Use one HubSpot deals pipeline for leads, from enquiry to signed engagement letter, and a second for onboarding, from signature to first deliverable. The Free CRM gives two users and the default pipeline only; Starter, listed at $20 a seat, adds custom pipelines. Breeze Assistant helps with drafts and summaries, so test it on your own records.
Build the lead pipeline first, because it shows you what information your quotes need, and add onboarding when the first client signs. Every stage gets an exit rule and a next action, so nobody has to remember where a client is. Breeze is judged the same way: five ordinary tasks, timed on your own records, so the verdict is yours rather than a vendor's.
Free CRM or Starter: what a firm of your size gets
The plan decides whether you can run two pipelines. HubSpot's pipeline help page gives free tools no custom pipelines and Starter up to 15, shared across all record types, with the default pipeline for each type not counted. The rest of the differences, from HubSpot's pricing page and task help page, are in the table.
| Feature | Free | Starter ($20 list per seat a month) |
|---|---|---|
| Users | Up to 2 | Add seats as needed |
| Contacts | 1,000 (leads, clients and referrers all count) | No practical cap for a small firm |
| Deal pipelines | The default pipeline only | Up to 15 custom pipelines |
| Custom properties | 10 | 1,000 |
| Meeting links | 1 personal link with HubSpot branding | Up to 1,000 personal and team links, no branding |
| Saved email templates | 3 | Up to 10,000 |
| Recurring tasks | Not available (need a paid seat) | Available with a Core seat |
| Automation and e-signatures | Not included | Listed among Starter's additions; tasks created by workflows still need Professional |
| Breeze Assistant | Included | Included, plus 500 credits a month |
As a rule, a firm of one or two people with one pipeline can start on Free, and anyone who wants a separate onboarding pipeline, a third seat or recurring tasks needs Starter. Six seats at the list price is $120 a month. HubSpot's Starter page was offering new customers up to 65% off when I checked in November 2026 ($7 a seat paid annually or $10 month to month), so you may pay less in the first year, but the offer is time-limited and I would budget on the $20. For a wider look at what each plan includes, see Does HubSpot Have AI? What Free, Starter and Pro Get.
The lead pipeline: five open stages with a next action each
HubSpot's default deal stages are Appointment scheduled (20%), Qualified to buy (40%), Presentation scheduled (60%), Decision maker bought-in (80%), Contract sent (90%), Closed won and Closed lost. They are built for a sales team, not a practice, so rename them. On a custom pipeline in Starter you go to Settings, then Objects, then Deals, then the Pipelines tab, and create one from scratch. On Free you edit the default pipeline itself in the same place: HubSpot's pipeline help page puts a plan requirement on creating extra pipelines, not on adding, renaming or deleting stages or changing their probabilities. HubSpot asks for at least one Won and one Lost stage so that its sales reports work.
| Stage | Probability | Exit rule | Next action |
|---|---|---|---|
| New enquiry | 10% | First reply sent within one working day | Reply with the booking link |
| Call booked | 25% | Discovery call held and notes saved | Fill in the quote inputs the same day |
| Fee proposal sent | 50% | Written fee and scope sent | Task: follow up in three days |
| Chasing the quote | 60% | Client says yes, no or later | Second follow-up, then a phone call |
| Engagement letter sent | 85% | Signed letter back | Task: check signature in two days |
| Closed won / Closed lost | 100% / 0% | Signed, or a lost reason chosen | Create the onboarding deal, or log why |
Two properties make the board more than a to-do list. HubSpot's default Closed lost reason property has options you can edit, so replace them with the five you actually hear: price, chose another firm, no reply, not a fit, timing. And set the deal's Amount to the first-year fee (monthly fee times 12) so the column totals show the value waiting at each stage, not just a count of enquiries.
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Buy nowAn enquiry form that collects what the quote needs
HubSpot's free form builder makes a lead-capture form without code, and each submission creates or updates a contact. Ask only the questions that change your fee. How to Price Accounting Services: Quote Fixed Fees With AI Support shows which inputs drive the minutes, and the form should collect exactly those, so the quote worksheet can be filled in before the discovery call, not after it.
| Form question | Property type | What it feeds in the quote |
|---|---|---|
| Business type (self-employed, company, partnership, non-profit) | Dropdown | Which scope list to start from |
| People on payroll | Number | The payroll line and its limit |
| Transactions a month (under 100, 100 to 250, 250 to 500, over 500) | Dropdown | Bookkeeping minutes and the volume trigger |
| Bank and card accounts | Number | The account trigger |
| Year-end month | Dropdown | When the annual work lands |
| Current bookkeeping software | Dropdown | Set-up time and who needs access |
| Services wanted | Checkboxes | Which tier to propose |
| How did you hear about us | Dropdown | Which marketing is working |
Watch the property count on Free. HubSpot's Starter page lists 10 custom properties for free tools and 1,000 for Starter. The form above needs eight, and the Referred by and Engagement letter signed properties below make ten, so a Free account is full before it starts. On Free, drop Year-end month and Current bookkeeping software from the form and ask those two on the discovery call; the three that move the fee most, transactions, payroll headcount and bank accounts, should always stay.
