How to Sync CRM Data with Google Sheets via n8n

Manually exporting CSVs from your CRM into Google Sheets is a routine that steals hours from your week. You do it to build custom reports, share sales data with stakeholders, or just to get a fresh look at your pipeline - but by the time you're done, the data in the sheet is already out of date. This article will show you how to break that cycle by using the automation tool n8n to create an automatic, hands-free sync between your CRM and a Google Sheet.

Why Sync Your CRM to Google Sheets?

Before jumping into the “how,” it’s helpful to understand the “why.” Your CRM is the source of truth for your customer relationships, but its native reporting tools often have limitations. Piping that data into a flexible environment like Google Sheets opens up a ton of possibilities:

• Custom Dashboards: Build the exact sales dashboard or marketing report you need without being constrained by your CRM's template or widget library. Visualize your data using Google Sheets' charts or connect it to Looker Studio for more advanced visualizations.
• Data Blending: Combine your sales data with information from other sources. For instance, you can pull in ad spend data from a separate sheet to calculate cost per lead or ROI for specific marketing campaigns directly alongside your Salesforce or HubSpot deal data.
• Simplified Access: Not everyone on your team needs - or should have - a full-access pass to your CRM. A synced Google Sheet gives stakeholders like finance or leadership the data they need without requiring another software license or complicated permissions setup.
• Backup and Analysis: Creating regular snapshots of your pipeline provides a historical record and a powerful dataset for deeper analysis in a familiar spreadsheet environment.

What is n8n and Why Use it?

If you’ve explored automation, you might have heard of tools like Zapier or Make. n8n (pronounced "n-eight-n") is a powerful and flexible workflow automation tool that serves a similar purpose. It uses a visual, node-based canvas where each “node” represents an app or an action. You connect these nodes to build a workflow that moves and transforms data automatically.

Unlike some of its competitors that focus on hyper-simple, linear zaps, n8n is built for more powerful, multi-step workflows with forks, loops, and custom logic. This makes it perfect for a task like a CRM sync, which might involve fetching hundreds of records, cleaning up a few data points, and then neatly adding them to a spreadsheet. While it has a slightly steeper learning curve, its flexibility is a huge advantage once you get the hang of it.

You can use n8n in the cloud or self-host it, but for this tutorial, we’ll assume you’re using their cloud offering to keep things simple.

Your Step-by-Step Guide to a CRM-to-Sheets Workflow

Ready to build? We're going to create a workflow that runs once a day, pulls all new and updated deals from a CRM (we’ll use HubSpot as our example, but the steps are very similar for Salesforce, Pipedrive, and others), and adds them to a Google Sheet.

Step 1: Get Your n8n Account and Google Sheet Ready

First, if you haven’t already, sign up for an n8n cloud account. Then, create a new Google Sheet. For our HubSpot deals example, let's create a sheet with a few column headers that match the data we want to pull:

• Deal ID
• Deal Name
• Create Date
• Deal Stage
• Amount
• Deal Owner

Having these headers ready makes mapping your data much easier later on.

Step 2: Create a New Workflow and Add a Trigger

Inside n8n, click "Add workflow" to start with a blank canvas. Every workflow begins with a trigger node - the event that kicks things off.

We want this sync to run on a predictable schedule. The perfect node for this is the “Schedule” trigger (you may see it as a Cron job node).

1. Click the + icon to open the nodes panel.
2. Search for “Schedule” and select it.
3. In the settings for the Schedule node, you can set the trigger interval. For a daily refresh, you can select "Every Day" from the mode dropdown and set your desired time (e.g., 5 AM, so the report is fresh for your team in the morning).

That's it for the trigger. The workflow will now automatically start at your chosen time.

Step 3: Fetch Data from Your CRM (HubSpot Node)

Now, let's pull the data. This step fetches all the deal information from your CRM.

1. Click the + icon attached to your Schedule node and search for your CRM. We’ll type "HubSpot" and select the HubSpot node.
2. Authenticate Your Account: The first time you use a new app node, you'll need to connect your account. In the "Credentials" section, you’ll be prompted to create new credentials. This usually involves an easy OAuth flow where you log into HubSpot and grant n8n access.
3. Configure the Node: Now you need to tell n8n what data you want.

To confirm it's working, click the "Execute step" button. You should see a list of all your deal data appear in the output panel on the right.

Step 4: Send the Data to Google Sheets

With your CRM data loaded, the final step is to put it into your spreadsheet.

1. Click the + icon after the HubSpot node and search for "Google Sheets."
2. Authenticate Your Account: Just like with HubSpot, you’ll need to create credentials for your Google account via OAuth.
3. Configure the Node: Now we need to configure where and how the data is written.
4. Map Your Fields: Now you link the CRM data to your sheet's columns. For each "Column" in the n8n node, you'll pick the corresponding data item from the HubSpot node.

Once your fields are mapped, hit "Execute step." After a moment, check your Google Sheet - it should be filled with your CRM data!

Step 5: Activate Your Workflow

If everything looks good, it's time to set your workflow live. Find the toggle labeled "Inactive" in the top-right corner of the editor and switch it to Active. Your workflow is now fully automated and will run on the schedule you set in Step 2.

Pro Tips and Other Ideas

Once you’ve mastered the basic sync, you can get even more creative.

• Data Cleansing: Sometimes raw CRM data isn’t perfect. For instance, timestamps might be in a format you don't like. You can add an "Edit Fields (Set)" node between your CRM and Google Sheets nodes to automatically reformat dates, concatenate fields (like a first and last name), or perform simple calculations before writing to the sheet.
• Error Handling: What happens if your HubSpot authentication expires or your spreadsheet is deleted? In n8n, you can set up error triggers to ping you on Slack or send an email if a workflow fails, so you’re never caught by surprise.
• Two-Way Sync: A more advanced workflow could be a two-way sync where changes in a designated Google Sheet column (like a “Notes” field) get written back into your CRM. This requires careful setup to avoid infinite loops but is incredibly powerful.

Final Thoughts

Creating an automated sync between your CRM and Google Sheets saves you from tedious manual work and provides you with a flexible, always-up-to-date dataset for custom analysis. Now you have a process to keep your custom reports fresh and accessible without ever having to click "Export CSV" again.

While getting your data into a spreadsheet is a huge step forward for custom reports, using AI-powered tools can take you even further. That's why we built Graphed to simplify the entire process. Instead of setting up automation workflows and building charts in a spreadsheet, we can connect directly to your CRM (like HubSpot or Salesforce), Google Analytics, and ad platforms, and let you create real-time dashboards and reports just by describing what you need in plain English.