Unlock Efficiency with the HubSpot Invoice Generator for Product Management

Hubspot invoice generator for Product Management

welcome back spinny spinny it's rocketeers welcome to another Master Class reminder we love you sprocketeers we love you thanks for being here today we have a mask class for you and before we get to what it is we're going to go into reminder to those of you just tuning in sprocketeer is the community for passionate HubSpot power users where we Champion the HubSpot super admin it's a role it's it's a whole rule that you have to participate in and in order to do so there are specific things that you need to learn about and connect with other people on or just upskill on and that's what we're here to do today we have a special guest with us uh on this master class we're going to be looking at invoice stack and in order to do that we have the founder of weavenblend Harry Bevin hey Harry hey so invoice stack before uh before Harry and I have talked real quick invoice stack is going to get into uh some things dealing with invoices now Harry's going to talk to us about how we can think about it properly and how we can think about invoicing inside HubSpot and that's what invoice stack does I wanted to introduce Harry because he doesn't just have uh invoice stack he founded we even blend with which is a software company that builds software on top of HubSpot an invoice stack is just one of those pieces of software excited to have you here Harry thanks so much for having me grow on yeah real big fan of this Rocketeer community so uh yeah it's great to be able to uh speak to the community about what we're doing um and hopefully I can help solve some kind of problems awesome thanks for building on top of HubSpot it's so cool to see more and more companies and people seeing that HubSpot is a platform and you can make it better definitely have seen that uh time and time again and you're going to show us another way today before you start sharing screen and we get into the demo and that sort of thing invoice stack let's start it let's start big picture what what's the market and and how do we think about that market that you're going after that's got this problem that invoice stack is going to solve for us yeah sure so invoice stack is is really targeted uh people who are um all in on the HubSpot they're using sales Hub to create their deals um to contract their revenue and basically to run run their business so if you're using sales Hub or you're kind of doing rev-ops or operations then like invoice stack is really um they're the target market okay okay so your native in HubSpot you're running your business in there and then you come across what what is it that you're gonna come across that that sprocketeers listening now need to say to themselves invoice stack I'm going to invoice stack for that yeah so where invoice deck is here to because solve the pain that comes with invoicing um and invoicing is like not a sexy cool thing but a lot of people talk about all the time right um but the more you dig into it and look we've spoken to loads and loads of businesses out there you see it all the time that investing is the kind of um like the the boring little bit that happens after your sale but actually the more you dig into it there are loads of pain points with invoicing um and it goes It goes right through to payment so you have pain points about your sales and your Finance teams talking together so I've seen people building huge crazy spreadsheets in order to send their invoices over to their Finance team um I've seen people who um can't keep track of what's been paid or what's overdue inside HubSpot and the finance reporting and their HubSpot reporting is don't match up so invoice stack is basically there to solve those problems um and that you know there are lots of pain points that I think people don't even realize that HubSpot can be part of the solution um to solve those problems great overview it sounds like consolidation and and consistency uh definitely definitely having something that can allow the data to be properly represented and to be accurate sounds fantastic one of the ethos of of HubSpot having having good data to sit up on okay yeah okay I I feel like I I know who's going to be using HubSpot what HubSpot users and then the problem they're coming across which uh which is from sale to payment and anything in between okay all right what else might we want to get into uh invoice stack is a integration with HubSpot correct yeah yeah so you're going to show us yeah so we integrate with HubSpot and we integrate HubSpot with popular accounting platforms so it's the moment uh that's zero and QuickBooks Online uh so zero super popular outside the US UK Australia Canada Etc obviously QuickBooks is is the one if you're based in the US um we're looking at other platforms actively as well to try and integrate the two and is there a minimum subscription for HubSpot or you can be on a free or starter and and use invoice stack you can use any as long as you've got sales hub on any tier you can you can use this some of the features that invoice stack unlocks like the reporting and the workflows are really valuable if you're obviously on HubSpot Pro um but you can still use the tool no matter your what your subscription you have love it okay all right we've covered the basics Harry I'm going to stop sharing screen and fill and why don't you share yours and you can walk us through what the tool does yeah I'm gonna what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk through an end-to-end kind of process of what happens what it looks like creating an invoice what your Finance team might see um and then look at all that like amazing kind of data and reporting that you get out of the other side so um let me share my screen window so here we have our sprocket here demo um so we're starting from a deal and everything in in boy stack is related to a deal so this is ideal for people who've got a deal data going on um so let's have a look at our deal we've got contact attached here on a company attached um okay moving down this sidebar here we've got a quote so um what happens obviously when you're doing quotes inside HubSpot is you get line items added to your deal one-off they can be monthly as well I'll show you that in a sec um uh but yeah it's kind of the basics is we've done a quote client signed off quotes approved