How to report on form submissions in HubSpot

If you are a HubSpot user, you have likely experienced a common pain point: reporting on individual form submissions over time is surprisingly difficult.

In standard HubSpot reporting, form submissions are treated as interactions rather than unique records.

his means you primarily see the date of the first submission, the date of the most recent submission, and the total count of unique forms.

What you cannot easily see in a single table is a chronological list of every single submission across multiple forms and how those specific moments influenced a closed deal.

This makes comparative conversion analysis a struggle for growth teams.

You can read more about this in the RevBlack guide on lead source vs. lead conversion in HubSpot.

The solution: custom objects

For users with enterprise versions of Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Operations Hub, or Content Hub, custom objects are the ultimate solution.

A custom object allows you to create a dedicated record for every single submission, creating a one-to-many relationship with your contacts. This ensures that every conversion event is preserved as its own data point.

Step 1: Create the form submissions custom object

You no longer need a developer or API knowledge to do this. HubSpot now includes a no-code custom object builder directly in the portal settings.

For a deep dive into the strategy behind this setup, check out our article on how to use and create HubSpot custom objects.

• Navigate to settings > data management > custom objects.
• Click create custom object.
• Name the object form submissions.
• Set the primary display property as submission ID.
• Add submission date as a date type and form URL as a text type.

Once the object is created, navigate to the associations tab. You must define a one-to-many relationship with contacts and deals.

This step is vital because it allows the new submission records to automatically attach themselves to the correct person and their associated sales opportunities.

Step 2: Automate record creation via workflows

Once your object exists, you need to tell HubSpot to create a new record every time a form is filled out.

This ensures your data stays updated in real time without manual entry.

You can explore other creative automation ideas in the guide to 9 ways to use HubSpot workflows.

• Create a contact-based workflow.
• Set the trigger to form submission.
• Select the action create record.
• Select the form submissions custom object.
• Set the submission date using the timestamp of the event.
• Set the form name by using the recent conversion property.

Under the associate this record with section, make sure you check the box for contact.

This links the submission to the person who filled it out.

You can also use the copy property value action to pull data like UTM campaign or referrer URL from the contact record into your custom object record.

This gives you a permanent snapshot of the source at the exact moment of submission.

Step 3: Build your custom reports

Now that every submission is being logged as its own record, you can use the custom report builder to see the full picture.

Because each submission is a unique record, you are no longer limited by the recent conversion fields on the contact record.

• Navigate to reporting > reports > create report.
• Select the custom report builder.
• Select form submissions as the primary data source.
• Select contacts and deals as secondary data sources.

With this setup, you can drag the submission date onto the x-axis and the count of form submissions onto the y-axis.

You can break this down by form name to see which assets are trending. Most importantly, you can filter by deal stage to see exactly which form submissions preceded a closed-won deal.

Note on plan tiers

While custom objects offer the most granular data, they are an enterprise-tier feature.

If you are on a professional plan, you can gain similar insights using the marketing campaigns tool or contact attribution reports.

While these are less flexible, they still provide a level of visibility into how forms contribute to revenue.

If your data feels disorganized before you even start reporting, consider following the HubSpot setup audit checklist to clean up your portal.

If you need help architecting your data model or implementing these custom objects to track your revenue more accurately, contact the experts at RevBlack for a technical strategy session.