Weekly Reports – Generate Google Sheets dashboards with KPIs

📊 Weekly reporting is a vital process for monitoring business performance, yet manually compiling these reports can be tedious and error-prone. This article is designed specifically for the HubSpot team, showing how to automate weekly reports by generating insightful dashboards with key performance indicators (KPIs) directly in Google Sheets.

By leveraging popular automation tools like n8n, Make, and Zapier—and integrating essential services such as Gmail, Google Sheets, Slack, and HubSpot—we will guide you through a practical, step-by-step workflow. This will streamline your data aggregation, reduce manual effort, and provide real-time KPI insights.

Keep reading to discover how to build and optimize your own automated reporting workflow, with tips on error handling, security, scaling, and monitoring, to empower your HubSpot operations.

Understanding the Need for Automated Weekly Reports with Google Sheets Dashboards

In sales and marketing, actionable data enables better decisions. HubSpot captures rich customer relationship and sales data, but piecing together weekly snapshots manually can delay insights and introduce inaccuracies.

Automating weekly reports to Google Sheets dashboards loaded with KPIs benefits multiple stakeholders:

• CTOs and Automation Engineers: Save time by automating repetitive reporting tasks, focusing on strategic improvements.
• Operations Specialists: Access up-to-date performance data without manual exports.
• Marketing and Sales Teams: Receive visually communicative reports highlighting trends and key milestones.

Ultimately, this automation reduces errors, speeds up reporting, and ensures consistent data delivery—crucial for fast-moving startups and data-driven teams.

Overview of the Automation Workflow

This automation workflow involves:

1. Trigger: Scheduled weekly execution (e.g., every Monday 8 AM) using a Cron scheduler node.
2. Data Extraction: Pull KPI data from HubSpot using the HubSpot API (e.g., contacts created, deals won, marketing email stats).
3. Data Transformation: Calculate key metrics and prepare data for dashboard presentation.
4. Update Dashboard: Write the calculated KPIs into a structured Google Sheets dashboard.
5. Notification: Send Slack or Gmail notifications summarizing KPI highlights for key stakeholders.

Step-by-step Automation Workflow Setup

1. Schedule Trigger & Initiate Workflow 🕑

Use the scheduler node in your preferred automation tool (n8n, Make, Zapier):

• n8n: Cron node configured for 8:00 AM every Monday, timezone set to your region.
• Zapier: Schedule trigger with weekly frequency on Mondays.
• Make: Scheduler module with custom time zone, weekly trigger.

This initiates the workflow without manual intervention.

2. Connect to HubSpot and Extract KPIs

Using HubSpot’s OAuth or API key authentication, pull data such as:

• Number of new contacts created in the past week
• Deals closed (won) in the period
• Marketing email open and click rates
• Sales pipeline status by stage

Example API endpoint: /contacts/v1/lists/recently_created/contacts/recent?count=100

n8n example node configuration:

{
  "resource": "contacts",
  "operation": "getRecentlyCreated",
  "limit": 100,
  "properties": ["email", "firstname", "lastname"],
  "filters": {
     "createdAfter": "{{$dateSubtract(new Date(), 7, 'days').toISOString()}}"
  }
}

Remember to handle pagination by querying multiple pages or implementing API call loops.

3. Transform and Aggregate Data for Dashboard

Once raw data is fetched, apply necessary transformations:

• Count total new contacts
• Filter deals by stage and status
• Calculate conversion rates (e.g., lead to customer)
• Aggregate marketing email metrics

Use functions or scripting nodes within your automation tool (e.g., JavaScript in n8n Function node) to process these calculations.

4. Update Google Sheets Dashboard

Structure your Google Sheets document with dedicated sheets for each KPI category:

• Contacts
• Deals
• Marketing

Use Google Sheets API to update cells or append rows with fresh KPI values:

Sheets API v4 example update values:

{
  "range": "Contacts!B2",
  "majorDimension": "ROWS",
  "values": [["{{totalNewContacts}}"]]
}

Configure authentication with Google’s OAuth 2.0; ensure scopes https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spreadsheets are granted.

5. Send Notification via Slack or Gmail

Once the dashboard updates, notify your team with summarized KPIs. For Slack:

• Compose a concise message: “Weekly HubSpot KPIs: 120 new contacts, 35 deals won, 25% email click-through rate.”
• Use the Slack API or Slack node in your automation tool.
• Set channel and message payload accordingly.