uh all right and now step is for the salesperson to go in and do their admin and create the invoices great so we got a deal we have the association of the people and the company and there's a quote on the deal yeah yeah so invoice tax sits in the sidebar uh so that allows the sales team to do is create the invoices without leaving HubSpot great so they don't need a log on for your accounting platform which makes Finance teams nice and happy right anyway yeah you don't need a license for your accounting platform either for those teams as well so that can save you money uh as well um interesting that means that so I I don't need a QuickBooks online or a zero license yeah if you're a salesperson you don't obviously your Finance team would um right right understood so you don't need all the additional seats is what you're getting at ah okay great and often we find that Finance teams aren't particularly comfortable with those teams having access to the financial data and sometimes that's why that sales team aren't creating invoices but we believe the sales people are the right people to create the invoices because they've got all the context about the deal they understand and they want to make sure that shows right when it gets to their client mm-hmm so next step for invoice stack is we sit in the sidebar right here most teams will see uh a single button that just says create invoices for this demo I've got more than one account attached to this so you can connect more than one zero account more than one QuickBooks account you could even have zero and QuickBooks running at the same time but good to know so the app fires up right inside HubSpot so it's going to get that loaded in and what you can see here is what we're trying to do is this kind of mirrors what a zero or QuickBooks invoice creation screen looks like but what we try to do and what we try to do with invoice stack is we try and fill in as much data as possible so really most times all the salesperson needs to do is just check it make sure everything kind of filled it um so yeah we're trying to do that auto fill bit where you you just checking that last bit making sure everything's right great so walk us through I see contact and currency account the account will be pulled from your accounting software I'm guessing and okay and then whatever taxes or other tax what's the drop down on on tax yeah so the tax rates um I mean and there's a really for those outside the US probably have more complex kind of tax situations or may need to charge vat or GST sales tax on their business to business invoices um so all of this data up here this is all pulled straight from your accounting system so if you're in zero for example you will have all your tax rates you will have all your accounts that your Finance team have set up and it's all mapped and you can select overall um but and I'll show you this in a sec you can also set it up so that for each product you have your your account and tax rates are selected automatically so that's what's happening down here is that we have oh I see inside xero or QuickBooks and you can say this is the tax rate and this is the account that I want it logged in in my finance system we take your HubSpot account HubSpot products we match up with your zero products and we link those together so fantastic so by line item you can Define the account and the tax yeah so some things are taxable some things aren't we know that because we don't connect your accounting system that's a big deal instead of having to select one and having to make the invoice or invoicing multiple times because you only have the ability to to tax one way you've given it to us by line item fantastic exactly and it saves the headache for sales teams the sales teams don't know what's taxable what's not like it just fills it out for them basically um so so some of the other things on here so we have contacts and if you don't have a contact already so it's a new client obviously we match it to whatever's inside your accounting platform otherwise you can add a new contact when you hit save that will create the contact inside your Finance system um but obviously we fill in all the data that you already have on a HubSpot about that contact so you already know your name their email address so we thought that out for you but you can change it so if that's go to like a Finance contact instead of your main contact you can change that before it gets sent over and this is the contact at your company correct or is this very company like at your client's business you are sending in so then does it also create a contact in HubSpot no so we your contact is already in Con in inside HubSpot so we just create that link between the invoice and the the client ah so if if I'm creating one if I'm creating an invoice and I have a contact in HubSpot it'll Auto populate here correct yeah if if I'm creating an invoice and there isn't a contact can I create one here or no uh you can't create a HubSpot contact through this screen receipt if you have it already in HubSpot it helps you move that contact from HubSpot over to your accounting platform understood so make sure you have maybe that contact added before so that when you do create the invoice it'll pull and like you said it'll make the new one an invoice stack okay yeah awesome awesome okay so let's just select that one up again and then we've got different things so we've got like currency so we support any currencies that your accounting platform has as well and obviously we'll select the right one based on what your hotspot deal is so this is in US dollars but my demo I've got pounds Australian dollars Euro Etc and we also support some of the more advanced kind of fields that you see in QuickBooks uh and and xero um so they've got custom Fields like tracking codes um the QuickBooks invoices have things like service dates and custom fields that you can enter and we support all of those and you can pre-fill those as well with information on your HubSpot deal so um if you have a purchase order number field in QuickBooks we can fill that in automatically if you already have that data on your HubSpot deal so again really trying to just fill out as much as possible yeah yeah and and so you shouldn't need a touch of thing okay so I'm seeing an auto fill save draft and sync to zero what do I need to know and do with these buttons yeah because when you pulled