Tracking Booked Revenue vs Earned Revenue in HubSpot

For businesses that rely on recurring revenue, it can be surprisingly easy to confuse “bookings” and “earned (or recognized) revenue.” Yet those two numbers tell different stories about your company’s performance.

Booked Revenue reflects how much new business your team has closed within a specific period. ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) and MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) show how much revenue your business is actually earning and retaining over time. 

For growing subscription-based businesses, including SaaS companies, tracking both booked and recurring revenue correctly is essential to ensure your sales forecasts, financial reports, and investor updates stay aligned and accurate.

With HubSpot’s continued investment in its revenue tracking and subscription management tools, teams now have the power to report and track these metrics directly within their CRM. What once required disconnected spreadsheets and manual calculations can now be tracked and reported in one unified system.

This article breaks down what booked revenue and earned revenue really mean, how they differ, and how to track them effectively inside HubSpot.

The Three Pillars of Revenue: Bookings, Cash, and Accrual

To understand how to track revenue in HubSpot, you first need to understand the three financial perspectives that shape subscription-based revenue models:

1. Booked Revenue (“Bookings”) – The total value of a deal when a contract is signed.
2. Cash – The amount of revenue from a payment actually received.
3. Accrual – The revenue that is earned and recognized over time according to GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) rules. Generally speaking, this is associated with when the business is providing the goods or services to the customer.

Think of it as three stages of the same story:

• Bookings mark the moment a customer commits to buy.
• Cash shows when the company gets paid.
• Accrual reflects when the company can officially say it earned that money.

For example, imagine a two-year software contract worth $24,000 that closes on July 30th.

• Bookings: $24,000 in total contract value (TCV) is recorded in July.
• Cash: If the customer pays annually, you’ll receive $12,000 this year (in August if Net 30 days) and $12,000 next year.
• Accrual: For accounting purposes, you’ll recognize $1,000 per month as earned revenue for 24 months.

Each of these numbers matters for different stakeholders. Some examples:

• Sales focuses on bookings to measure new business performance and future potential revenue from closed deals.
• Finance monitors cash and accruals to manage liquidity and revenue recognition.
• RevOps connects all three to ensure accurate forecasting and cross-team alignment.

By tracking each correctly, you gain a complete picture of both future potential and current performance. Further, these metrics are commonly used by investors to determine a company's value.

Why the Distinction Matters

At first glance, it might seem unnecessary to split hairs between these numbers. But failing to distinguish between bookings, cash, and earned revenue can create serious operational blind spots.

When bookings, cash flow, and recurring revenue aren’t clearly connected, teams can:

• Misalign sales goals with financial performance.
• Report inconsistent data to investors and stakeholders.
• Build siloed systems and tracking leading to errors and missed revenue.

Each department depends on a different view:

• Sales cares about how much was sold and when.
• Finance needs to know what was actually earned in a given period and when they will collect the cash.

For instance, a $120,000 deal booked in Q1 might make the sales dashboard look great. However, the earned revenue for the period will be much less or even zero, depending on when the contract begins and when the business can recognize the revenue.  Further, payment terms like quarterly or monthly need to be considered to understand when the business will have cash flow. This is why it’s important for each of these inputs to be captured in a consistent way and leveraged to provide each stakeholder with what they need. 

The solution is to connect these data points in your CRM so everyone is working from a shared source of truth. That’s where HubSpot comes in.

Tracking Booked Revenue in HubSpot

Booked Revenue is the simplest metric to track inside HubSpot because it aligns directly with how the CRM’s Deals object works.

A booking occurs when a deal is marked as Closed Won. HubSpot captures the total contract value (TCV) and the close date, giving you instant visibility into sales performance.

Best practices for tracking Booked Revenue:

• Use Deal Amount to represent the total value of the contract, not just first-year revenue.
• Standardize how sales stages are defined and when deals are considered closed.
• Use separate pipelines for different revenue streams (New Business, Renewals, and Amendments for things like expansions).
• Build dashboards that track Booked Revenue by date, rep, and pipeline.

For example, you can create a custom report showing “Total Booked Revenue by Close Date” to track your team’s performance against quota.

For most sales teams, Booked Revenue is the headline metric for measuring success. It tells you how much future value your team has generated.

Tracking ARR and MRR in HubSpot

While bookings measure the value of new deals, ARR and MRR measure the recurring revenue that continues after the sale.

• MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) is the predictable revenue your company earns each month.
• ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) is that same number multiplied by 12, representing a yearly view of recurring contracts.

ARR and MRR are essential for SaaS businesses because they reflect stability, retention, and long-term health.

How HubSpot Calculates ARR and MRR

HubSpot can calculate recurring revenue automatically when you use line items on your deals. Each line item can be set as:

• Recurring or One-time
• With defined Billing Frequency (monthly, quarterly, or annually)
• With Start Date and End Date

From these values, HubSpot can calculate metrics like:

• Total Contract Value (TCV)
• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

Recent updates also allow you to report on revenue by start date or payment date, creating flexibility for tracking revenue recognition versus cash flow timing.

Managing Revenue Over Time: Renewals, Upgrades, and Churn

Recurring revenue changes constantly. Customers expand, downgrade, or leave altogether. To keep your ARR and MRR data accurate, you need a structure for tracking those changes.

We recommend separating revenue lifecycle events into separate pipelines in addition to your regular “new business” pipeline:

1. Amendments Pipeline: Used for mid-term changes like expansions or downgrades. This ensures that any change to an active subscription is tracked without editing the original deal.
2. Renewals Pipeline: Each active subscription should have a renewal deal that can be used to track whether a contract will continue after the initial contract end date. If it’s renewed, the deal can be moved to closed won, and a new renewal deal can be created for the next contract term. If it’s closed lost, it’s marked as churn.

