How do I automate renewal deals in HubSpot?
Short answer
Three moving parts. A contract end date on the company, stored as a real date property.
One filter based workflow that creates the renewal deal ninety days out and writes a flag so it can never create a second one. Then a reminder cascade at ninety, sixty and thirty days for the account owner. Sales Hub Professional, two hours for the core three. The trap: filter based enrollment fires once, so a workflow switched on late skips the accounts already inside the window.
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What a spec looks like
The nine sections, and the files
Every spec follows the same nine sections, so a team reads one and knows how to read all of them.
- Outcome, when to use it and when not to
- Prerequisites: properties, lists, tiers, with the JSON to create them
- Enrollment and re-enrollment, then every step with its parameters
- Known pitfalls, a test plan, variants, and the YAML build spec
PDF, Markdown, properties JSON, workflow JSON, custom code where used. Test plan and known pitfalls in every spec.
Each spec states its minimum tier. The 12 free ones open in full, the others show their public preview.
The 53 specs, in build order
The contract date everything else hangs on
Gets one reliable end date per account on the record, and keeps it rolling forward after each cycle.
What each spec doesHide
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The renewal deal and the calendar around it
Creates the deal, owns it, prices it, routes it to the right pipeline, and closes it honestly when the answer is no.
What each spec doesHide
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Risk, scored from signals that already exist
Turns usage, tickets, billing events and health scores into one flag a CSM can sort on.
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What the customer told you
Routes every survey response by category instead of leaving it in a report nobody opens.
What each spec doesHide
Save plays, and the campaigns you stop
Acts on the flag: outreach, suppression from upsell sends, reviews on a cadence, and a real handoff when the owner changes.
What each spec doesHide
Expansion, the other half of the renewal
Catches the accounts growing out of their plan while there is still time to sell them more.
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The 3 things that break this, and how the specs stop them
The renewal workflow that only ever fires once
Filter based enrollment fires when a record newly matches the criteria.
A company already inside the ninety day window on the day you switch the workflow on never enrolls, and never will, unless somebody edits the date or you turn re-enrollment on, which then risks a second renewal deal for the same contract. The reminder cascade has the same shape from the other side: delays scheduled at enrollment do not recalculate if the contract date moves afterwards, so an extended contract keeps getting the reminders for its old date.
How the specs stop itShow less
A contract end date that is not a date property
Every spec here names the field type in its prerequisites for one reason.
The operators these workflows run on, less than ninety days away and delay until a date property, exist for a date picker property. An end date that arrived through an import into a single line text field looks correct on the record and offers none of them, so the workflow cannot be built as written. One spec in the data quality category exists for exactly this conversion, and it routes ambiguous formats to a human instead of picking a convention.
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A risk score computed on a property nothing updates
The churn risk specs read usage counts, open ticket counts and health scores that something outside HubSpot writes.
When that sync stalls, the properties keep their last value, the workflow keeps scoring, and every account reads as safe. A blank input is worse: unless the formula handles a null on purpose, an account with no usage data at all computes as no decline. Watch the source property's last updated timestamp, because workflow history will report success the entire time.
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What this bundle builds
The renewal that nobody owned. It exists in every portal that sells subscriptions: a contract ends, a date sits in a field, and whether anyone acts on it depends on a rep's memory and a spreadsheet that was last opened in March.
Fifty three specs close that gap end to end. A renewal deal opens itself ninety days out, associated to the account, priced from the current contract value and owned by whoever manages the account today rather than whoever sold it three years ago. The owner gets reminders at ninety, sixty and thirty days, and a manager hears about it if nothing moved. Renewal deals route to their own pipeline so new business reporting stays clean, and cannot sit in Closed Won without a signed contract attached.
Alongside that runs the risk half. Usage decline, ticket spikes, support escalations, failed payments, a departed champion, a health score that dropped: each writes to one flag and one source field, so a CSM sorts by risk instead of by instinct. Flagged accounts drop out of upsell campaigns automatically. Survey responses split at the answer, detractors to a save play and promoters to a referral ask. And the expansion specs catch the accounts growing out of their plan while there is still a conversation to have.