this up there was already data there yeah so we do autofill automatically if we have the data um but if you want to refill it or you've made a mistake then you can hit that button do it again okay you can save it so if you don't want to send it to your accounting platform straight away you can save your progress and sync to zero lets you send it straight away this Little Green Dot tells you whether the amount that you're invoicing matches what's in your HubSpot deal so oftentimes people have more than one invoice so you might have two three invoices for staged payment so if you're an agency you might be billing um based on the kind of phase of work if you are you know some businesses charge deposits you can create both those invoices from the same screen so you could just add another invoice you can even drag these line items drag and drop between invoices between invoices um nice even create monthly invoices as well so this is something that we're it's in Visa at the moment but we will be launching it really soon you can create repeating invoices inside QuickBooks and xero so that's great if you have like subscriptions so say you have like a one-off payment right up front payment and then you have a subscription again we will pre-fill that all from your HubSpot deal and so you can create all of those invoices that's just on one screen on one page okay Harry so I'm uh let me see if I got this so I can make my invoice and pre-fill it from HubSpot and I can make it recurring I can create multiple invoices uh three four or five invoices what have you all from the same screen I'm still in HubSpot at this point yeah when I sync to zero let's say I have the number that I like and I have the invoices uh or the recurring timing when I sync to xero or QuickBooks is that also sending that invoice to my customer so there's a there's different options for doing that so we have a couple options depending on how your Finance team wanted set up so the kind of first option we have is for larger businesses say you have like a dedicated Finance team often they want the invoices to get sent over as draft so they can check it and approve it before it goes out or get set so zero has a draft status QuickBooks doesn't but you can you can stop it from being sent automatically um or for smaller teams what you can do is you can actually send straight from HubSpot so if you're a smaller team once you send over invoices authorized in xero for example you'll see an extra button here that says sends to your customer and that will use your template that you've got set up inside your accounting platform we'll send it just in the exactly the same way that it goes gets sent as if you're in that platform and obviously you can check it great so over in your accounting platform you have some settings that you as a team those of you listening need to set up and the way you want it to be sent or the process you you want to use so that when you do send it over and sync it it's following your process that's right that makes sense yeah that's the best thing about invoice stack is it maps onto the existing process you've got so if you've got a process for getting your invoices out there and getting your invoices paid and your Finance team are happy with that you don't need to change anything all we're doing is just changing that initial bit of getting the data into the invoicing platform at the right at the beginning great all right so Harry what else do we need to see on this screen because right now I'm thinking all right I sync to zero when I'm back on the deal record what am I seeing there what updates do I see as invoices come due uh are overdue or more information or changes need to be made what else do I need to see here before I'm checking my deal record yeah well let me look I think here we've if we checked our invoices we're happy with them I think what we'll do is we'll sync them we'll use zero for this demo but it's exactly the same process for QuickBooks and then I'll show you what that shows up inside um inside zero and then we can uh we can generate a game and see what happens [Laughter] so let's do that so my invoices have been synced and we can flip over so this is zero um so we can see we've got our invoice here which is our sprocketeer demo it's called all the data filled out so if your Finance team or they will see if they draft invoices right and they check it check make sure everything's correct they've even got a button here that takes them back to HubSpot so if they need more context that takes them back to HubSpot um and right right into the deal that this is a part of back to the deal record you can you can even pass notes through um between those teams and if they make changes here then those changes are all synced back to HubSpot so we're using the accounting platform as the sources Finance teams love this whatever they say they do and that's right super important for us so if you're an Ops person trying to implementing Implement something like this thinking hey the finance team will never go for it it's these things that will kind of sway them basically understood understood so let's put in uh let's approve this but it also it's worth saying as well like zero and QuickBooks have some like really cool payment options as well so you can actually um have like online payments through these invoices as well when they get sent out so oftentimes like so QuickBooks have got like you know PayPal stripe um xero has PayPal Stripes got go cardless for the monthly subscriptions so again if you're using payments or that can just use your existing accounting platform so that's something to consider obviously we've heard loads about HubSpot payments it's available if you're not inside the US and so you can't use HubSpot payments but you want the power of that or you want to do that but keep your same accounting flow that invoice that could help make that happen and it can sync some of that data back into your deals great point so since it we're using your accounting software you may have already added the payment link or the or the payment processor to your accounting software so since we're sinking from HubSpot to your accounting software that payment can be over there and again like you said Harry your existing process can just run you're just making it easier to do yeah great that's great I'll show you what what our deal looks like now so let me hit that