HubSpot Commerce Hub

Introduction

In the modern era, more and more sales processes and financial transactions are shifting to the digital realm. To enable companies to efficiently conduct and manage these processes, HubSpot has released its latest product: the Commerce Hub.

The tool is designed to increase revenue and save time and costs by further centralizing processes and allowing transactions to be conducted within HubSpot.

It provides companies with a powerful solution for effortlessly managing their commerce activities. This innovative platform is designed to seamlessly integrate into HubSpot's existing suite of hubs.

The new hub recently launched for the European market and offers several useful benefits. Let's take a closer look at these:

Functionalities

Electronic Payments

The biggest innovation of the hub lies in its ability to process ACH payments within HubSpot. This core feature of the new tool makes it easier for companies to streamline and simplify payment processes.

ACH stands for Automated Clearing House—transactions that occur during electronic payment processes, such as payments via credit card or bank transfer.

To enable this, in addition to the Commerce Hub, you'll need either a Stripe account or HubSpot's payment tools.

Since Stripe is not as widespread in the European market as it is in the US, you can also utilize one of the currently available 10 payment apps from HubSpot's App Marketplace. These applications facilitate payments via credit card or PayPal.

Invoicing

Another useful feature is the ability to create invoices directly from HubSpot. In the CRM, documents can be generated directly through contacts, companies, deals, or quotes, extracting necessary information for the invoice.

Subscription Management

Subscription management is included in the Commerce Hub. You can easily manage recurring services and their subscribers directly from the CRM.

E-Signature

The new HubSpot tool enables electronic signature collection. Electronic signatures carry the same legal weight as handwritten signatures and are recognized and binding in most countries. This allows you to obtain a person's consent to the terms of a document. Digitization significantly speeds up the signature process for you.

Creation of Offers

The offer tool enhances the CRM platform, enabling your team to quickly and effortlessly create custom, brand-specific offers.

These offers streamline the purchasing process. With reliable templates, you can send professionally designed offers from the CRM in no time. Combined with electronic signatures, significant time savings and professionalization in the sales process are achievable.

Reporting

Automated reports make your life easier by allowing all dealers to analyze their business activities through metrics and reports. For many organizations, evaluating ROI and other key indicators can be challenging. As a result, many often do not utilize reporting, despite its essential nature for a business. With the Commerce Hub, creating revenue-based reports is easily achievable.

In addition to revenue reporting, you can monitor cash flow through reports on recurring payments, gain insights into preferred payment methods, and maintain accurate data on active, paying customers.

This enables effortless data-driven decision-making to help you achieve your business goals faster.

Payment Links

Make the payment process easier for yourself and your customers. With the Commerce Hub, payment processing becomes a breeze by embedding payment links easily into your emails, forms, and websites.

With the payment apps mentioned in the App Marketplace, payments can be processed easily. Alternatively, Stripe can also be used.

QuickBooks Integration

The Commerce Hub can be synchronized with the accounting tool QuickBooks to automatically capture and reconcile financial data and payments. QuickBooks is a comprehensive accounting software mainly used by small and medium-sized businesses. This software offers a variety of features aimed at simplifying and automating financial management.

Benefits of the Commerce Hub

The Commerce Hub enables leaner and more efficient workflows. By integrating online business processes into your CRM, it saves costs and effort in all activities related to transactions.

Seamless integration with the CRM reduces workload and the likelihood of human errors. Since invoices and quotes are sent from the CRM, less manual data entry is required, and data is inserted directly from the system. Additionally, invoices can be tracked more easily, and payments can be processed faster.

The Commerce Hub further simplifies your quote creation by integrating the function of a product library. This allows you to digitally manage, place, and integrate your products into your quotes.

The introduction and use of the program entail no risk for your company. Since the Commerce Hub has no base fees as long as you use the HubSpot payment apps, it can be used at no cost until the first transaction is conducted with the software. Only when a transaction is made will the first transaction fees be charged. These fees vary depending on whether Stripe or HubSpot is used as the payment processor, but more on that later. Thus, it is possible to use the features without permanent obligations.

Integration with QuickBooks saves valuable time in management and accounting, as payment data is synchronized. Automation not only reduces the effort for tedious, repetitive tasks but also reduces the likelihood of human errors alongside the laborious data reconciliation.

HubSpot remains true to user-friendliness even with the Commerce Hub. This approach ensures that e-commerce features are easy to use and seamlessly integrate into HubSpot's overarching ecosystem. Beginners find it easy to use the new tool.

Features such as the product library, quote creation, and invoice management support faster revenue generation.

Costs of the Commerce Hub

As mentioned earlier, the new software features are free, and there are no monthly subscription fees. Instead, a small fee is charged per transaction, resulting in costs based on the "pay-as-you-go" principle for actual usage.

The transaction fees depend on the tool used for payments:

If you use the HubSpot Payments Processor, the fee is 0.9% for credit card transactions. Additionally, there may be a fee for the subscription to one of the payment apps from the App Marketplace.

If Stripe is used, you'll pay 0.5% for the use of the HubSpot platform per transaction. Additionally, Stripe fees apply, which can vary.

Summary

The Commerce Hub enhances payment processing by implementing ACH payments (Automated Clearing House), simplifying the process of electronic transactions. Companies have the option to manage payments either through Stripe or one of the ten available payment apps in the HubSpot App Marketplace.

Moreover, the hub allows for the creation of invoices directly within the CRM, subscription management, and the collection of electronic signatures, which are legally binding just like handwritten ones.

Automated reports on revenue and cash flows facilitate the monitoring of business activities and support data-driven decisions. Integration with accounting tools such as QuickBooks also streamlines financial management and minimizes errors from manual data entry.

In summary, the Commerce Hub offers a cost-effective solution to streamline business processes and respond faster to market changes without incurring financial obligations.

If you're interested in the new hub or need further information, feel free to reach out to our team. We're here to support you with your HubSpot endeavors.