Company Last Modified Date updating WITHOUT new data

[Jesse2]

Hi all,
I'm having a problem where I'm sending updates to Companies via the API and I'm relying on their Last Modified Date to determine when I should copy their data back to the other system.

For whatever reason, in every case I'm doing this, the Last Modified Date of the target Company is getting updated, even when I am not sending in any new data. The property history of each record confirms that the only thing getting updated is the Last Modified Date:

image.png1283x1558 39.1 KB

You can see good data was entered up until yesterday. After that, each time my code ran to copy data to the Company, it was trying to send in the same data the Company already has, but HubSpot has updated the Last Modified Date.

This doesn't seem to be a problem at all for Leads or Contacts where I am performing similar operations.
Can anyone offer ideas or solutions? I've checked HubSpot settings as well and I don't see anything that even sounds like it could be affecting this. This is happening in TWO different HubSpot systems I am working with.

Thanks
Jesse

[IsaacTakushi]

Hey @Jesse,

There is a broad ETA of 1-3 months, but I don't think they have a more exact estimate at the moment.

[IsaacTakushi · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jesse,

I've confirmed that the Last modified date property reflects the last time any property on the object changed, regardless of whether the property is visible in the UI, and regardless of whether the change came from user action or an internal or external background process.

As such, an update to a hidden internal property would update Last modified date but the change would not be visible in the record's property history. I was unable to get specific examples of internal properties. Updates to one of the HubSpot Company Insights properties would also affect the Last modified date, but those changes would be visible in the record's property history.

For the companies above, however, our logs only show a change made to the Last modified date property (hs_lastmodifieddate) from Scribe (OAuth app 25599). This is consistent with your initial observation that no properties appeared to have been updated.

The team believes this behavior is caused by a known issue where, in some cases, if apps request updates which fail, the system still updates the Last modified date value. The engineers have plans to fix this issue in an upcoming release.

[EDelVento]

Hi,

I am not sure what happened since 2018 but we started to use Hubspot in 2020 and we did not experienced any problem with the "last modified date" since february: on the 6th february some of deals changed the last modified date taking the date of 06/02/2021. The same happened this month on 21st and 22nd and 23rd to the bulk of deals and we lost the real last modified date. During those dates we did not touch anything in Hubspot or other system and app..

Canuou help us? Did it happen to us only?Is theer a way to recover. the real last modified date?

Thanks in advance for your help

[Jesse2]

Thanks again Isaac. So it sounds like there may be at least some cases where the last modified date is getting updated erroneously. I assume there is no ETA on that part being fixed from HubSpot's side?

[IsaacTakushi]

Hi @Jesse,

I'm seeking insight into the types of company properties updated and whether HubSpot Company Insights are part of the picture. Stay tuned on this.

Unfortunately, it's not possible to curtail these platform-side changes since HubSpot also relies on the Last modified date property for other internal processes.

[Jesse2]

Thanks Isaac. We are familiar with those triggers on Contact changes and they are usually cases we agree with, but the details on the Company side are still more of a puzzle. Are these background changes associated with how HubSpot automatically updates Companies with known industry data? Are there any settings in HubSpot that could be disabled or otherwise used to help control this behavior?

[IsaacTakushi]

Hi @Jesse,

Apologies for the delayed response.

I have confirmed that HubSpot occasionally changes the values of "internal properties" which are not visible to or used by users. When such changes occur, HubSpot updates the Last modified date property, as the property is also used by internal systems for validation.

Examples of such properties on contact records are:

• The last time an email was sent, opened, or clicked.
• If a contact visits new pages and their analytics profile is updated.
• If a form is submitted.
• If a contact is added or removed from a list.
• If a contact is enrolled or unenrolled from a workflow.

While these aren't necessarily relevant to company records, the same principle applies — changes to properties only used by the HubSpot system can and do update Last modified date without showing the changes on the frontend.

The product team admitted that they understand integrators sometimes base processes on Last modified date and that these internal changes can be confusing. While "[they] will look into ways to mitigate this in the future, for now [they] have no plans to change how [this] works."

[Jesse2]

Hi Isaac,

Thanks for responding. Here are a couple examples from one portal:
https://app.hubspot.com/contacts/3972768/company/980382514/?interaction=note
https://app.hubspot.com/contacts/3972768/company/980580679/?interaction=note

And these are from the other portal:
https://app.hubspot.com/contacts/443323/company/895192299/?interaction=note
https://app.hubspot.com/contacts/443323/company/894820638/?interaction=note

For working Contacts, you could pick from any record in the first portal. We frequently update these as needed and we've never had any issue with Last Modified Date calculating in an unexpected way (or at any other of our customers).

[IsaacTakushi]

Hi @Jesse,

I'd like to investigate further. Could you share links to a few company records (at least one in each account) showing this behavior, as well as a "working" contact record?