Custom Objects in HubSpot: When Contacts, Companies and Deals Aren't Enough
Equipment, sites, contracts, licences: at a certain size the standard HubSpot objects stop matching how the business actually runs. Here's how custom objects close that gap, worked through a genuinely Australian regulated example.
HubSpot introduced custom objects in 2020. The standard objects, contacts, companies, deals and tickets, work well for a lot of businesses, but they run out of road at a specific point: when the things you actually need to track, equipment, sites, contracts, licences, don't fit into any of the four boxes HubSpot ships with.
Custom objects let you build a data model that reflects how your business actually operates, instead of forcing your operations into HubSpot's default shape.
What a custom object actually is
Custom objects in HubSpot let you create a new data category with its own properties, associations and workflows, connected to your standard objects the same way contacts connect to companies. Think of it as adding a new tab to your CRM for something HubSpot never anticipated you'd need to track.
The clearest way to see why this matters is a specific, regulated example. When the standard HubSpot objects run out of road, it's usually because the business is tracking something with its own compliance obligations, and a generic deal or ticket record has nowhere to put that information.
A worked example: a therapeutic goods sponsor
Take an Australian business that sponsors therapeutic goods, medical devices or complementary medicines it imports or manufactures. Under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, most of what it sells has to be listed on the Therapeutic Goods Administration's Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) before it can be supplied in Australia, and that listing carries ongoing obligations, not a one-off approval.
A HubSpot setup for a business like this could use custom objects to track:
- Products: each item with its ARTG listing number, listing status and pricing tier.
- Regulatory Submissions: applications and variations lodged with the TGA, with milestone dates.
- Clinical or Technical Evidence: the evidence file linked to a specific product, so sales can find it fast when a customer asks.
With those in place, the sales team can pull up a product's ARTG status and supporting evidence mid conversation, while the regulatory team keeps its own view of submission deadlines, without either team maintaining a separate spreadsheet.
Worked implementation note: put the ARTG listing number and its expiry or review date on the Product custom object as their own properties, not buried in a notes field, so you can build a workflow that flags a listing coming up for renewal before it lapses.
Two more industries where the same pattern applies
Financial services
A wealth management firm can use custom objects to track Investment Portfolios (assets and performance), Financial Products (offerings and eligibility rules), and Client Reviews (scheduled assessments with compliance notes attached). Calculated properties can work out portfolio performance automatically and trigger the next quarterly review.
Real estate and property management
Not sure your data needs its own custom object?
Most teams stretch the deal record for years before asking.
A commercial property manager can track Properties (specifications and availability), Leases (terms, renewal dates, escalation clauses) and Maintenance Requests tied to a specific property. A dashboard built off the Leases object shows every expiry coming up across the portfolio, so renewals get managed ahead of time instead of after a tenant has already decided to leave.
Building it properly
Map the business first
Before creating anything, write down what your business actually tracks that doesn't fit contacts, companies or deals, how those things relate to the objects you already have, and who needs to see them. This is the step that gets skipped, and it's the one that decides whether the build reflects your business or someone's template.
Get the associations right
Associations decide how data moves through your CRM. Work out whether a relationship is one to many or many to many, which object should own it, and how that affects who can see what on each record.
Let workflows do the checking
Custom objects can trigger workflows and be triggered by them: a submission's status can update as milestones are logged, a lease renewal can create a task before the expiry date, a maintenance schedule can fire from an installation date. This is where the object stops being a filing cabinet and starts doing some of the work.
Build so it keeps working as you grow
As the business adds products, sites or clients, the data model needs to keep up. Use consistent naming conventions on properties, write down how the object structure works so it isn't only in one person's head, and group properties logically so the record doesn't turn into a wall of fields nobody can read.
Where this pays off
An equipment leasing business is a good test case: Equipment Assets (maintenance schedules, depreciation), Lease Agreements (terms, payment schedules, renewal options) and Maintenance Logs tied to each asset. That gives the sales team equipment availability, maintenance history and lease terms in the same record they're already working from, instead of a phone call to the operations team every time a customer asks a question.
Getting there
- Map it: document what you track and how it relates to your existing objects.
- Design it: build the schema, properties and associations.
- Build it: create the custom objects in HubSpot, or bring in a partner who has done this before. Here's what that looks like for a contracts object built around renewals, and here's the same idea applied to routing tickets off a custom company association.
- Migrate: move existing data into the new structure, properly, not just an import.
- Train: make sure the team actually uses the new model, by role.
- Refine: adjust based on what people actually do with it once it's live.
Custom objects are one of HubSpot's most useful features for a business whose operations don't match the default shape. Done properly, they don't just store more data, they let the CRM run workflows and reporting specific to how your business actually works, instead of forcing every industry into the same four boxes.
Already got custom objects nobody fills in?
Half-empty records usually mean the model came before the work.
Whether you're tracking therapeutic goods, leases, portfolios or something else entirely, the same discipline applies: map the business first, then build the objects to match it. Here's how we scope custom object builds as part of a RevOps setup in HubSpot.