38 questions · answered

Every question a HubSpot operator has asked us.

Manual filter recipes, the workarounds that get you halfway, and what Bloated actually does instead. No fluff, no scroll-baiting.

5 categories
38 questions
Median read · 5 min

Follow-up failures8 questions

Buyers and leads stalling because someone did not reply in time. Each finding ties to a record you can act on today.

~43 min total read

Which of my contacts only have closed-lost deals?

Manual recipe
Filter contacts where Number of associated deals > 0 AND Number of associated open deals = 0 AND Number of associated closed-won deals = 0. Watch out: the 'where stage = X' rollups require Operations Hub Pro+ calculation properties — below that tier, you're exporting to a spreadsheet.
Bloated answer
The Lost-only contacts rule surfaces contacts whose only deal history is closed-lost — the cohort most worth dropping into a nurture sequence rather than leaving to rot in the CRM.

Which of my leads have gone cold after being worked?

Manual recipe
Filter contacts where Lead status is Attempting OR Connected AND Last activity date is more than 21 days ago. Watch out: sequence emails count as activity, so leads being drip-emailed look fresher than they really are.
Bloated answer
The Active leads gone cold rule catches the cohort the rep judged worth pursuing — then dropped. Distinct from never-touched leads and from hot inbounds in their SLA window.

How do I find reps who have stopped working their deals?

Manual recipe
Use HubSpot's Activity leaderboard to find users near 0 activity in the last 30 days, then filter their deals for Last activity date is more than 30 days ago to confirm. Watch out: sequence emails count as activity — a rep who set up a sequence on day 1 looks busy.
Bloated answer
The Inactive owner rule cross-references activity counts with deal stage advances — separating reps who are under-logging from reps who've actually stopped working.

Which buyers emailed me and I'm still ghosting them?

Manual recipe
Compare each contact's most recent inbound vs. most recent outbound email timestamp. If inbound > outbound AND inbound is 48h+ old, the buyer is waiting. Watch out: HubSpot's UI doesn't expose this comparison directly — you need the CRM Engagements API.
Bloated answer
The Unanswered reply rule catches every open deal where the buyer sent something 48h+ ago and the rep went quiet — the most direct stall signal in your pipeline.

Which follow-ups did I promise but never do?

Manual recipe
Filter tasks where Due date is more than 7 days ago, Status is not Completed, AND Task creator equals Task assignee. Watch out: reps sometimes 'complete' tasks without doing them — your filter clears, the buyer is still waiting.
Bloated answer
The Overdue follow-ups rule rolls up rep-created overdue tasks to the parent deal — so you see 'this deal is stalled because the rep promised something and didn't do it' in one row.

Which leads have I never actually touched?

Manual recipe
Filter Lifecycle stage = Lead AND Number of times contacted = 0 AND Created date is more than 7 days ago. Watch out: imports often pre-set Last activity date to the import date — filter on Number of times contacted instead, which actually starts at 0.
Bloated answer
The Unworked leads rule excludes marketing-only sends and import-stamped activity, surfacing only leads where no rep ever picked them up.

Which of my leads haven't been contacted yet?

Manual recipe
Filter contacts where Last contacted is unknown AND form fill happened in the last 24 hours. Watch out: HubSpot's Last contacted counts sequence emails as touches.
Bloated answer
Every Friday, the Speed-to-lead rule surfaces every form fill from the past 24h with no real human touch — sequence emails excluded.

Which SQLs don't have a deal yet?

Manual recipe
Filter contacts where Lifecycle stage = SQL AND Number of associated deals = 0 AND Date entered SQL is more than 14 days ago. Watch out: lifecycle stages don't auto-progress, so a worked-but-stalled SQL stays SQL forever.
Bloated answer
The SQL no deal rule shows every SQL aged 14+ days with no deal — the lead-to-deal handoff timing your reps are dropping.

Pipeline risk12 questions

Deals drifting because of ownership, stage, or lifecycle problems. Not directly a missed touch, but money leaking the same way.

~66 min total read

Which of my marketing contacts am I paying for but never emailing?

Manual recipe
Filter contacts where Marketing contact status is Marketing contact AND Last marketing email send date is more than 180 days ago (or unknown). Watch out: reclassifying isn't undoable in real time — HubSpot has a cooldown before flips back, so mistakes cost a billing cycle.
Bloated answer
The Stale marketing contacts rule catches the cohort each month and flags which workflows are still re-marking them — so you fix the source, not just the symptom.

How do I find deals stuck in the same stage too long?

