How to Add Terms & Conditions to a Sales Quote in HubSpot?

In HubSpot’s Quotes tool, the “purchase terms” field plays a vital role in defining the terms and conditions of a sale. This field allows businesses to clearly communicate policies regarding payments, refunds, delivery, and other essential aspects of the transaction, building trust and reducing the risk of misunderstandings. This guide explains how to use the purchase terms field effectively, why it’s important, and how to customize it for your specific needs.

Purchase terms and comments to buyer character limit errors

When customizing the purchase terms field in HubSpot Quotes, you may encounter a few character limit errors. Here are some of the most common error messages and tips for resolving them:

The Purchase Terms field has a character limit of 65,536 characters. This can cause issues if your terms are lengthy or if there is hidden HTML that’s pushing the character count over the limit.

Below are some ways you can sidestep this error and also customize the look and feel fo the terms and conditions in your quotes.

Three ways you can add terms and conditions to a quote

1. Add a snippet of your terms of service to the quote each time you generate a quote
   • Pros: Easy to setup and the snippets are nicely organized. If you update a snippet all future quotes will use the new language.
   • Cons: Hard to remember to add that to the quote. So it is prone to errors.
2. Customize the quote template terms module and include your terms of service there. This way it is baked into the quote template.
   • Pros: Easy to setup and you don’t have to remember adding it every time.
   • Cons: You can’t override it if you need to.
3. Add a custom deal property (rich text) that could be used to override default terms in the template. Each deal created will then have this property in place. When you create a deal you can then customize the terms as needed and override the default. It would change the text for that particular deal and not the ones using the default text.
   • Pros: Easy to setup and you benefit from being able to have a default terms as well as being to customize it on the fly. In addition, the terms are saved with the deal object so it is easy to refer back to if needed.
   • Cons: Requires more steps to setup.

Option 1: Add a snippet to your purchase terms when generating a HubSpot quote

When you create a quote, there are two rich text boxes that you can add comments to the buyer or purchase terms. In the purchase terms box, click the square icon with horizontal lines to open the snippet selection panel. Choose a snippet to add into the terms box. What is a snippet? A snippet is reusable text that you can quickly add to different areas inside of HubSpot. So if you have 3 terms of service for different services, you could have three different snippets here. Choose your snippet and it will automatically be filled in this box.

Option 2: Customize the HubSpot quote template terms module

Navigate to the HubSpot Sales Quote Template Customization Editor

1. Go to Account Settings
2. On the left menu look for Data Management > Objects > Quotes
3. Click the orange Customize Quote Button
   
   
4. Select the default template you would like to customize.
5. On the left hand side are a list of modules that let you customize various parts of the quote template. To update the default terms you would next select terms.
   
   
6. If your terms are the same for every quote you can just type your terms in this box and click save. Everytime you would use this customized quote template it will include the boilerplate terms of service.

Option 3: Add a custom deal property (rich text) that can override a default value

The first step is to create a new custom property on the deal object. I have a tutorial video that explains how to do this. The only difference is my video shows how to create a custom property for the product object. You would just need to do this for the deal object.

1. Go to Account Settings
2. On the left menu look for Data Management > Properties
3. Next click the select an object dropdown menu and select deal properties
   
4. Next click the orange button to the right create property
   
5. Name your property something like Deal Terms and select deal information
   
6. Click next and scroll down to select rich text as the field type
   
   

Now that the blank deal property has been created. Now you need to customize the quote template to look for data in this field.

Navigate to the HubSpot Sales Quote Template Customization Editor

1. Go to Account Settings
2. On the left menu look for Data Management > Objects > Quotes
3. Click the orange Customize Quote Button
   
   
4. Select the default template you would like to customize.
5. On the left hand side are a list of modules that let you customize various parts of the quote template. To update the default terms you would next select terms.
   
   
6. Click the green personalize link and look for the deal object in the select dropdown. Next search for your new deal terms rich text property.If you view the source code of this, you should see a personalization token below. But instead of template_data.quote you should see template_data.deal.
   
   You now need to write HubL code to look for deal-specific terms and if the field is empty, display a default terms of service. Below is code you could try for this. You might be wondering why you have to do this? The reason is HubSpot doesn’t currently support having default values in custom properties. So this code is a manual way of doing the same thing.

   {% if personalization_token('template_data.deal.deal_terms', '') %}
      {{ personalization_token('template_data.deal.deal_terms', '') }} 
   {% else %}
     Your default terms of service would go here. 
   {% endif %}

Additional Resources for Optimizing HubSpot Quotes

Adding clear, concise purchase terms is just one way to enhance the professionalism of your HubSpot quotes. To further optimize your quoting process, explore additional resources:

• Customizing Quotes for Different Clients in HubSpot
• Best Practices for Terms and Conditions in Sales Quotes
• How to Use HubSpot’s Quotes Tool for Complex Sales

Conclusion

Depending on your business there are a few different ways you can add terms of service to your quotes generated by HubSpot. Some are more complex than others. Some customizations require editing the code and for that you would need to hire a HubSpot developer. If you need help in this area please let me know.

Contact me if you have questions or need help customizing your HubSpot quote templates.