My Business Before Dubsado
I started my first business (in the wedding industry) before I had ever heard of Dubsado. As my business grew, so did the patchwork collection of disjoint systems I had to help me run it: I was sending paper contracts, invoicing through Square, and scheduling appointments through Acuity; I was writing the same emails over and over again; I was creating reminders for myself to send reminders to my clients. With each new booking, it became increasingly difficult to keep track of where each client was in the process. What my business really needed was a CRM (Client Relationship Management system) that could do ALL of this and more.
Finally I found Dubsado and everything changed. With Dubsado at the helm of my client experience, I was able to streamline my business and automate the repetitive parts. Today, I work with photographers and creatives to do the same for their own Dubsado accounts. Here’s what I’ve learned over the past 5 years about why you need Dubsado in your business life, too!
Who is Dubsado for?
Dubsado was originally created by photographers for photographers, but it attracts tons of other types of businesses as well, including:
- Anyone in the wedding industry – photographers, florists, event planners, stationery designers, cake designers, makeup artists, DJs, officiants, etc.
- Tons of coaches
- Creatives like copywriters, graphic designers, web designers
- Service providers like interior designers, home stagers, doulas
- I’ve even worked with professionals like bookkeepers and HR firms
- The list goes on and on!
7 Reasons You’ll Love Dubsado
1. Your branding is on display, not Dubsado’s
You’ve spent waaaaay too much time crafting your brand to have everything break down by sending ugly, generic quotes and documents from your CRM. I love that Dubsado gets that and give you full control of your form designs!
Proposals in Dubsado are fully customizable. And when I say fully, I mean FULLY. Any form in Dubsado – whether it’s a quote/proposal, contract, questionnaire, or your website lead capture – begins as a blank page and can be designed from scratch with Dubsado’s easy drag-and-drop build feature. Add images, text blocks, dropdowns, checkbox responses, make columns, etc. And for the ultimate wow factor, you can add code blocks for custom CSS to take things to the next level.
Beautifully branded form design would be enticing enough on its own, but Dubsado takes it a few steps further to provide a completely white-labeled system for your business. You can connect your email address so that emails coming from Dubsado look just like they would coming from your normal email provider. (I have used other systems that like to throw their own logo at the bottom of every email.) If you’re feeling tech savvy, you can even play with your website domain settings so that the links created in Dubsado use your own URL instead of Dubsado’s. How cool is that?!
2. Easy Booking (ie: get paid faster!)
Dubsado’s Proposal feature is the ultimate way to get your clients booked quickly and easily. Just send it off and wait for your clients to accept your proposal, sign the contract, and pay the deposit completely on their own!
How Proposals work in Dubsado
Proposals (used to their fullest extent) have 3 parts: the Proposal, the Contract, and the Invoice. The system works seamlessly to share information so that you don’t have to stop the client’s momentum mid-booking. No more manually updating contracts and invoices because Dubsado does all of this automatically!
Step 1: The Proposal. The Proposal is an interactive quote or pricing guide where you can have all of your service offerings or packages on display. You can also feature optional upgrades to your service, such as an additional photographer, rehearsal dinner coverage, additional hours on the wedding day, album upgrades… whatever you like! Your client will select any services they want, and they’ll be able to see their subtotal appear at the bottom of the screen.
Step 2: The Contract. Once the client makes their selections and submits the proposal, they’ll be routed to the Contract. Normally, you would have to intervene at this point to make sure your contract accurately reflects the service(s) your client is retaining you for. However, Dubsado can do ALL of this manually by using mapped fields to pull their selections and pricing into your contract.
Step 3: The Invoice. The final stop for your client is the Invoice. The price has already populated (thanks again to the proposal) and the invoice is ready for your client to submit a payment!
No hidden fees
It’s worth noting that Dubsado doesn’t process your client billing directly; instead, you’ll connect with Stripe, Square, or PayPal. This is a GOOD thing. Other platforms like Honeybook process the transactions and quietly take a percentage of your invoicing (in addition to the monthly subscription fee).
3. Integrated Appointment Scheduling
Say goodbye to Calendly, Acuity, or endless back and forth over email, because Dubsado has a native scheduler! It’s one more way that Dubsado makes your life easier.