yeah let's look at that for those of you listening the payments outside of the US it sounds like Harry's got another solution uh in order for you to recognize and have them well done we're asked constantly and people are commenting what about outside the US and there's always that disclaimer from hubspotters too of still just in the U.S all right understood keep going here yeah oh well sure uh okay so what we've done is we've we've we've generated a payment of see a couple of things have changed on our deal so first if we've got a timeline event say that the invoice has been paid we can see an invoice Stack Down the sidebar here we have the invoices now marked as paid um but the cool stuff happens over here so we have our invoicing properties and I put these into a nice bit here some of the key ones but we have I think it's 17 different properties that we update on your HubSpot deal okay live anytime any activity happens with your invoices that are linked to this deal so we have things like invoice status so whether they're synced whether they're paid whether they're all paid um we have the amount that's been invoiced and if you are invoicing different currencies we can even think back the currency conversion rate that your accounting platform adds so great if you have say that again I interrupted you so it's great if you're using multi-currency so say you have you're a UK company you're in pounds or you're invoicing in dollars you want to know what that exchange rate that's zero so we sync that back and you can get the base currency so if you're multi-currency um we've got a solution for that as well we do a reporting can be can really reflect what is inside your accounting platform on that number Harry let me ask you this is that number the overall so if I've made five invoices is that the total or is this the last paid or this is the total so um yeah so we uh built from the ground up to be able to support multiple invoices for a single day great okay all of these options kind of support that as well so we have a next invoice next invoice due date numbers paid and whether it's overdue or not and we've got a ton of other stuff as well so we've got things like the invoice numbers like the ID of the contact inside your accounting platform if you want to match up that data externally and it's all updated live so as soon as that invoice goes overdue that that property changes if your invoices by the finance team then again ah all right Finance is gonna live over in their accounting software and so you want visibility over there you want to be able to see and get those updates I'm thinking through that then that they will show up here regardless even if uh you shoot off and fire off an email or you send them a message or you're on the phone with them you're able to at least pull up in HubSpot uh the deal record and you can see those changes uh those of you listening as admins I know I'm already thinking I want a notification that it's been updated I want a notification when any of the invoice contact properties have changed and so that would be a separate admin step um so what you've done for us Harry has allowed us to have that change to now take action on it which is great yeah absolutely so you speak to loads of teams who who need to do things like they have to wait for an invoice to be paid before they do the work or once the invoice has been paid it moves over to a different team or they need to stop or change activity if things go overdue um and and what this allows you to do is because you have these properties that's a great Point Harry yeah it'll it might change over from sales now to an AE because it's paid and it might then the the owner might now be the delivery team whatever you're selling you know if it's a service it's now going to a whole team that's going to actually do something so thank you fire off the thank you email congratulations here's your next step introduce the new person and maybe send some tasks to some people to follow up and get set up love that love that those of you admins listening you now have a property of uh that's sinking back and forth with your accounting software that you can trigger all these actions from love that I've even got some I've got some examples here actually like his uh here's one I made earlier like his you know invoice status is paid then you can send a notification using just standard workflows say it's been paid to the deal owner um rotate that record but you know anything that helps with workflows can do you can do with this you just use those properties that native HubSpot properties you can use them as triggers um like it's it could be as simple as just moving the deal stage that's like a super simple one that most most people do we've actually got that belt straight into the app you can do it when you set up the app um yeah but this lets you go like super Advanced you can do branching logic all kinds of things as well that makes sense and then because these are properties you can use you can do um reports as well so here's here's a report if you want a dashboard of what deals have been invoiced what ones we've got overdue or not then you can see all that inside the dashboard um a real popular one is this one so you can track how many invoices have been how many deals have closed but don't have invoices on them so this is like who has forgotten their admin which are the sales haven't done that all right right and you can compare these figures of like how much has been invoiced versus what you're saying in HubSpot as well so you can say that the the number of invoices changes you can get it to automatically update the deal total and things like that of course of course you could do invoice create date how long did the deal stay in the The Creation stage before you even set an invoice let alone when it was paid how long did did they take to pay how long overdue are they what's the average overdue how many are outstanding of course yeah this is fantastic thanks it's really that visibility so it gives the sales and Ops Team great visibility about invoices but then for the finance team it gives them visibility because it gives them visibility about where the invoices come from and why you're creating their invoice because they've got that link back to the HubSpot deal all the time so they know that their data is correct and Harry it would bring confidence to those teams