HubSpot Workflow Audit Checklist: 5 Key Areas to Review
Why Your HubSpot Workflows Need a Health Check
They’re a HubSpot admin’s best friend and a marketer’s secret weapon—until they’re not. Workflows, while incredibly powerful, are often a “digital attic” for your business. Over time, they can accumulate outdated logic, redundant processes, and performance-draining automations that silently hinder your portal’s efficiency and cause unexpected headaches.
Unmanaged workflows might be the silent culprit behind a sluggish portal, inaccurate reporting, or even mixed signals being sent to leads.
This is precisely why a regular workflow audit isn’t just a good idea; it’s preventative medicine for your HubSpot portal. This process is about more than just cleaning up. It’s about ensuring your automation is actively supporting your current business goals.
This post provides a comprehensive, actionable checklist to guide you through a full workflow audit. We’ll show you how to identify and address the issues, leading to improved performance, better data hygiene, a more consistent customer experience, and a smarter, more reliable HubSpot portal.
Phase 1: Pre-Audit Preparation & Inventory
You can’t fix what you don’t understand. Before you change a single workflow, you need to get organized and create a master inventory.
Define Your Audit Goals: What are you trying to achieve? Your goals will shape your entire audit. Are you aiming to improve portal speed, align with new sales processes, reduce task usage, or clean up old campaigns after a rebrand? Write down your primary objectives.
Export a Full Workflow Inventory: This spreadsheet will be your command center.
Navigate to Automations > Workflows.
In your list view, add key columns:
Workflow Name,Type(Contact, Deal, etc.),Created By,Last Modified Date, andTotal Enrolled.Export this view to a spreadsheet.
Add Audit Columns to Your Spreadsheet: Add new columns to your spreadsheet for your audit notes:
Status (Keep, Optimize, Pause, Delete),Owner,Purpose/Business Goal, andNotes.Assemble Your Audit Team: You’ll need more than just one perspective. Identify key stakeholders from Marketing, Sales, and Service who can provide crucial context on why a workflow was built and whether it’s still needed.
Phase 2: Performance & Technical Health
The goal of this phase is to quickly identify workflows that are broken, inefficient, or causing technical issues. Your primary focus is on what might be actively slowing down or harming your portal.
✅ Review Naming Conventions:
A good workflow name tells you its purpose at a glance. Is the name clear? (e.g.,
[Lifecycle Stage] - [Action] - [Asset]).Flag for review any workflows with vague names like “Test,” “Untitled Workflow,” or “James’s Workflow.”
✅ Check Workflow Performance:
Use HubSpot’s built-in “Performance” tab in the Workflows tool. This will show you which workflows have the highest number of enrolled contacts, most task usage, or slowest execution times.
These are your top priority for optimization, as they have the biggest impact on your portal’s health.
✅ Audit Enrollment Triggers:
Are the triggers too broad, causing a massive number of unintended enrollments?
Are they using outdated criteria (e.g., a form from an event that happened two years ago)? Review your triggers and tighten them up.
✅ Look for Off-boarded Owners:
Filter your spreadsheet inventory by
Created ByorLast Modified Byto find workflows owned by former employees.Reassign these workflows to a current owner who can provide context and take responsibility for them.
✅ Verify Goal and Unenrollment Criteria:
Does the workflow have a clearly defined goal? Goals make a workflow more efficient by automatically un-enrolling contacts once they’ve completed the objective.
Is the unenrollment logic correct? Ensure contacts are removed when they no longer meet the criteria or have met the goal.
Phase 3: Strategic Alignment & Redundancy
Once the technical issues are flagged, it’s time to ensure every active workflow serves a current, relevant business purpose.
✅ Confirm the Business Purpose:
For each workflow in your master spreadsheet, ask the core question: “What business goal does this support?” and “Is this goal still relevant to our current strategy?”
Check the workflow’s description field in HubSpot. If it’s empty, document its purpose for the future.
✅ Hunt for Redundancy & Consolidation Opportunities:
Do you have multiple, similar workflows that could be combined into one using an “if/then” branching logic? For example, three separate lead nurturing workflows for three similar e-books could become a single, more efficient workflow.
✅ Review the User Experience:
Map out the contact’s journey through the workflow. Are the email timings logical? Are they being sent too many emails in a short period?
Ensure the content and messaging in automated emails are still up-to-date, on-brand, and aligned with your current value proposition.
✅ Check Internal Processes & Notifications:
Are the task creation and lead rotation assignments still going to the right people or teams?
Are internal notifications still useful and actionable, or are they just creating unnecessary digital noise for your team?
Phase 4: Data Hygiene & Actions
This phase involves scrutinizing the individual actions within your workflows to prevent bad data and unintended consequences.
✅ Review Property Changes:
Are your workflows changing data correctly? For example, are they setting the Lifecycle Stage or Lead Status in a way that aligns with your sales process?
Watch for actions that could inadvertently overwrite good data with bad, or that set properties in a conflicting way.
✅ Inspect If/Then Branching Logic:
Follow the branches of your workflows carefully to ensure the logic is sound. Are there any dead ends or incorrect paths that could lead to a poor user experience?
✅ Check Delays and Timing:
Are your delays appropriate? For an automated follow-up email, a simple “delay for 3 days” is often less effective than a “delay until a specific day or time” to ensure a better user experience and higher open rates.
✅ Validate Integration Actions:
If the workflow sends data to an external system (like Salesforce or a webhook), is that integration still active and configured correctly? A broken integration action can cause a major data silo without you even knowing.
Phase 5: Creating Your Post-Audit Action Plan
Your audit is complete, and your spreadsheet is full of notes. Now, it’s time to turn those findings into a concrete plan for improvement.
Triage Your Workflows: Use the
Statuscolumn in your spreadsheet to assign a final status to each workflow:Keep: No changes needed.
Optimize: Needs updates to logic, timing, or actions.
Consolidate: Merge with another workflow.
Pause: Temporarily deactivate (e.g., for a seasonal campaign).
Delete: No longer needed. (Always back it up or clone it first if you’re unsure!).
Prioritize and Assign: Rank your “Optimize” and “Consolidate” tasks based on their impact. Address performance-related issues first, then move on to strategic and data hygiene fixes. Assign a clear owner and a deadline for each action item.
Document Everything: Update the description field in every workflow you keep or optimize. A clear, concise description of what the workflow does and its business purpose will save countless hours of confusion in the future.
From One-Time Audit to Ongoing Governance
A comprehensive workflow audit is the single most effective way to clean up your HubSpot portal. It will lead to a healthier, faster, and more reliable system that actively supports your business goals.
But this shouldn’t be a one-time event. To prevent your portal from becoming a “digital attic” again, it’s crucial to look to the future:
Schedule Regular Audits: Put a recurring task on your calendar to conduct a bi-annual or quarterly audit.
Establish a Governance Process: Create a simple set of rules for new workflows (e.g., every new workflow must have a clear name and a description, be tied to a business goal, and have an owner assigned).
A clean, well-governed HubSpot portal is a powerful business enabler, and it all starts with your workflows.
Feeling overwhelmed? schedule a free HubSpot Portal Health Check with our experts today. We'll help you create a foolproof plan.
Resources:
HubSpot Knowledge Base – Workflows: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows
HubSpot Knowledge Base – Workflow Performance: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/workflow-performance
HubSpot Blog – Automation & Workflows: https://blog.hubspot.com/automation
