rules?
→ Learn about advanced approvals in quote•hapily
1. Create a new quote rule in quote•hapily
- Name: Guardrails: Require Approval
2. Add conditions to the quote rule
- Any of the conditions below
- “Line Items” > “Discount Percentage” > “Greater Than or Equal To” > “15”
- “Line Items” > “Discount Percentage” > “Less Than or Equal To” > “25”
3. Select rule outcome
- Select: Require Approval
- Message: Quotes with discounts between 15-25% require approval.
- Checkbox: Check “Add to Approval Queue”
- Approval Queue: “Sales Approvals”
4. Create an automated quote-based workflow in HubSpot
- Trigger the workflow when an event occurs
- Has completed: Property value change
- Property name is Quote approval status
- New value: Quote approval status is any of Pending approval
5. Create a branch and check branches in order
- Needs Sales Approval: quote•hapily Approval Queue is any of Sales Approval
- Needs Finance Approval: quote•hapily Approval Queue is any of Finance Approval
- No Approval Queue Set: If none of the criteria are met
6. Needs Sales Approval Branch
- Action 1: Use the quote•hapily “Request Quote Approval” workflow action to send the quote for approval to your desired sales approver email address.
💡 The “Request Quote Approval” action checks all approvals have been accepted before releasing the quote to the next step in the workflow. - Action 2: Use the quote•hapily “Publish the Quote” action to publish the quote for prospects.
7. Needs Finance Approval Branch
- Action 1: Use the quote•hapily “Request Quote Approval” workflow action to send the quote for approval to your desired finance approver email address.
- Action 2: Use the “Go To Action” workflow action to route the workflow to the quote•hapily “Publish the Quote” action in the first branch.
8. No Approval Queue Set
- Action 1: Use the “Go To Action” workflow action to route the workflow to the quote•hapily “Publish the Quote” action in the first branch.
PLAYBOOK #5
Automatically add one-time fees to quotes
Automatically add one-time fees to quotes based on specific triggers like deal value, product mix, or customer attributes. Perfect for adding support fees, shipping charges, processing fees, or any other conditional charges without manual calculation.
💡 Playbook Insights
HubSpot quoting allows for basic line item pricing but businesses often need more sophisticated fee calculations that respond dynamically to what's being quoted.
Whether it's shipping costs for physical products, processing fees for large deals, or handling charges for specific product combinations, manual calculation of these fees is both time-consuming and error-prone.
Quote rules turn this manual process into an automated one. By automatically calculating and applying fees based on quote conditions, you can eliminate the need for sales reps to remember when and how to add various charges.
🔗 Additional Resources
→ Explore how the quote builder works in HubSpot
1. Create a new quote rule
- Name: Add One-Time Percentage Support Fee
2. Add rule outcomes
- Any of the conditions below”
- “Line Items” > “Product Type” > “Is Any Of” > “Inventory”
3. Choose rule outcomes
- Select: Notify
- Notify Message: “You must include implementation when selling an enterprise plan.”
4. Verify your quote rules by creating a test quote
- Create test quote that includes a line item with the type “Inventory” line item
- Confirm a one-time fee with the correct percentage has been added
- Verify the total amount of the quote is correct
💡 Playbook Insights
Tax calculation requires sophisticated handling of multiple jurisdictions, different product types, and varying customer scenarios.
Starting with automation for your most common scenarios can significantly reduce manual work and eliminate costly errors in your quoting process.
Keeping tax calculations in HubSpot helps maintain clean reporting while ensuring consistent tax application across quotes.
🔗 Additional Resources
→ How does quote•hapily automatically calculate US sales tax?
1. Create a new quote rule
- Name: Add VAT for UK Customers
2. Add rule conditions
- “Any of the conditions below”
- “Companies” > “” > “Country/Region” > “IS” > “United Kingdom”
3. Choose rule outcome
- Select: One-time Tax(es)
- One-Time Tax: “VAT”
- Percentage: “20%”
4. Verify your quote rules by creating a test quote
- Create test quote for a company with a “Country/Region” of “United Kingdom”
- Confirm a one-time tax for 20% has been added
- Verify the total amount of the quote is correct
PLAYBOOK #7
Create and enforce product bundle requirements
Ensure compliance with product bundling requirements by creating rules that enforce the inclusion of necessary add-on products. Perfect for companies that need to ensure services, support, or additional products are always quoted with specific offerings, preventing incomplete or non-compliant quotes.
💡 Playbook Insights
When selling complex products, ensuring the right combination of products, services, and support is crucial for customer success. Without automated enforcement, sales teams often forget critical components or struggle to maintain consistency in their quoting process.
By using rules to enforce product combinations, you can eliminate guesswork and ensure every quote includes all necessary components, while maintaining the flexibility to handle exceptions through the approval process.
→ Build your bundle requirements based on your most successful customer implementations to ensure new customers get the support they need to be successful.
🔗 Additional Resources
→ What are quote rules?
→ Learn more about bundling in quote•hapily
1. Create a new “Notify” quote rule
- Name: Guardrail: Require Implementation for Enterprise Plans
- Conditions: “Any of the conditions below”
2. Add rule conditions
- Any of the conditions below
- “Line Items” > “Name” > “Contains” > “Enterprise”
3. Select a rule outcome
- Outcome Type: “Notify”
- Notify Message: “You must include implementation when selling an enterprise plan.”
4. Create a new “Block” quote rule
- Name: Guardrail: Block Enterprise Quotes without Implementation
- Conditions: “Any of the conditions below”
5. Add conditions to the quote rule
- Any of the conditions below
- “Line Items” > “Name” > “Contains” > “Enterprise”
- “Line Items” > “Name” > “Is None Of” > “Implementation”
6. Select a rule outcome
- Outcome: Notify
- Notify Message: “Before you can publish a quote you must add implementation for enterprise plans”“Line Items” > “Name” > “Is None Of” > “Implementation”
7. Verify your quote rules by creating a test quote
- Create test quote that includes an “Enterprise” line item
- Confirm correct pricing and currencies are visible
- Validate that the quote cannot be published
Complex quoting doesn’t have to be painful in HubSpot
Making CPQ process changes fit your team’s existing workflow makes it easier to drive adoption and process compliance while also improving your revenue outcomes. That’s a big vote for HubSpot native solutions like quote•hapily vs integrating a disconnected 3rd party solution.
Together with this guide, you have everything you need to implement your own business logic and pricing scenarios in HubSpot without disrupting the quoting workflow for your reps.
Want to see how quote•hapily delivers HubSpot native CPQ that brings complex business rules to HubSpot Quotes?
Start a free 14-day trial or book a demo for a personal walkthrough from the team.