Manual recipe
Use HubSpot's built-in Is deal stalled filter, add Last activity date is more than 7 days ago. Watch out: the native flag uses a one-size-fits-all team average — late-stage stalls and fast-rep stalls slip through.
Bloated answer
The Stalled deals rule layers HubSpot's flag with per-stage thresholds and activity-recency, so a 14-day Negotiation stall isn't lumped in with a 14-day Lead stall.

How do I find deals with no owner in HubSpot?

Manual recipe
Filter open deals where Deal owner is unknown AND Deal stage is not closed won/lost. Watch out: finding them is easy — keeping the count at zero requires fixing whichever integration / round-robin gap creates them.
Bloated answer
The No owner rule rolls up unowned deals by company so a single account with three orphaned deals shows once. Click Recover to re-route via your assignment workflow.

How do I find records owned by deactivated users in HubSpot?

Manual recipe
Filter each object type (deals/contacts/companies) where Owner status is archived. Watch out: HubSpot's offboarding prompt is a one-shot — workflows and integrations keep assigning new records to deactivated users until you remove them.
Bloated answer
The Archived owner rule cross-checks all three object types in one view AND traces which workflows/integrations are still assigning records to deactivated users.

Which deals are closing soon but nobody's talking to the buyer?

Manual recipe
Filter open deals where Close date is less than 14 days from now AND Last contacted is more than 7 days ago. Watch out: sequence emails count as 'contact' — a deal nudged by a drip looks freshly contacted even when the rep has gone silent.
Bloated answer
The Closing soon, silent rule strips out sequence emails before flagging — surfacing only deals where the rep has actually gone quiet during the window when response time matters most.

Which deals had their amount quietly lowered?

Manual recipe
Build a custom amount_peak property via workflow that snapshots the highest historical Amount, then filter deals where current Amount < amount_peak * 0.8. Watch out: the 'no documentation' part requires querying notes/calls/emails APIs separately — no single native filter exists.
Bloated answer
The Quietly discounted rule walks Amount property history AND cross-references engagements within a 3-day window of the change — flagging only undocumented drops, not legitimate concessions with notes.

Which deals have had their close date pushed multiple times?

Manual recipe
Build a custom property close_date_push_count and a workflow that increments it whenever Close date moves forward. Filter deals where the count is 3+. Watch out: the increment workflow can't backfill — deals already pushed 3× show as 0 until pushed a 4th time.
Bloated answer
The Pushed 3+ times rule walks every open deal's close-date property history server-side, no workflow setup, no Operations Hub Pro+ requirement. The 3rd push is the strongest 'this deal won't close' signal in your data.

Which deals moved backward in the pipeline?

Manual recipe
Build a custom stage_regressed property via workflow that flags when a deal stage moves to an earlier pipeline order. Watch out: stage ordering varies across pipelines, so the regression check has to know which pipeline the deal lives in.
Bloated answer
The Stage regressed rule walks each deal's stage history server-side and weights regressed deals lower in the forecast — so a deal bounced back to Discovery isn't treated like a fresh Discovery deal.

Which late-stage deals have gone quiet?

Manual recipe
Filter open deals where Deal stage is Proposal/Negotiation/Contract Sent AND Last activity date is more than 7 days ago. Watch out: the activity-date field is polluted by sequence sends, and a rep replying to a buyer's email looks like 'engagement' even when the buyer is going dark.
Bloated answer
The Late-stage silent rule combines stage-tenure with rep-only activity recency, surfacing deals where the buyer has actually gone dark mid-eval — not deals where a sequence email keeps the timestamp fresh.

Which of my deal contacts have gone dark?

Manual recipe
Two views: contacts on open deals where Hard bounced is true, and contacts on open deals where Last contacted is more than 365 days ago. Watch out: Last contacted is polluted by sequence emails — a contact ignoring marketing for a year shows as 'contacted 2 days ago' if a sequence kept firing.
Bloated answer
The Gone dark rule cross-references hard-bounce status with rep-only activity recency, surfacing deal contacts where the buyer is genuinely unreachable — even when sequence sends inflate the activity-date field.

Which of my deals have no contact attached?

Manual recipe
Filter open deals where Number of associated contacts is equal to 0. Watch out: multi-object reports (deals + contacts) silently drop orphan deals — the very report you'd build to find data quality issues hides them. Use a single-object filtered view instead.
Bloated answer
The Orphan deals rule catches deals with no contact AND auto-suggests the most likely re-attach candidate from the associated company's contact list.

Which of my deals only have junior contacts attached?