This approach keeps historical data intact while maintaining accurate tracking of ARR, churn, and growth. The deal data from each of these pipelines will impact the metrics we’ve discussed, including bookings, earned revenue, and forecasted cash flow.  

Next, we’ll discuss how you can organize this data using subscriptions in HubSpot or leverage third-party tools to see these changes and the current values for each contract more easily.

Advanced Revenue Tracking with HubSpot Subscriptions and APIs

HubSpot has steadily improved its ability to manage subscriptions directly within the CRM. What once required custom objects or third-party tools can now be handled natively through HubSpot Subscriptions and the Subscriptions API.

• Subscription Object: Stores key data like billing frequency, renewal date, and recurring amount for each active contract. Subscriptions are automatically created when using HubSpot Payments in HubSpot and were originally created for this purpose.
• Subscriptions API: Allows you to create, update, and manage recurring contracts, even if you aren’t using HubSpot Payments.
• Integration with Smart CRM: Subscriptions connect directly to contacts, companies, and deals, ensuring a single source of truth.

Subscriptions allow for a single record that represents an existing contract. They are created when a new business deal closes, modified when an amendment deal closes, and extended when a renewal deal closes. Each of these changes can automatically update the subscription so that it reflects the current value of that contract to the business. Further, you can customize the subscription object to contain different pieces of information that help calculate earned revenue and expected cash flow.

While much of this requires custom build and automation today, subscription features continue to improve in HubSpot. This evolution accelerated after HubSpot’s acquisition of Cacheflow, which has powered the rollout of HubSpot CPQ inside Commerce Hub. CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) brings quoting and subscription creation into one unified flow, helping revenue teams move seamlessly from proposal to signed contract to active subscription.

Together, CPQ and Subscriptions signal HubSpot’s long-term commitment to a full quote-to-revenue experience, combining deal, quote, and recurring revenue management on one connected platform.

By using the Subscriptions API or HubSpot’s native Subscription Object, teams can automate renewals, sync payment data, and maintain more accurate ARR and MRR reporting without relying on external spreadsheets.

Integrating HubSpot with Financial and Subscription Management Tools

While HubSpot’s built-in tools cover much of the revenue tracking process, many organizations still connect their CRM to dedicated subscription management systems for more complex scenarios.

Popular integrations include:

• Chargebee
• Maxio (formerly SaaSOptics)
• Recurly
• Ordway
• Stripe

These platforms specialize in connecting the “bookings-to-cash” lifecycle by handling invoicing, payments, and recognized revenue. By integrating with HubSpot, deals and subscription data can stay connected, and you can view that information inside the CRM.

When to integrate:

• You manage high deal volume or complex billing terms.
• You need automated revenue recognition for compliance.
• You want to eliminate manual reconciliation between systems.

For lower-volume or simpler contract models, HubSpot’s built-in capabilities often provide enough flexibility to track and report on ARR/MRR without outside help.

Recurring Revenue Reporting Best Practices

Once your HubSpot setup is configured, the real value comes from the reports you build. ARR and MRR reporting allow you to see how recurring revenue is trending and which customer segments are driving growth or churn.

Key reports to create in HubSpot:

• Booked Revenue by Close Date
• MRR Growth by Month
• ARR by Customer or Industry
• Churned ARR vs Renewed ARR
• Expansion ARR (upsell and cross-sell performance)

Use HubSpot’s Custom Report Builder to combine data from Deals, Line Items, and Subscriptions into a single report. You can then visualize:

• New business ARR
• Renewal ARR
• Net ARR (including expansions and churn)

For executive dashboards, pull ARR/MRR totals up to the Company object using sync properties. This allows for a clear view of total customer value and retention at the account level.

Reporting Tip: Different teams measure success differently. Sales focuses on booked revenue and deal closures, while Finance monitors cash flow and recognized revenue to understand overall business performance.

Getting Started with Recurring Revenue Tracking in HubSpot

Tracking recurring revenue in HubSpot starts with clear data structures and scalable reporting. Here’s a simple roadmap to evolve your setup as your business grows.

Phase 1: Foundational Setup

• Use line items to separate recurring from one-time revenue.
• Build three pipelines for New Business, Amendments, and Renewals to manage each part of the revenue lifecycle.
• Always complete key fields such as Start Date, End Date, and Billing Frequency to ensure accuracy.

Phase 2: Build Connected Reporting

• Use the Custom Report Builder to connect Deals, Line Items, and Subscriptions.
• Create ARR and MRR properties at the Deal and Company level for unified reporting.
• Sync data across CRM objects to align Sales and Finance visibility and ensure a shared revenue picture.

Phase 3: Automate and Integrate

• Use HubSpot’s Subscriptions API or tools such as Chargebee and Maxio to automate renewals and revenue tracking.
• Connect HubSpot to your accounting software, such as QuickBooks, NetSuite, or Xero, to align accrual reporting.
• Automate renewal workflows, quote generation, and ARR updates to maintain a real-time revenue view.

When structured this way, HubSpot becomes the central system for managing Booked Revenue, MRR, and ARR. This framework ensures accurate forecasting, stronger alignment between Sales and Finance, and scalable revenue reporting as your company grows.

As your reporting needs mature, use these same foundations to create advanced dashboards that combine booked, recurring, and earned revenue data to give leadership a clear picture of business health.

Whether you’re just starting with simple line-item tracking or implementing a full subscription management system, the key is building a clear, connected workflow between your CRM, billing, and reporting processes.

Need help implementing recurring revenue tracking in your HubSpot portal? Contact the Pros.