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The Right Data Migration Order for HubSpot

Picture of Garrett Hunt

Migrating to HubSpot Without a Data Order Plan Is a Guaranteed Mistake

Most HubSpot migrations fail quietly.

The data loads.
Records appear.
Dashboards technically work.

But reporting is wrong. Attribution is broken. Forecasts are unreliable. And leadership starts asking whether HubSpot was the right choice.

The problem is rarely HubSpot itself.

The problem is the data order.

HubSpot is a relationship-driven CRM. The order you load data matters just as much as what data you load. If you ignore that reality, you are setting yourself up for long-term reporting chaos.

HubSpot Is Built on Relationships, Not Rows in a Spreadsheet

Unlike legacy CRMs, HubSpot does not treat records as isolated rows of data. Every object is designed to connect to another object.

Companies connect to contacts.
Contacts connect to deals.
Deals connect to revenue.

When those relationships are missing or loaded out of order, HubSpot cannot infer intent or rebuild context later.

There is no magic fix after the fact.

That is why migrations must follow a strict hierarchy.

Step 1: Load Companies First

Companies are the foundation of your CRM. Everything else connects to them.

If company records are missing or incomplete, every downstream object suffers.

Required or Critical Company Fields

  • Company name

  • Company domain name (this is the primary association key)

  • Company owner

  • Lifecycle stage

  • Industry, company size, and region if available

The company domain name is especially important. HubSpot uses it as the default association logic for contacts.

No company record means weak or broken associations later.

Step 2: Load Contacts Second

Contacts should never be imported before companies.

If you do, HubSpot has nothing to associate them to, which leads to duplicate companies, incorrect ownership, and bad attribution.

Required or Critical Contact Fields

  • Email address (primary unique identifier)

  • First name and last name

  • Associated company domain or company record ID

  • Contact owner

  • Lifecycle stage

Email is non-negotiable. If email is missing or duplicated, you should expect merge issues, routing failures, and unreliable marketing attribution.

Step 3: Load Deals Third

Deals are where reporting either becomes trustworthy or completely unusable.

Deals must be associated to both companies and contacts to function properly in HubSpot reporting.

Required or Critical Deal Fields

  • Deal name

  • Deal stage

  • Pipeline

  • Amount

  • Close date

  • Associated company record ID

  • Associated contact record ID

Deals without clean associations destroy forecasting, revenue reporting, and pipeline analysis.

A deal with no company is a red flag.
A deal with no contact is a bigger one.

Step 4: Load Invoices, Orders, or Custom Revenue Objects Last

Revenue objects should always be the final step.

Invoices and orders depend on everything upstream. Without proper relationships, they become disconnected numbers with no business context.

Required or Critical Revenue Fields

  • Invoice or order ID

  • Amount

  • Status

  • Issue date and due date

  • Associated company record ID

  • Associated contact record ID

  • Associated deal record ID if applicable

Revenue data without relationships is useless for attribution, LTV analysis, or customer reporting.

Association Rules That Actually Matter in HubSpot

These are the relationships you must define explicitly during migration.

  • Contacts to Companies: email domain or company record ID

  • Deals to Companies: company record ID

  • Deals to Contacts: contact record ID

  • Invoices to Companies: company record ID

  • Invoices to Contacts: contact record ID

  • Invoices to Deals: deal record ID

If these keys are not mapped correctly, HubSpot will not fix it later.

The Migration Mistake Most Teams Make

Many teams try to load everything at once.

It feels efficient.
It feels faster.
It feels logical if you are coming from spreadsheets or older CRMs.

But HubSpot cannot magically infer relationships when records arrive out of order.

The result is orphaned records, broken attribution, and leadership questioning the CRM instead of the migration strategy.

The Truth About HubSpot Data Migrations

Data order is not a technical detail.
It is a revenue decision.

If your migration plan does not explicitly define:

  • Load order

  • Association keys

  • Required identifiers

  • Validation checkpoints

Then your migration plan is incomplete.

Clean reporting starts before the first import ever runs.

Final Takeaway

If you are migrating to HubSpot and not thinking about data order, you are already behind.

Companies first.
Contacts second.
Deals third.
Revenue last.

Get that right, and HubSpot becomes a reliable growth system.
Get it wrong, and you will spend months cleaning up problems that never needed to exist.