Manual recipe
There's no native filter for 'every associated contact matches X.' Build a custom calculation property has_senior_contact = false via workflow, then filter deals on it. Watch out: job-title parsing is fragile — 'Associate' is junior in legal, mid-level in consulting.
Bloated answer
The No senior champion rule cross-references every deal contact's title against a senior-keyword list, so a deal with three coordinators and zero VPs is flagged before the manager finds out at end of quarter.

Forecast accuracy7 questions

Forecast-distorting issues: open deals with stale close dates or missing amounts, won deals with bad attribution data, duplicate deals inflating the pipeline. The dollar surfaced here is the magnitude of distortion, not money to recover. Fixing it is data work, not customer work.

~35 min total read

How do I find deals past their close date in HubSpot?

Manual recipe
Filter open deals where Close date is more than 0 days ago AND Deal stage is not closed won/lost. Either the deal slipped without anyone updating the date, or somebody forgot to mark it lost.
Bloated answer
The Past close date rule flags every open deal where the close date is in the past. Pick a recovery action: push the date with intent, mark lost, or close-properly with a reason logged.

How do I find duplicate open deals on the same company?

Manual recipe
Filter Companies where Number of associated deals > 2 (or build a calculation property for open-deal count, Operations Hub Pro+). Watch out: the rule has false positives — multi-divisional companies and renewals + expansions are legitimately multi-deal.
Bloated answer
The Duplicate deals rule surfaces every company with 3+ open deals AND tells you which rep owns each. Catch territory conflicts before pipeline review, not during it.

How do I find won deals with a future or missing close date?

Manual recipe
Filter Deal stage = Closed Won AND Close date is unknown OR after today. Watch out: stage-required-property rules don't fire on workflow-driven or import-driven stage changes — your validation can be in place AND the bad data can still exist.
Bloated answer
The Won, bad close date rule catches three categories — null close dates, far-future placeholders, and dates set to the close-won timestamp incorrectly. Each gets a different recovery action.

How many of my won deals have no amount?

Manual recipe
Filter Deal stage = Closed Won AND Amount is unknown OR equal to 0. Watch out: stage-required-property rules don't fire on workflow-driven or integration-driven stage changes — so even with validation, won-no-amount deals slip through.
Bloated answer
The Won, no amount rule catches them every Friday before they break your monthly revenue close — including the ones from integrations and bulk imports that bypass HubSpot's required-field rules.

Which of my deals have no scheduled follow-up?

Manual recipe
Filter open deals where Next activity date is unknown AND Last activity date is before 7 days ago. Watch out: sequence emails populate Next activity date with future send timestamps, so a deal queued for a drip looks 'scheduled' even when no human plans to touch it.
Bloated answer
The No next activity rule looks at logged activities AND scheduled tasks AND meetings — strips out sequence noise, surfaces deals nobody's planning to actually touch.

Which of my open deals have no amount?

Manual recipe
Filter open deals where Amount is unknown OR equal to 0 AND Created date is more than 1 day ago. Watch out: stage-required-property rules don't fire on workflow-driven or import-driven stage progression, so even with required fields you'll have no-amount deals in late stages.
Bloated answer
The Zero amount rule catches no-amount deals AND surfaces suspiciously round placeholders ($1, $10K) — separating real missing data from sandbagged values reps put in to satisfy validation.

Why is my HubSpot forecast not weighted by stage probability?

Manual recipe
Settings → Objects → Deals → Pipelines → Edit each pipeline → check every stage's Probability field. Watch out: there's no native automation that runs this check on a schedule — you remember to re-audit after every pipeline change, or you don't.
Bloated answer
The Unweighted pipeline rule walks every pipeline's stage configuration via API and flags missing probabilities. Catches the silent forecast breakage that drift introduces over time.

Data quality7 questions

Records that quietly clutter your CRM and break association, segmentation, and automation. No direct dollar; long-tail compounding cost.

~37 min total read

How do I find duplicate companies in HubSpot?

Manual recipe
HubSpot's Companies → Actions → Manage duplicates catches same-domain matches. Watch out: it misses domain typos (acme.com vs acmer.com), formatting differences (https://acme.com vs acme.com), and the multi-domain subsidiary case.
Bloated answer
The Duplicate companies rule normalizes domains (strips http/www/paths, lowercases) and clusters them — catching cases the native tool's exact-match misses.

How do I find duplicate contacts in HubSpot?

Manual recipe
HubSpot's Contacts → Actions → Manage duplicates catches email matches but misses phone-only or name-only duplicates. Watch out: the native merge UI is one-pair-at-a-time — fine for 10 duplicates, painful for 1,000.
Bloated answer
The Duplicate contacts rule clusters across normalized email, phone, and full name independently — so a contact whose email matches one record and phone matches another shows in both clusters, both worth merging.

