Goals in HubSpot: How Do You Set and Track Them?
HubSpot's Goals tool lets you set measurable targets - revenue, deals created, calls made, meetings booked, tickets closed and more - and track your team's progress against them automatically, right inside the platform. You'll find it under Reporting → Goals, and it works across sales, service and marketing teams. In this guide we'll walk through what goals HubSpot supports, how to build them step by step, which tier unlocks what, and the one template choice that trips up almost everyone.
What Are Goals in HubSpot?
Goals are measurable targets you assign to users or teams, tracked automatically against real CRM activity. Instead of a quota living in a spreadsheet that gets updated (maybe) once a month, a HubSpot goal updates itself every time a deal closes, a call is logged or a ticket is resolved. Managers get live attainment views, reps get milestone notifications, and leadership gets goal reports on any dashboard. If you've done your HubSpot onboarding properly, goals are the natural next layer: they turn clean data into accountability.
There are two ways to build a goal, and the difference matters:
HubSpot's ready-made goal types - Revenue, Deals Created, Calls Made, Meetings Booked, Tickets Closed and more. Pick a template, choose contributors, set targets, done.
- Available from Professional (Revenue only on Starter)
- Covers the standard sales & service quotas
- Includes the Forecastable Revenue template for the forecast tool
Build a goal from scratch using almost any object, property and aggregation combination - up to 1,000 per account. Ideal when your quota doesn't fit a standard template.
- Sales Hub or Service Hub Enterprise only
- Track any property-based measure you define
- Only deal-based custom goals can be used in reports
The Four Categories of HubSpot Goals.
Sales goals
User or team quotas for the numbers sales managers care about: Revenue, Deals Created, Calls Made and Meetings Booked. Assign them at user, team or pipeline level and set milestones monthly, quarterly or annually. One catch worth knowing: meetings only count towards a rep's goal if the meeting's "Activity assigned to" property is filled in.
Service goals
Quotas for support and success teams: Tickets Closed, Average Ticket Response Time, Average Ticket Resolution Time and Revenue. These give service managers the same live attainment tracking sales teams get - genuinely useful if your support KPIs currently live in an export nobody opens.
Marketing goals
Targets for your ad campaigns - for example, tracking ad cost per contact in a given lifecycle stage. You can create these from the Goals tool or directly from Marketing → Ads, and they require Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise.
Custom goals
The Enterprise-only flexible option: define your own goal from hundreds of property and aggregation combinations, with a Goal Owner property so collaborative teams can credit the right person on shared deals. You can create up to 1,000 per account, though only deal-based custom goals can feed the report builder.
How to Set Up a Goal in HubSpot.
Here's the full walkthrough, using the most common example: a monthly revenue quota for a sales team. You'll need a paid Sales or Service Hub Professional or Enterprise seat (or Super Admin) to create goals - and anyone being assigned a goal needs a paid seat too.
Reporting → Goals
Goals live in the Reporting menu, not in Sales or Service - the number one reason people tell us they "can't find" the tool. In the top right, click Create goal.
Select Create from template, then pick your category on the left - Sales, Service or Marketing - and choose the goal type. Enterprise users can instead build a custom goal from scratch, or create their own reusable goal templates for the team.
The trap to avoid: if you want this goal to appear in the Sales → Forecast tool, choose the Forecastable Revenue template. A standard Revenue goal only shows in reporting and the Goals overview - it will never surface in forecast, and rebuilding it later is a faff.
Give the goal a clear name (we like "2026 Q3 - New Business Revenue" over "Sales Goal 2"). Under Contributors, choose User goals only or Team with user goals, then select the people or teams. If relevant, use the Pipeline dropdown to scope the goal to specific pipelines - for example, new business only, excluding renewals.
Choose Monthly, Quarterly or Annually, then enter a target for each milestone and each contributor. You can set different values per person per month, or tick the checkbox and use Apply targets to fill the same figure across the board. Two forecasting caveats: goals spanning multiple pipelines and goals with yearly milestones can't be forecast.
Before you click Done, tick the milestones you want to trigger notifications - typically when someone hits their target, and often at the halfway mark too. This is the difference between a goal your team actually watches and one that quietly exists in a tab nobody opens.
Reporting → Goals → Create goal report
Once a goal exists, click Create goal report to build a pre-configured visual and drop it on any dashboard. You get three purpose-built views: a gauge chart for overall progress towards target, a leaderboard bar chart comparing attainment by user or team, and a line or column chart for attainment over time. Day to day, the Manage tab is where you view details, edit targets and clone goals for the next period.
Which Goals Do You Get on Which Tier?
Goal availability is one of the sharper tier divides in HubSpot, and it's a frequent surprise in the portals we audit. Here's the honest picture:
| Capability | Starter | Professional | Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue goals | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Deals created, calls made & meetings booked goals | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Service goals (tickets closed, response & resolution time) | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Marketing (ad) goals | ✗ | Marketing Hub Pro+ | ✓ |
| Forecast tool integration | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Custom goals (build from scratch) | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom goal templates | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
In short: Starter gets a taste (Revenue only), Professional gets the full working set most teams need, and Enterprise gets the build-your-own layer. Service goal measures follow the same pattern on the Service Hub side.
Is Your Goal Setup Actually Working?
Having goals in the portal isn't the same as goals doing their job. A quick gut-check based on what we see across 200+ implementations:
Signs It's Working
Warning Signs
Frequently Asked Questions.
Greg and the team guided us seamlessly through the onboarding process as we transitioned to HubSpot. Their support in implementation and training was outstanding, ensuring a smooth and confident move for our entire team. Greg's knowledge is second to none, and we're incredibly grateful for the team's dedication and expertise. We can't recommend them highly enough.
- Ramskill, N. · Jul 2025 · CRM Implementation & Migration
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