The Quarterly Data Hygiene Checklist for HubSpot Teams

I'm going to give you something practical. No philosophy, no frameworks, no "here's why data matters" pep talk. Just a checklist your team can run through every quarter to keep your HubSpot data clean.

Print it. Pin it to your wall. Set a recurring calendar reminder. The cadence matters more than perfection.

Before You Start: Assign Owners

This checklist works best when specific humans own specific sections. Before your first quarterly run, assign:

• Data owner: The person who runs this checklist and holds the team accountable (usually the HubSpot admin)
• Marketing lead: Owns the email and campaign-related items
• Sales lead: Owns the pipeline and contact-related items
• Ops lead (if you have one): Owns the property, workflow, and integration items

Section 1: Contact Database Health (30 minutes)

1. Run HubSpot's duplicate management tool. Merge or reject all flagged pairs.
2. Check total marketing contact count vs. your tier limit. Are you within 80%? If so, plan a cleanup.
3. Review contacts with bounced emails (Marketing > Email > Health). Remove or suppress contacts with hard bounces.
4. Pull a list of contacts with no activity in the last 180 days. Review for re-engagement or archival.
5. Check for contacts missing critical fields: email, company name, lifecycle stage, lead source. Build a task list to fill gaps.

Section 2: Property Audit (45 minutes)

1. Go to Settings > Properties. Sort by "Last updated." Flag any property not updated in 6+ months.
2. Review custom properties. Can you explain the purpose of each one? If not, research it or archive it.
3. Check for duplicate or near-duplicate properties (e.g., "Phone 2" and "Secondary Phone"). Consolidate.
4. Verify that dropdown/picklist values are still relevant. Remove outdated options.
5. Confirm all properties used in active workflows still exist and are populated.

Section 3: Workflow and Automation Review (30 minutes)

1. List all active workflows. Can you explain what each one does? Turn off any that are no longer relevant.
2. Check workflow error logs. Fix any workflows throwing errors.
3. Review enrollment numbers. Workflows with zero enrollments in the last quarter are candidates for archival.
4. Verify that data quality workflows (formatting, dedup alerts, inactive flagging) are still running correctly.
5. Check for conflicting workflows that might be updating the same property with different values.

Section 4: Pipeline and Deal Hygiene (30 minutes)

1. Review deals stuck in the same stage for 60+ days. Are they real or stale?
2. Check for deals with no associated contact. These create reporting blind spots.
3. Verify deal amounts are populated on all active deals.
4. Review close dates on open deals. Update any that have passed without action.
5. Check that lifecycle stage progression is consistent: no SQLs without a deal, no Customers without a closed-won deal.

Section 5: Integration and Sync Check (15 minutes)

1. Review all active integrations (Settings > Integrations). Are they all still needed?
2. Check sync logs for errors or failures in the last quarter.
3. Verify that integration field mappings are still correct (especially after CRM updates).
4. Confirm that exclusion rules are working (coworker exclusion, vendor filtering, test domains).

Section 6: Governance Review (15 minutes)

1. Review user permissions. Are there any users with more access than they need? Tighten as needed.
2. Check the super admin count. If more than 2 humans have super admin, reduce.
3. Verify that your data entry standards document is still accurate and accessible.
4. Review any data issues reported by the team since last quarter. Have they been resolved?

After the Checklist: Document and Share

At the end of each quarterly audit, create a brief summary:

• Duplicates merged: [count]
• Contacts archived/removed: [count]
• Properties archived: [count]
• Workflows turned off: [count]
• Key issues found and fixed: [list]
• Carry-forward items for next quarter: [list]

Share this with your team. Data hygiene isn't a solo sport, and visibility builds accountability.

For the complete framework that puts this checklist in context (including weekly and monthly cadences), read our Ultimate Guide to Data Hygiene. And for the automation that handles cleanup between audits, check out our 7 Data Quality Workflows.