Two default contact properties do useful work here. Lifecycle stage has the options Subscriber, Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Qualified Lead, Opportunity, Customer, Evangelist and Other; for a practice, set Lead when the form is submitted, Opportunity when a deal exists and Customer when it is won. Lead status holds New, Open, In Progress, Open Deal, Unqualified, Attempted to Contact, Connected and Bad Timing; it is where the person who answers the phone records what happened to each call. Use only the options you need and ignore the rest.
A quarter in numbers: where the leak shows
This worked example is illustrative. A six-person practice gets 90 enquiries in a quarter and records every one in the pipeline above. Counting the deals that reached each stage gives the funnel below.
| Stage reached | Deals | Share of the previous stage |
|---|---|---|
| New enquiry | 90 | |
| Call booked | 52 | 58% |
| Call held | 41 | 79% |
| Fee proposal sent | 29 | 71% |
| Engagement letter sent | 15 | 52% |
| Closed won | 13 | 87% |
Thirteen clients from 90 enquiries is 14.4%. The leak is plain: only 52% of fee proposals turn into an engagement letter. That points at the chasing stage, not at the website or the price. With an average fee of $450 a month, 13 new clients are worth $70,200 in first-year fees, against $1,440 a year for six Starter seats at the list price, or about 2% of what the pipeline brought in. Whatever you think of HubSpot, the sum is why a firm that loses track of quotes should fix the follow-up before it worries about the software bill.
Referrals: record who sent them, and thank them
Many practices grow through introductions, and a pipeline that does not record them hides the best lead source you have. Add a text property called Referred by to the deal and fill it in at the call-booked stage, using the form's "how did you hear about us" answer as the prompt. When a referred deal reaches Closed won, create a task to thank the referrer within a week. Group won deals by source once a quarter, and after two quarters you will know your five best referrers by name.
For those five, a recurring quarterly task on the contact ("Update and thank") keeps the relationship warm without anyone remembering to do it. Recurring tasks need a paid seat, so on Free the same job is a calendar reminder.
The handover: the engagement letter task and the onboarding pipeline
Closed won in the lead pipeline means the engagement letter is signed. On Starter, the next step is a new deal in a second pipeline called Client onboarding, associated with the same contact and company. On Free there is no second pipeline, so leave the won deal where it is and put the onboarding steps in tasks on that deal, or hand the client to your practice software at this point. Either way, the engagement letter gets its own task, because it is the one step with legal weight and the one a busy week quietly drops.
Task: Send engagement letter - [company name]
Type: To-do | Priority: High
Due: one working day after the fee proposal is accepted
Associate with: the deal, the contact and the company
Checklist in the task notes:
1. Tier and monthly fee match the written proposal
2. Scope list and limits attached
3. Start date and first-month pro-rata agreed
4. Payment method requested
5. Identity checks started as the firm's own rules require
6. Follow-up task created: check the signature in two working daysAdd a date property called Engagement letter signed. It costs nothing, and it lets you report on the gap between acceptance and signature, which is often where a client goes cold. HubSpot's conditional stage properties can make a property such as this one required when a deal moves into a stage (Pipelines tab, Conditional logic rules column). The pipeline help page lists no plan requirement for them, so check whether the column appears on your plan; if it does, require the signed date at Closed won, and if it does not, the checklist in the task is your control. For the letter itself, AI Engagement Letters for Accountants: Faster Drafts, Clear Scope covers drafting and what to check.
| Onboarding stage | Exit rule | Target days | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome and checks | Identity and authority checks recorded | 3 | Admin |
| Records requested | Request email sent with a deadline | 1 | Admin |
| Records received | Last item in, or partner call made | 7 | Admin, chasing |
| Set up in practice software | Client created, feeds and access connected | 3 | Bookkeeper |
| Kick-off call held | Call done, notes saved on the deal | 3 | Accountant |
| First deliverable scheduled | Date in the calendar and client told | 1 | Accountant |
| Live | Closed won in this pipeline | Total: about 18 | Partner reviews |
Those day counts are targets to adjust, not benchmarks. The useful number is the one you measure: how many days each stage actually takes. Once a quarter's deals are in, sort the board by time in stage. If "Records received" is always the slow one, the fix belongs in the request email and in the chasing routine below. How to Automate Client Onboarding in a Small Accounting Practice goes through the wider onboarding routine around this.