How do I find companies with no domain set in HubSpot?

Manual recipe
Filter Companies where Domain is unknown AND ideally Number of associated contacts > 0 (so you focus on active records, not list-import noise). Watch out: marking Domain as required only enforces on manual creation — imports and integrations bypass it.
Bloated answer
The Missing domain rule catches active company records (with associated contacts/deals) where the domain is empty — so cleanup focuses on records that matter, not on archived list noise.

How do I find contacts with no working email or phone?

Manual recipe
Two views: one filtering all channels (Email/Phone/Mobile) blank; another filtering Email contains placeholder patterns (test@, noreply, @example.com). Watch out: the placeholder list is open-ended — every quarter brings new test domains and ISP-specific patterns to add.
Bloated answer
The Unreachable contacts rule maintains the placeholder pattern list across all known test/noreply/ISP domains AND keeps the filter inverted vs. personal-vs-corporate distinction so cleanup decisions are explicit.

How do I find lost deals with no loss reason logged?

Manual recipe
Filter Deal stage = Closed Lost AND Closed Lost reason is unknown AND Closed-lost date in the last 90 days. Watch out: even with required fields, reps pick the path-of-least-resistance option (often 'No Decision Made'), so you get filled-in fields that say nothing useful.
Bloated answer
The No close-lost reason rule catches missing-reasons in the 90-day recoverable window — and surfaces over-used categories so sales-ops can re-ask reps when 'No Decision Made' is being used as a default.

Which of my companies aren't actually companies?

Manual recipe
Filter Companies where Domain matches personal-email patterns (gmail.com, yahoo.com, etc.) or test patterns (test.com, example.com). Watch out: the personal-domain list is region-specific — mail.ru, gmx.de, 163.com get missed if you build from a US-only list.
Bloated answer
The Personal/test domain rule maintains a global list of personal-email and test-domain patterns AND surfaces fake-company records by descending associated-contact count so the highest-impact cleanups surface first.

Why do my contacts' lifecycle stages not match their deal status?

Manual recipe
Three separate views: Customer with no closed-won, Opportunity with no open deal, Lead with deal in late stages. Watch out: the intuitive fix (reset lifecycle stage backward) corrupts conversion reporting per HubSpot's docs — use a parallel custom Lead status instead.
Bloated answer
The Lifecycle mismatch rule cross-references each contact's lifecycle against actual deal reality across all three sub-cases AND auto-suggests the right fix per case (don't reset; flag operational status separately).

Compliance4 questions

Sender-reputation and consent-respecting checks. Compliance findings carry no dollar attribution — they are protective, not recoverable.

~26 min total read

Am I still emailing contacts after they hard-bounced?

Manual recipe
Use the Email Events API to fetch all EMAIL_BOUNCE and EMAIL_SENT events, group by recipient, find contacts where any send timestamp is later than their first hard-bounce. Watch out: native HubSpot filters can't express this — Email Events API access (Marketing Hub Pro+) is required.
Bloated answer
The Bounced + re-emailed rule queries the Email Events API on every scan and surfaces every contact who got a marketing send AFTER their first hard-bounce — the smoking gun for sender-reputation damage.

Do my marketing contacts have a documented consent basis?

Manual recipe
Filter contacts where Marketing contact status is Marketing contact AND Legal basis for processing data is unknown. Watch out: the Legal basis property requires HubSpot's GDPR features enabled — some portals don't have it, in which case this audit can't be run natively at all.
Bloated answer
The No consent basis rule catches the missing-basis cohort AND surfaces re-engagement candidates whose consent is more than 3 years old (when GDPR 'periodic refresh' best practice kicks in).

Is emailing someone who unsubscribed still allowed?

Manual recipe
Filter contacts where Email opted out is true AND Lifecycle stage is SQL/Opportunity/Customer. Watch out: the line between marketing and 1:1 sales is blurry — a templated 'checking in' from a rep counts as marketing to a regulator.
Bloated answer
The Unsubscribed + active rule catches contacts who opted out and are still being touched by sales motion — sequences, deal contacts, late-stage lifecycle. Doesn't block 1:1 replies, only flags violation territory.

Should I still be marketing to contacts whose email bounced?

Manual recipe
Filter contacts where Hard bounced is true AND Marketing contact status is Marketing contact AND Email opt-out is false. Watch out: HubSpot's auto-suppression on hard-bounce isn't always immediate — and re-validation by enrichment can flip a bounced contact back to active.
Bloated answer
The Hard-bounced active rule cross-references bounce flags with marketing-contact status AND ongoing send activity, so contacts that slipped past auto-suppression get caught before the next blast.