Associate records

In HubSpot, there are standard CRM objects: contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and custom objects. To keep track of the relationships between these objects, you can associate their records together. Associations are always two-way (i.e., if record A is associated to record B, record B is also associated to record A) and can be seen in each record in the right panel.

Examples of when you'd associate records include:

• When making a sale, you communicate via email to three individuals at the same company. In HubSpot, you associate the deal to the three contact records and their company record.
• When handling a customer complaint, you communicate via email to two individuals. These individuals are also in the middle of a sale with your company. In HubSpot, you can associate the ticket record to the two contact records and the deal record.

You can also associate the activities in a record's timeline to appear in another record. If the records are already associated together, some activities will automatically be associated to the associated records.

Please note: a contact record can be associated to only one company record.  Learn more about association limits in the Technical Limits section in HubSpot's Products & Services Catalog.

Associate individual records

To associate records on your desktop:

• Navigate to your records:
• Contacts: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts.
• Companies: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Companies.
• Deals: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Sales > Deals.
• Tickets: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Service > Tickets.
• Custom objects: In your HubSpot account, navigate to Contacts > Contacts, then click the dropdown menu in the top left and select the name of the custom object.

• Click the name of the record you want to associate with others.

• In the right panel, locate the relevant object section and click Add. For example, if you want to associate a deal with the record you're in, look for the Deals section and click Add.

• You can either create a new record to associate to the record, or associate an existing record to the record.
  • To create a new record to associate the record to, in the Create a new [record] tab, enter information in the fields, and click Create.
    
  • To associate an existing record, click the Add existing [record] tab, search for the record you want to associate to the current record, and select the checkbox next to the record in the search results.

• Click Save.

To manually associate records on mobile:

• Open the HubSpot app.
• Navigate to your records:
  
  • Contacts:in the bottom navigation menu, tap on Contacts.
  • Companies: in the bottom navigation menu, tap Contacts, then tap the Companies tab.
  • Deals: in the bottom navigation menu, tap Deals.
  • Tickets (Android only): in the bottom navigation menu, tap More, then tap Tickets.

• Tap the name of the record.
• Tap the Associations tab.
• Tap Add [records] and select existing records you want to associate to the record.
• Once selected, tap Done in the upper right.

Associate records in bulk

There are multiple ways to associate records in bulk:

• Associate records via an import. The records in your import can be existing records or new records. Learn how HubSpot identifies existing records through its deduplication process.
• If you have developer resources, you can also bulk associate records via API.
• Turn on the setting to automatically associate contact and company records based on the company domain.