Streamlining the Quote-to-Cash Process

HubSpot payments facilitate quicker, more intuitive transactions for you and your customers. However, the benefits of this user-friendly solution span beyond its impact on individual payment processing tasks.

Every element of your organization’s sales and payment operations ties back into a larger quote-to-cash process. The quote-to-cash (QTC) process encompasses the vital, revenue-driving components of your sales cycle — including product configuration pricing, quoting, customer acceptance, ordering, and revenue management.

A well-managed QTC process makes it easy to track, measure, and analyze every step of the transaction process. You can use the insights you uncover to streamline processes, shorten sales cycles, and provide your customers with easy-to-use payment tools.

The result? More delighted customers and more closed deals to boost your bottom line.

Despite its direct impact on revenue and customer sentiment, QTC management is tricky for many businesses, especially those without a commerce-powered CRM that can streamline payment processes and centralize transactional data on the back end.

The Complexities of Traditional Quote-to-Cash Management

• Nearly every company has a defined quote-to-cash process, but that doesn’t mean they’ve all mastered the art of efficient, customer-centric QTC management.
  
  Most organizations use at least five separate tools to manage the quote-to-cash cycle — often meaning one tool gets used to draft a quote, another to convert the quote into a contract, another tool for signature, yet another to prepare an invoice, and so on. This disjointed approach results in a clunky process that slows down deal creation and asks customers to jump through hoops to complete their purchases.
  
  The quote-to-cash process might seem inevitably complex, but you can narrow down its many steps into three main stages:
  
  
• Quoting and Contracting: where the merchant comes to an agreement (contract) with the buyer about what they are buying, how they’re buying it, and when they will buy it.
  
• Billing and Payment: where the merchant charges for the product or service the buyer agreed to purchase, and the buyer pays the merchant within a specified payment period.
• Accounting: where the merchant stores a copy of what they are owed (invoices) and what they have been paid (sales receipts) for tax and payroll purposes.

When you manage these processes separately, your employees waste valuable time and effort manually moving deals from one step to the next. At the same time, buyers are forced to re-enter their payment details in several places and wait out frustrating processing delays.

What’s more, your organization will miss opportunities to capture and retain critical customer data — like contact information, pre-approved discounts, and other essential contract details — as deals move from one stage to the next. This results in more work for your employees and less intuitive experiences for the people purchasing your products and services.

How HubSpot Simplifies the Quote-to-Cash Process

The secret to more efficient quote-to-cash management? A commerce-powered CRM that automates critical QTC tasks, centralizes payment data, and gives sales reps unfettered access to information about their buyers.

Quote-to-Cash Without HubSpot (~14 steps)

Quote-to-Cash With HubSpot (~6 steps)

The HubSpot CRM includes intuitive, scalable features that speed up sales cycles, automate recurring tasks, and make payment more convenient for your customers. Along with payments, there are several must-have tools you can use to streamline your quote-to-cash process within HubSpot:

HubSpot quotes

Spend less time switching between systems and more time selling with HubSpot’s quoting software. Our easy-to-use tools give your sales reps and managers an easy way to create accurate, personalized quotes in just a few clicks.

Rather than manually extracting customer data from your CRM and importing it into a separate quoting platform, your reps can instantly populate quotes with buyer information and the specific details of each open deal. You can even customize quotes with your company logo and color palette to infuse your branding into the sales process.

Core Features of HubSpot quotes

• E-signature
  
• Payments embedded in quotes
• Custom quote templates
• Quote approvals
• Product Library

custom-module 
Complicated Call-To-Action

HubSpot payments

From one-click payment links to natively embedded quotes, HubSpot payments offers an array of features that streamline quote-to-cash management and give customers access to convenient payment options. 

HubSpot payments inherently supports a smoother, more centralized quote-to-cash process by allowing you to collect payments directly inside of sales quotes and manage the revenue from those quotes inside of your CRM rather than relying on external and disconnected ecommerce or accounting software. 

No matter how you collect payments, HubSpot’s payment object automatically stores each buyer’s transactional data inside of your CRM, making it easy to reference or leverage in automated onboarding workflows, order updates, invoice reconciliation, and more.

HubSpot invoices

Accelerate payment cycles and simplify your quote-to-cash process with HubSpot’s built-in invoicing tools. Sales reps can generate invoices from open deals or quotes in HubSpot, then auto-sync them with accounting systems to ensure Accounting teams have the information they need for tax and payroll purposes. 

Thanks to built-in digital payment options, your customers can review and pay invoices in minutes without picking up a pen. And since invoices are created directly from existing deals and quotes, buyer information, contract details, and payment terms automatically carry over into your accounting systems. 

The result? Fewer invoicing errors, less time spent manually creating invoices, and more convenient payment options for your customers.

HubSpot’s Native Accounting Integrations

Beyond the sales and payment tools you can access inside of HubSpot, our all-in-one CRM also natively integrates with Quickbooks Online and other popular accounting systems.

Store invoice and payment data in HubSpot, then use powerful integrations to simplify invoice reconciliation by syncing that data back to customer accounts in your Quickbooks Online system.

The Benefits of Managing Your Quote-to-Cash Process in HubSpot

• Fewer Tools and Integrations: even the most technically impressive solutions won’t generate results if they’re too complex and time-consuming to use. HubSpot’s quote-to-cash process balances impressive features with a consolidated tech stack that stems from the user-friendly CRM your teams already know and love.
  
• Billing and Payment: don’t just refine your quote-to-cash process and hope for the best; track the impact of your efforts across stages in the QTC lifecycle with HubSpot’s built-in reporting tools. Leverage pre-configured reports to measure deal close rates, manage open quotes or contracts, and follow deals from contract signing to final payment.
• Intuitive Automation: boost internal efficiency and get paid faster with HubSpot’s automated quote-to-cash tools. Use the payment object to schedule automated email reminders about open invoices, stay on top of recurring payments, or enroll new customers in onboarding workflows once they’ve paid an open invoice.
• Revenue-Generating Insights: uncover new personalization opportunities by tapping into transactional data with a commerce-powered CRM platform. Gain a comprehensive view of your customers’ buying habits in HubSpot, then use automated workflows to send them specific resources based on their past purchases or recommend products that align with their preferences.

custom-module 
Complicated Call-To-Action