Imagine getting a new inquiry. They seem like a great fit and you’re excited to talk to them! With a click, you can effortlessly send off your appointment scheduler where your current availability is visible in real time. Your prospective client selects a date that works for them and receives a personalized confirmation email. SO EASY! You can also set up as many reminders leading up to the appointment as you like!
Calendly and Acuity can schedule appointments, too. What’s the advantage of using Dubsado’s native scheduler?
- You can have your appointment scheduler send automatically based on another event! (eg: a new bride fills out your lead capture)
- You can have other actions trigger based on the appointment being scheduled, the appointment start time, or the appointment end time! (eg: send proposal 1 hour after the call ends)
- When the scheduler is sent from a project, Dubsado already knows who the client is. That means they don’t have to fill out their name or email to schedule the appointment. All they do is select the date and time and click submit! This makes scheduling on mobile sooooo easy for your clients and makes you look like a rockstar.
- If you need additional information from your client at the time of scheduling, simply attach a form. The completed form appears in your client project, keeping everything organized and in one place.
Limitations of the Dubsado Scheduler
I want to be honest with you: there are some limitations with the scheduler that can be frustrating for certain types of businesses.
The main limitation is scheduling for teams since there is no way to connect multiple user’s calendars with Dubsado. As soon as an appointment is booked, the time is blocked and can’t be booked again for another user.
Text reminders is another feature that Dubsado does not currently support; however, you can set up as many email reminders leading up to your appointments as you like.
The Dubsado scheduler isn’t perfect, but in most cases, the benefits of automation outweigh the limitations!
4. Save Countless Hours with Canned Emails and Form Templates
Don’t ever write that same email again! Dubsado allows you to create templates for everything, from emails to contracts to questionnaires to payment schedules. Create all of your content in Dubsado ONCE and effortlessly apply it to new client projects over and over again.
5. Client Portal
As a photographer, you may have lots of forms and resources to send to your clients (think: welcome packet, couple questionnaire, shot list, wedding day timeline, preferred vendors, etc.). You don’t want to risk all of that valuable content getting buried in your client’s email inbox!
With the Client Portal, your client has access to every email, form, invoice, contract, and appointment that you’ve sent them – all in one convenient location.
Side note: If you’re a studio photographer with lots of recurring clients, a bonus feature for you is that clients will be able to access ALL of their past and present projects in the Client Portal.
6. Organization & Reporting
There are so many ways to keep yourself and your clients organized within Dubsado!
Projects, Funnels, and Tags
Dubsado is a projects-based system. New wedding client? Create a project. Family Session? Create a project.
As your client moves through your process, you’ll want to take advantage of Project Funnels to identify the current status of their project. The funnels are fully customizable and you can have as many as make sense for your business.
Dubsado has an awesome projects dashboard that provides a high level overview of where everybody is at in the funnels, including invoicing and contract status for each project. I love that all of this info is available at a glance!
To further classify your projects, add tags like Wedding, Engagement, Portrait, Branding, etc.
Reporting
I won’t suggest that Dubsado replaces your bookkeeping software, because it definitely doesn’t. BUT it does have some cool reporting features that you can take advantage of so long as you probably categorize your invoices. For example, you can see how much money you’re making in your different income categories (eg: weddings vs. events).
7. Free up Your Time with Automated Workflows
I saved the best for last. The REAL MAGIC of Dubsado is in automated workflows! A workflow is a series of “if then” statements that trigger actions. For example: “IF a new leads fills out the Website Contact Form, THEN send email X 15 minutes later.” Getting your processes properly translated into Dubsado workflows is where you will start seeing HUGE time savings! First, map out your process start to finish. Next, get all of your content ready (write your email templates, design forms, create appointment schedulers, etc.). Then you can begin building your workflows!
Getting started with Dubsado
Get your free trial
First, sign up for a free trial to make sure that Dubsado is right for you. There’s no time limit on their trials – just a 3 client limit – so you can take as long as you need to check out all of the features.
Save 30%
Then when you’re ready to take the plunge, be sure to use discount code HEATHERGAGNON for 30% off your first month or year with Dubsado!
Dubsado’s Resources
Dubsado has tons of helpful resources and courses to help you learn the system. Check out their Getting Started Guide and Education Courses.
Setup My Account!
If you get stuck and need help setting up your Dubsado account, I’d love to help! Reach out through my contact form here.
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