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How the pieces fit together
The contract end date first, and as a date picker property. Everything downstream reads it, so start with the spec that finds customer accounts where it is blank and chases them, before you build anything that assumes it is filled. Accounts with several contracts need the custom object version instead, not a forced single date.
Then the creation workflow and its flag, then the reminder cascade on top. Build them in that order, because the cascade branches on whether a renewal deal already exists and the flag is what tells it. The close-won workflow that rolls the date forward and resets the flag comes third, and it is the one people forget, which is why so many portals only ever automate one renewal cycle.
The risk half is independent and can be built in parallel by someone else. Its only hard dependency is a source property that something updates reliably, a product API, a billing webhook or the onboarding health score. Score, band, alert, suppress. Save plays and expansion triggers sit last, because they consume the flag rather than produce it.
What you get
- 53 specs, from a 20 minute owner assignment to a 65 minute custom object sync, roughly 34 hours of build at an honest pace with testing
- Each spec as PDF and Markdown, with enrollment criteria, the step list, a diagram, a test plan and the known pitfalls written out
- Properties JSON: 116 property definitions across companies, contacts, deals, tickets and one custom object
- Workflow JSON in Automation API format, switched off on import
- Custom coded actions in 9 specs, each with a native or calculated property fallback described where one exists
- Tier stated per spec: 33 Sales Hub Professional, 8 Service Hub Professional, 7 Data Hub Professional, 3 Enterprise, 2 Marketing Hub Professional
- Test plans that cover the negative path: the blank date, the unowned account, the second renewal deal
- Install in one click for Full and Agency buyers
Who it is for, and who should skip it
For the RevOps or CS ops person in a subscription business who has been asked, out loud, how a renewal got missed. Also for a consultant standing up post-sale automation on a new portal, since the first six workflows are the same every time with the pipeline names changed.
Skip the risk half if no product usage or billing data reaches the portal, because those specs have nothing to read and no amount of workflow logic invents the signal. Skip the whole thing on Starter, where the enrollment criteria these specs use do not exist. And if renewals are one of several problems rather than the loud one, the full library works out cheaper per spec.
Questions admins ask
How do I create renewal deals automatically in HubSpot?
One workflow on the company object. Enroll on customer lifecycle plus a contract end date less than ninety days away, set a created flag as the first action so a re-run cannot produce a second deal, then use Create record to open the deal in a renewal pipeline with the amount copied from the contract value. The Create record action sets the new deal's owner directly, including the enrolled company's existing owner, so there is no follow up copy step. Around forty five minutes on Sales Hub Professional.
Why does my renewal reminder workflow skip accounts?
Two usual causes. The account has no contract end date at all, so it never matches the criteria, which is why one spec here does nothing but find and chase those blanks. Or the account was already inside the window when the workflow went live, and filter based enrollment only catches a record at the moment it newly matches. Check workflow history for an enrollment count that is lower than your active customer count.
Can HubSpot calculate a customer health score without custom code?
Yes. Build the score as a calculated property with a formula over the usage and ticket properties you already hold, then use the workflow only for the banding and the alerts. That keeps the maths in the properties layer, which needs a Professional tier of any hub rather than Data Hub specifically. Custom coded actions are the option when the score needs a lookup or an API call the formula editor cannot express.
Do these renewal workflows need Data Hub?
Seven of the fifty three do, and they are the ones that pull usage from an API, roll up a custom object, or react to a billing webhook. Thirty three run on Sales Hub Professional, eight need Service Hub Professional because they read tickets or survey responses, and three need Enterprise for custom objects and territory logic. Every spec states its tier at the top.
What sets the next renewal date after a renewal closes won?
A separate workflow on the deal. When the renewal deal reaches Closed Won it rolls the company's contract end date forward by the contract term and resets the created flag, so the account is eligible for the next cycle without anyone editing a date. Watch two details: a blank term value leaves month to month accounts stuck on the no branch, and multi-year contracts need their mid-term check-in task rebuilt against the new term rather than the old one.
Read 12 complete specs before you pay.
One per category, same format as the paid ones. Email only, no card.
We email the link, then a short note when specs change. Nothing else.
Here it is. Download the pack now (.zip) The link is in your inbox too.
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