HubSpot/QuickBooks: Best Integration for a Small Business?

What Hubspot integration are you using with Quickbooks Online?

Growing small business and tired of all the double and triple entries. ISO of the most efficient, dependable and user friendly integration between Hubspot Sales Starter and Quickbooks Online Plus.

I see Hubspot has several apps in their marketplace, as well there are a number of 3rd party sync integration options. I see plenty of mixed reviews about most integrations.

I’m hoping to connect with users that have first hand experience setting this up and can offer insight as to obstacles upon installation as well any limitations they found throughout setup and upon roll out.

Any and all suggestions/ advice are greatly appreciated and welcomed.

TIA!

The short answer is:

What Hubspot integration are you using with Quickbooks Online?

The best solution for a small business user on Sales Starter is to start with the native HubSpot QuickBooks Online Data Sync app to handle contacts, products, and invoices, then augment its limitations for detailed or custom automation by using a low-code integration tool like Zapier or a more flexible, custom, and cost-effective API-based solution using HubSpot API, QuickBooks API, and a server-side tagging environment like Google Tag Manager paired with Stape or a Google Cloud Platform function.

The native HubSpot app is the quickest to install and will solve your immediate need for basic data synchronization, which will eliminate a lot of the double entry you are experiencing.

The long answer is:

I completely understand your frustration with double and triple entries and the mixed reviews on integrations.

As a growing small business on HubSpot Sales Starter, you’re in a common position where the basic integration is good but a perfect, tailored solution is just out of reach with off-the-shelf apps.

The primary choice, the native HubSpot QuickBooks Online Data Sync app, provides essential bi-directional syncing for contacts, products, and invoices.

It’s the most user-friendly setup, and it allows your sales team to create invoices directly from a deal record in HubSpot, which is a huge win for efficiency.

However, you will immediately run into limitations, especially with Sales Starter, which doesn’t include the HubSpot Workflows feature needed for advanced automation like automatically creating an invoice when a deal closes.

You also can’t sync sales tax easily, and custom field mapping is restrictive or impossible on lower-tier plans.

To overcome these limitations without the high cost of a Professional-tier HubSpot subscription or an expensive third-party app, you should look towards a low-code platform like Zapier or a custom API solution.

While Zapier offers pre-built “Zaps” for specific triggers like updating a QuickBooks customer when a deal stage changes, its complexity grows with your needs and its transaction volume pricing can become a recurring high cost.

This is where a more technical and ultimately cheaper solution comes in by leveraging the application programming interfaces.

A custom integration using HubSpot API, QuickBooks API, Google Tag Manager, and a server-side environment like Stape or a simple Google Cloud Platform function is a superior long-term solution because it offers ultimate control and low operational cost.

While this requires a one-time development effort, it avoids the recurring subscription fees and transaction limits of most third-party sync apps.

The core idea is to bypass the limitations of the packaged apps by having your systems talk directly to each other using their APIs.

You can set up event tracking in your HubSpot account to fire an event when a deal hits the “Closed Won” stage, which can be configured as a custom event through the server-side GTM container hosted on Stape or a similar service.

This event can then trigger an action in a simple code function which uses the QuickBooks API to instantly create the corresponding invoice, including correct tax, customer names, and all custom fields that often break in the native or third-party apps.

For example, instead of relying on a pre-packaged app to sync a contact, you send a ‘Deal Stage Updated’ event with all contact and deal properties.

Your small function then receives this event and calls the HubSpot API to fetch any missing data, then immediately sends the instruction via QuickBooks API to create the invoice, using precise logic for sales tax and custom numbers.

This method provides true bi-directional syncing with more immediate updates, allows for perfect control over data mapping and transformation between systems, and once set up, the ongoing cost for the hosting environment and API calls is usually minimal, giving you a custom and dependable solution far cheaper than a Professional Hub or an enterprise sync app.

This approach future-proofs your integration, ensuring that as you grow and your data needs become more complex, your integration can easily adapt without needing to switch platforms.

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