together rather than my software versus your software it's more we're having the same conversation about the same data now and so we can bring our perspectives of whatever we want to say to the conversation because we're not arguing about the data itself yeah and what we're trying to do here is remove some of the admin because like a like a lot of businesses have admin overhead of filling out spreadsheets building reports about invoices yeah you know sending you know emailing sometimes financing so can you send this invoice to yes if you're listening to that and you guys are doing good if you've got a spreadsheet stack because we can we can help you with that and whoever was just triggered very sick emailing invoices and spreadsheets management for your invoices go over to invoice stack.co and download invoice stack you you won't be triggered any longer um and it is it so so often the conversation is the the conversation twice a month or at each month or quarterly whatever you're doing that meeting really like you're saying Harry you're surfacing all of this admin that just didn't get done and so now you're just arguing about who should do the admin which admin does it actually reside with what do we actually need to do what what data point is wrong that's now showing up in the report that is all done yeah so those meetings can be much more productive about what you want to happen how long do you want the invoice to be outstanding before you do something about it how long do you want to have a deal created before the invoice is created the business process not the admin because invoice stack will just do it for you exactly yeah invoice status this is great so you you have the the setup from the deal you have the workflow where you can trigger actions and then you have the reporting once all of that's that's working for you that's right Harry this has been great and you've even connected over to uh to the accounting software what other pieces do we need to know I know you said before uh we got on that you could go to invoicestack.go.com to either book a demo if you want to walk through with Harry or you can straight away uh and start playing around with it yeah the app is completely self-service so and we've got to let in and we've got a kind of flow that kind of will take you through it step by step collecting HubSpot connecting your accounting platform or like a test version if you just want to try it I'll walk you through that so you can you can do everything through that or you can book a demo as well I also wanted to do a bit of a shout out to any hotspot Partners as well so we've got a partner program um that we've just launched so we're looking for HubSpot Partners uh Solutions Partners if you're implementing um things for your clients reach out to us um we'll see whether we can kind of help solve some of these challenges for your clients as well um so do get in touch if that's something that's of interest to you as well great so if you're a admin at a company and this is your responsibility to make it clean like Harry is showing you go to invoicestack.com and and you can even do the test demo uh what I'm here you you say Harry though also is those of you listening who are at agency or you're a partner HubSpot partner uh reach out to Harry and there's a program to help help you as well Implement these into all the portals of your partners exactly yeah great great let's see so uh we even blend I I know this isn't uh demo related we even blend we're gonna see more from you Harry I'm expecting yeah uh invoice stack is just one do you have a couple more that you can you know what let me just gotta open screen so this is uh this is our whole thing so we are we make fantastic apps for HubSpot um what we're trying to do is uh basically kind of raise the game we love HubSpot as a platform I'm a HubSpot Super Fan completely changed my life so uh what I want to do is make sure that the the kind of apps on HubSpot are great quality uh you know they've got fantastic support they're easy to set up easy to use uh and and and they and they kind of really solve some real problems uh for clients so we've got invoice stack uh we've got purpose stack which hope to talk about soon which helps you fund climate action when you close HubSpot deals um so launched as part of the app accelerator program that HubSpot recently ran awesome uh for those who are in the UK we have got a company lookup which ties straight into the UK's company's house which keeps that kind of record of all your business data uh for individual clients it helps you link that up as well so um there are three at the moment but yeah we've got more in the works if you've got a great idea if you've got an idea for an app uh and you're listening to this you're like I've got an idea for now come talk to me fantastic all right sprocketeers that's it for Harry and the invoice stack master class uh we talk all things HubSpot in Discord head to sprocketeer.community and you can join the Discord there uh we're on LinkedIn and YouTube you're probably watching this via LinkedIn or YouTube at this moment uh Harry we even blend and invoice stack can be found at weavenblend.com invoice stack at invoicestack.com you can also find invoice stack in the HubSpot Marketplace though you don't have to do it there you can go straight to the website but it is also available straight away in the marketplace Harry thanks so much for walking us through invoice stack uh beyond that thanks for creating such a cool app that really helps us get the admin out of the way of invoicing on the accounting end thanks so much thank you so much for having me it's been uh absolute pleasure showing it to you um and yeah like I say huge fan of the spokota community so I hang out as well on the Discord Channel and things like that so if you want to come find me ask questions about it or you have ideas then I'd love to hear from you as well I'm weave on the Discord community look up Harry his username is weave on Discord and you can talk all things uh invoice stack or you can just ask him about his beautiful artwork that he has all around his house [Laughter] which is a beautifully designed newspaper here in the UK it's it's just fitting that we went over invoices in accounting and you have a number yeah peace intentional no one's mentioned that all right sprocketeers all right Harry take care till next time spinny spinny