Chasing records with three templates and four tasks
Free allows three saved email templates, which happens to be exactly one chase cycle: the request, the reminder and the final nudge. Starter lifts the limit, but a short cycle is better than a long one anyway. A chase runs on tasks, because HubSpot's own task help page says tasks created by workflows need Professional, so a person creates each one by hand when the stage changes.
- Day 0: send the request template, with the deadline and a list of exactly what is needed.
- Day 3: task to send the reminder template.
- Day 7: task to phone the client; log the call result on the deal.
- Day 14: task for the partner to call, and a decision about whether the start date moves.
Subject: Documents we need to start your accounts
Hi [first name],
Welcome aboard. To start your monthly service we need these by
[date]:
- Bank and card statements for [period]
- Supplier bills and receipts for the same period
- Your latest payroll summary, if you run payroll
- Access to your accounting software (link below)
You can reply to this email with files attached, or use the secure
upload link. If anything is hard to find, tell me which item and I will
help you track it down.
[your name]For ongoing clients, a recurring monthly task on the company record ("Records due by the fifth working day") does the same job without anyone having to remember. Recurring tasks need an assigned paid seat, so this is one more reason a practice with clients on retainer ends up on Starter.
A 20-minute weekly review that keeps the board honest
A pipeline decays when nobody looks at it. Put twenty minutes in the diary on the same day each week and run the same six checks. The thresholds are my own rules of thumb, so adjust them to how your enquiries behave.
- Sort the lead board by time in stage. Any enquiry in New enquiry for more than one working day gets a reply today.
- Open every deal in Fee proposal sent that is older than three days and has no open task. Create the follow-up.
- Read this week's Closed lost reasons. If "no reply" is the commonest, shorten the gap between follow-ups; if "price" is, check whether the scope was explained before the number.
- In the onboarding pipeline, anything over seven days in Records received gets a partner call.
- Update the Amount on any deal where the client chose a different tier from the proposal.
- Write down one thing to change next week, and look at it first next time.
That review is also how you check the whole set-up is working. If the funnel table from earlier looks the same after two quarters, the pipeline is recording but not improving anything, and the fix is a change in behaviour, not another property.
Log the email so the history sits on the client record
A pipeline is only as good as the history behind each deal. HubSpot logs email in two ways on every plan. You can connect a work inbox, or you can copy a BCC address into a message you send and forward received messages to a separate forwarding address; both are found under Settings, Objects, Activities, on the Email Log and Track tab. The BCC address is the same for every user in the account, the combined size of a logged message is capped at 40 MB, and a recipient who is BCC'd does not get a record created or the email attached, so use the address for your own copy only.
Check the contact email logging rules on that same tab. "Log replies only" logs an incoming message only if it belongs to a thread already in the CRM, and "Log all emails (from known contacts)" logs mail to and from people who already exist as contacts. For a practice, the second is usually right for clients and the first is safer if staff use the same inbox for personal mail. Add family, friends and personal domains to the never-log list so private mail never lands on a client record. Treat the HubSpot copy as a working history, and keep your statutory client file in your practice system.
A five-task test of Breeze Assistant on your own records
HubSpot's Breeze Assistant page says it draws on your CRM data, customer records and HubSpot's knowledge base, drafts emails and proposals, helps prepare for and follow up on meetings, and can analyse a pipeline. It also says the assistant is included with every subscription at no additional cost, without saying which of those actions work on which plan. HubSpot's pipeline help page adds one hard limit: the assistant cannot create or update pipeline rules, tags or automations, and cannot change lifecycle stages, so it will not tidy your board for you. That gap is the reason to test: run the same five tasks on real but low-risk records, time them, and keep the tool only if it earns its place.
First, check the switches. A Super Admin controls AI under Settings, Account management, AI, on the Access tab. "Give users access to generative AI tools and features" and "Give users access to Breeze Assistant" are on by default, with data-access toggles for CRM data and customer conversation data on and files data off. Decide deliberately what you want it to read before anyone starts; HubSpot for Financial Advisers: Pipeline and Where Breeze Stops goes through those settings in more depth, and the principles apply to any firm holding client details.
| Task | What to ask | A good result | A failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Lead summary | Summarise this contact and deal before my call | Names the services wanted, the quote inputs and the last contact date | Invents details the record does not hold |
| 2. Quote follow-up | Draft a short follow-up to a lead whose fee proposal went out five days ago | Short, uses the real fee tier, offers one next step | Wrong tier or fee, or pushy wording |
| 3. Records request | Draft the opening records request for this new client | Lists the items for their business type with a deadline | Asks for items you do not need |
| 4. Pipeline question | Which fee proposals are more than five days old with no reply? | A correct list that matches your board | No answer, or a wrong one. That is a plan limit, so use a saved filter instead |
| 5. Thread summary | Summarise this email thread as a note for the deal | Two or three accurate lines | Misses an agreed date or a number |
Log minutes without and with Breeze, the edits you had to make and any error that would have reached a client. The decision rule I would use: keep it in the weekly routine if it saves at least three minutes on three of the five tasks and nothing wrong survives a one-minute check. Otherwise use it occasionally, for first drafts only.