For Gmail:

• Send a formatted email with KPIs to stakeholders.
• Use the Gmail API with proper send scopes or SMTP integration.

Try applying these powerful automations now and Explore the Automation Template Marketplace to find prebuilt HubSpot to Google Sheets workflows.

Error Handling, Retries, and Robustness Strategies

Automation workflows face common issues such as API rate limits, transient network errors, and data inconsistencies. Implement these robustness practices:

• Retries with exponential backoff: Automatically retry failed API calls with increasing wait times to handle temporary issues.
• Idempotency keys: Use unique identifiers to prevent data duplication, especially when writing to Google Sheets.
• Logging and alerting: Maintain detailed logs of workflow runs, failures, and key events. Configure alerts (email or Slack) on failure.
• Error branches/paths: Define alternative automation routes for manual review or compensation steps when critical nodes fail.

These practices enhance reliability and keep your workflows resilient and trustworthy.

Performance and Scalability Considerations

Webhook vs Polling 🚀

Choose webhooks over polling where feasible for real-time HubSpot event triggering. For weekly reports, scheduled triggers suffice, but if real-time updates are needed, webhooks reduce excessive API calls and latency.

Implement queue systems or concurrency limits to handle large data volumes efficiently and avoid hitting rate limits rapidly.

Modularization and Versioning

Break workflows into reusable modules (e.g., data extraction, transformation, notification modules). Maintain version control to track changes and roll back if needed.

Consider environment separation such as dev/test vs production flows in your automation platform.

Security and Compliance Best Practices

• Secure storage of API keys/tokens: Use environment variables or secure credential stores provided by your automation platform.
• Limit OAuth scopes: Only request minimum required API permissions (e.g., read-only where possible).
• Handle personally identifiable information (PII) carefully: Encrypt sensitive data at rest and in transit, comply with data protection regulations like GDPR.
• Audit logs: Ensure all data accesses and changes are logged for accountability.

Testing and Monitoring Your Workflow

• Use sandbox or test HubSpot accounts to validate API calls without affecting production data.
• Run isolated parts of the workflow with sample data to verify transformations.
• Enable run history and execution logs in tools like n8n and Zapier for troubleshooting.
• Set up alerting on failures or performance anomalies to enable proactive support.

Ready to build your own? Create Your Free RestFlow Account and start automating your HubSpot weekly reports today.

Automation Tools Comparison Table

Tool	Cost	Pros	Cons
n8n	Free self-host / Paid cloud	Highly customizable, open source, webhook support	Requires setup; steeper learning curve
Make (Integromat)	Free tier; paid plans from $9/month	Visual builder, HTTP modules, extensive integrations	Limited operations in free tier; learning curve
Zapier	Free tier; paid from $19.99/month	User-friendly, lots of prebuilt templates, good support	Limited multi-step workflow logic, costs add up quickly

Webhook vs Polling for HubSpot Data Retrieval

Method	Latency	API Load	Use Cases
Webhook	Near real-time	Low API calls, event-driven	Real-time sales triggers, immediate notifications
Polling	Scheduled intervals (e.g., hourly, daily)	Higher API call volume, repetitive	Periodic reports, batch data fetching

Google Sheets vs Database for KPI Dashboards

Storage Option	Ease of Setup	Scalability	Data Visualization	Cost
Google Sheets	Very easy, low setup time	Limited by API quotas and sheet size	Built-in charts, simple dashboarding	Free to low cost
Relational Database (e.g., PostgreSQL)	Moderate setup, requires DBA or developer	Highly scalable, supports complex queries	Requires external visualization tools (Tableau, Looker)	Variable, depending on hosting

Conclusion

Implementing an automated solution to generate weekly reports and Google Sheets dashboards filled with KPIs improves efficiency, accuracy, and visibility of HubSpot data. By integrating popular automation platforms with HubSpot, Google Sheets, Slack, and Gmail, teams can receive timely, actionable insights with minimal manual effort.

Key takeaways include designing robust error handling, scaling thoughtfully with queues and concurrency, securing API credentials properly, and monitoring workflows to sustain performance over time. Automation frees up valuable engineering and operations time while enhancing data-driven decision-making across departments.

Start automating your HubSpot weekly reports today and accelerate your team’s productivity!