How to Run a HubSpot Workflow Audit in 15 Minutes With Ask Howly

You just got access to a portal. It might be a new client, an inherited admin role, or your own portal after two years of nobody cleaning up. There are dozens of workflows, no documentation, and someone wants to know what is broken and what it will take to fix.

A HubSpot workflow audit answers three questions: what is broken, what depends on what, and what to fix first. With Ask Howly, you run that audit as a conversation.

Connect the portal to Howly, then ask about its health, triage the critical issues, trace the workflows and properties that matter, and finish with a cleanup plan that names every workflow to review. In the walkthrough below, the whole audit takes about 15 minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdp6oWNtlZc

Why most HubSpot workflow audits stall after the findings

Every audit tool, Howly included, used to stop at the findings. The canvas shows the connections, Health Checker scores the portal from 0 to 100, and Property Impact lists every workflow that depends on a property. You still had to decide what it all meant and what to fix first, and that judgment step is where audits eat a full day.

Ask Howly is a read-only chat assistant inside Howly that does that step with you. It works on any portal you connect, and it answers from the dependency map, health issues, property usage, recent changes, and the last 30 days of enrollment activity. You do not need to know the portal before you start asking.

Step 1: Size the job before you open a single workflow

Ask: "How healthy is my workflow setup, and what are the main issues?"

This is the question that tells you what you are dealing with. You get the Health Checker score, the number of workflows, and every issue grouped as critical, warning, or informational. Inactive workflows and possible duplicates land in the informational group and carry no scoring penalty, so the score reflects real structural problems.

That baseline does two jobs. It tells you whether this is a one-hour cleanup or a multi-week project, which is the first thing a client asks. It also gives you a starting score to compare against once the cleanup is done.

Step 2: Know what to fix first

Ask: "Which workflows have critical issues that I should look at first?"

On a portal with a hundred issues, the hard part is knowing which ones are hurting the business right now. This question gives you that list, with the problem and the action needed for each workflow.

Broken enrollments usually lead the list. A broken enrollment is a workflow that enrolls records into a workflow that is turned off, so those records stop partway through the enrollment chain. Ask Howly gives you a decision tree for each one. If the target workflow is still needed, turn it back on. If it is deprecated, remove it. If it has been replaced, update the enrollment action to point at the replacement.

Every workflow Ask Howly names links to the canvas and to HubSpot, so you can confirm any finding before you act on it.

Step 3: Understand a workflow without opening it in HubSpot

Ask: "What does [workflow name] do, from enrollment trigger to actions?"

Reading an unfamiliar workflow in HubSpot means clicking through every branch and then hunting for what it enrolls into. Ask Howly gives you the trigger, each action in order, and every downstream workflow in one answer. It also tells you what is wrong with it.

In the walkthrough, this question exposed an MQL workflow feeding two inactive downstream workflows, so new MQLs never got their welcome emails. It also turned up an inactive near-duplicate that only cluttered the map. That is the kind of problem nobody finds by scrolling a workflow list.

Step 4: See what a property is really holding up

Ask: "Where is the property [lifecycle stage] being used across my workflows?"

Some properties carry far more automation than their name suggests. Property Impact lists every workflow that references one, and Ask Howly adds the values each workflow uses, which are active, and what the gaps mean.

This is where you find the problems a client will pay to fix, like a funnel stage whose welcome workflows are all turned off.

Step 5: Check a new workflow before you build it

Ask: "I'm planning a workflow that enrolls when [property] is [value]. Which existing workflows use that property and value?"

The client usually wants something new once the audit is done. This question lists every existing workflow on the same trigger, so you find out whether two workflows will act on the same records before you build, not a month after launch.

Step 6: Walk away with a cleanup plan

Ask: "Based on the issues you found today, give me a short cleanup plan and name the workflows to review."

This is the question that turns the audit into work you can schedule. Ask Howly returns a phased plan that names the workflows in each phase:

1. Fix broken enrollments so records stop falling out of enrollment chains.
2. Clean up inactive workflows that no longer serve a purpose.
3. Review stale workflows, meaning active workflows not modified in 6+ months.
4. Remove empty workflows, meaning workflows with no actions configured.
5. Optimize by consolidating duplicates, reviewing circular dependencies, and deciding whether orphaned workflows should be connected or archived.

An orphaned workflow is an active workflow with no upstream or downstream connections. That is not automatically a problem, because many operational workflows run on their own by design. The last phase asks for a decision, not a deletion.

Review the plan with your own judgment and pair it with the Audit Report. For an agency, that is the scope of a paid cleanup engagement. Our HubSpot workflow audit guide for agencies covers how to present it to a client.

Ask Howly runs on Claude

The step from findings to a plan takes judgment, and that judgment comes from the model. Ask Howly runs on Claude, the model built by Anthropic. Howly's AI Audit runs on Claude too, and the Howly MCP server connects Howly's workflow data to Claude for teams that prefer to work in a Claude chat.

In October 2026, Howly was accepted into the Claude for Startups program. That gives us early access to where the models are heading, credits to build with, and dedicated time with Anthropic's team.

Howly stays read-only throughout. It connects via OAuth 2.0 and cannot write, edit, or change anything in a portal. Ask Howly tells you what to change and in what order, and you make each change in HubSpot.

Key Takeaways

• A HubSpot workflow audit answers three questions: what is broken, what depends on what, and what to fix first.
• Ask Howly works on any portal you connect, yours or a client's, and runs the audit as six questions that end in a named cleanup plan.
• Ask Howly runs on Claude and is read-only. It plans the work, and you make every change in HubSpot.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I audit HubSpot workflows in a portal I didn't build?

Start with a health baseline that counts the workflows and groups every issue by severity. Fix critical issues such as broken enrollments first, then investigate the workflows and properties that drive the most automation, such as lifecycle stage. Finish with a cleanup plan that names the workflows to fix, review, or remove. Doing this by hand means tracing every connection yourself, which our HubSpot workflow audit guide covers. In Howly, you connect the portal via OAuth 2.0 and Ask Howly runs the same audit as a conversation, with every finding linked to the workflow on the canvas and in HubSpot.

How long does a HubSpot workflow audit take?

A manual HubSpot workflow audit on a portal with dozens of workflows often takes a full day, because every dependency has to be traced by hand. With Howly connected, the canvas loads a full portal map in 10 to 25 seconds, and Ask Howly can take a portal from a health baseline to a named, phased cleanup plan in about 15 minutes. Reviewing that plan with your own judgment takes additional time.

What is a broken enrollment in HubSpot?

A broken enrollment is a workflow that uses a direct enrollment action to enroll records into another workflow that is turned off. The records stop partway through the enrollment chain and never receive the downstream actions. The fix is to turn the target workflow back on, remove the enrollment action if the target is deprecated, or point the action at a replacement workflow.

Summary

A HubSpot workflow audit is only finished when it ends in a plan. Ask Howly turns the audit into six questions, from a health baseline to a named cleanup plan, on any portal you connect. It runs on Claude, it is read-only, and every answer links back to the workflow it describes.

Connect your portal to Howly, open Ask Howly, and run your next HubSpot workflow audit before the client call. The 7-day free trial requires no credit card and includes Ask Howly.

Howly is the #1 workflow audit tool for HubSpot Solutions Partners. It maps every workflow connection and dependency, shows the blast radius of a property change before you make it, and exports white-labeled audit reports. Trusted by 250+ solutions partners worldwide.