This is the kind of draft task 2 might produce. It is my illustration, not captured HubSpot output.
Hi [first name], I wanted to check you received the fee proposal for the Standard plan at $795 a month. If it would help, I can walk through the scope on a ten-minute call this week. Whatever you decide, I will be glad to answer any questions. [your name]
What I would fix: the fee and tier have to match the deal exactly, so check them against the record; "Whatever you decide" is filler; and a specific time offer ("Thursday morning or Friday afternoon") gets more replies than "this week". The test is the same for every task: ask what it got wrong, not whether it sounds good.
When HubSpot is the wrong home for the onboarding half
HubSpot is a good front door for a practice: enquiries, quotes, follow-up and the signed letter. It is a weaker back office. Recurring deadlines, working papers and time records belong in practice software, and if you already use a tool that bundles client onboarding with recurring work, keep onboarding there and run only the lead pipeline in HubSpot. TaxDome vs Karbon for a Small Firm: AI, Cost and Fit compares two such tools.
Keep the first version small. Five open stages, a quote-input form, one engagement letter task and a three-template chase will tell you within a quarter whether the pipeline is the problem or the follow-up is. If you add automation later, remember where the limits sit: on HubSpot's own pages, tasks created by workflows need Professional, which is a different price level from the $20 seat this tutorial assumes.
HubSpot questions accounting firms ask
Is HubSpot's free CRM enough for an accounting firm?
For up to two users and 1,000 contacts, yes, with one catch: free tools give you the default deals pipeline only, so a separate onboarding pipeline needs Starter. Firms with three or more staff, or with more than 1,000 leads and clients, will usually move to Starter at the $20 list price per seat.
Does HubSpot replace practice management software?
No. It handles enquiries, quotes and the handover well, but recurring deadlines, time tracking and working papers belong in practice software. Many firms use HubSpot for the front half, from enquiry to signed engagement letter, and hand the client to their practice tool once onboarding starts.
Where should engagement letters be signed?
HubSpot's pricing FAQ lists e-signatures among Starter's additions, but check how it works for a plain letter before relying on it. If you already use a signing tool or practice software, keep it, and track the letter in HubSpot with a task and a date property so the status is still visible on the deal.
Does testing Breeze Assistant use up credits?
HubSpot's AI set-up guide says Breeze Assistant helps with daily tasks without using HubSpot Credits; credits go on specific features and agents marked with a credits icon. Starter includes 500 credits a month for those, and unused credits expire at the end of each month. Glance at the credit usage page after the test week to confirm nothing drew on them.
Further reads
- How to Chase Missing Client Records With AI Before Deadlines — Chasing records before deadlines, with AI-drafted reminders.
- AI Chatbot for Accountants: Website FAQs Without Giving Tax Advice — Handle website enquiries without giving tax advice.
- CRM With Accounting Integration: Link Deals to Invoices and Payments — Link won deals to invoices and payments.
- AI Marketing for Accountants: LinkedIn, Newsletters and Local Search — Fill the top of your lead pipeline with a monthly plan.
- Accounting Fee Proposal Template: Draft and Price It With AI — A worked fee proposal for a small-business client: scope, three fee options, exclusions and acceptance line, priced from hours and rate.
- Accounting Firm Standard Operating Procedures With AI: Record to Publish — Turn screen recordings of real month-end and busy-season work into written procedures with an owner, a review date and a home.
- Notion for Accountants: Firm Wiki, Client Trackers and Notion AI — A firm wiki, a client tracker database and a costed verdict on Notion AI, with the templates written out field by field.
- Selling an Accounting Practice: Prepare the Due Diligence Pack With AI — Assemble an indexed buyer pack from practice records while controlling when identifiable client files become visible.
- Zapier for Accountants: Five Automations for Intake and Reminders — Five Zaps for client intake, document chasing and deadline reminders, with the monthly task count and plan each one needs.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: HubSpot pricing page and Starter product page; HubSpot Knowledge Base pages on pipelines, tasks, default deal properties, lifecycle stages, email logging, AI settings, AI adoption and HubSpot Credits; HubSpot's Breeze Assistant page (checked 4 November 2026).