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When you start a creative business, one of the biggest surprises is how much admin work there is. Responding to inquiries, sending invoices (and following up when they don’t get paid), asking for reviews after a wedding—all necessary to keep your wedding business running, and also a lot of manual work.
As a copywriter for wedding pros, my business runs a lot like yours. For years, I’ve been using Dubsado to manage my client experience from the moment an inquiry lands in my inbox.
But if you’ve never tried Dubsado or a similar software before, you might not know what it’s capable of. And there’s a lot more that you can do besides just sending proposals and collecting payments.
That’s why I put together this list of 23 ways you can use Dubsado as a wedding pro. But before we get into it, an important clarification:
What Dubsado Is (And What It Isn’t)
What Dubsado is
Dubsado describes itself as software for creative service businesses. In their words, their tool “lets you streamline operations, create repeatable processes, and deliver the best client experience.”
Its features include forms, contracts, and invoices, plus workflows that tie them together. You’ll also have a scheduling feature that syncs with your calendar, and the ability to send emails from within Dubsado.
What Dubsado isn’t
When I went to Dubsado headquarters for their partner collab day, their CTO emphasized that Dubsado is NOT trying to replace every software subscription you currently have. Instead, they want to do some things and do them really well.
In other words, Dubsado is NOT a replacement for:
- Accounting software
- Project management software
- Email marketing software (like Flodesk)
- Wedding vendor-specific software like Aisle Planner
- Complex CRMs like HubSpot or Salesforce (which are designed for large-scale businesses)
23 Ways Wedding Vendors Can Use Dubsado
- Create a custom inquiry form
You can create your inquiry form in Dubsado, style it to match your website, and then embed it in your site. When you’re building a form, you can add different types of questions (multiple-choice, dropdowns, date selections), and you have the option to make any question required. - Send an automated inquiry response
Everything we know about Gen Z suggests that they expect a quick response when they inquire with wedding vendors. The good news is that you don’t have to be glued to your phone 24/7—with Dubsado automations, you can set up an email response that goes out as soon as they inquire. - Send pricing/availability based on the package they select
Let’s say you’re a wedding vendor who offers both photo and video services. You can set up your inquiry form to ask whether they’re interested in photo, video, or both. Then, depending on their selection, you can trigger a workflow specific to that service. - Schedule consultation calls
Dubsado comes with a built-in scheduling tool that syncs with your calendar and projects. You can send couples a link to book their consultation call based on your availability (no back-and-forth about days and times). - Allow couples to build their own package
When you’re setting up proposals in Dubsado, you create your own packages for clients to choose from. But you may want to give them upgrade options or have them tell you how much of anything they need. For example, a hairstylist’s final pricing depends on how many people need styling.
Dubsado lets you add both checkboxes and number fields so that clients can customize a proposal and the pricing automatically adjusts. One of my clients uses Dubsado proposals to let clients build their entire semi-custom stationery package, adding on inserts, ribbons, etc. and entering the number of suites they need. - Follow up on proposals
If you’re sending a proposal and never following up, you may be losing business. Dubsado lets you trigger one (or more emails) when a form isn’t completed, so that you can automate follow-ups a few days after you’ve sent a proposal. - Require clients to initial certain sections in your contract
YES, clients are supposed to read your entire contract before signing, but we all know it doesn’t always work that way. Adding an initials box to certain key clauses makes it likelier that they’ll read what they’re signing. - Countersign contracts with one click
This is one of my favorite new features—you no longer need to open up a contract and type in your name. Just open up the forms section, click one button, and you’re done. Plus, the new Project Suggestions feature allows you to see all at once which contracts still need countersigning. - Allow clients to book an appointment directly
Dubsado’s public proposal feature is perfect for letting clients book a slot on your calendar and pay up front. It works best for services like a makeup trial, where you charge a flat fee for the service. As part of a public proposal, you can also require clients to answer questions before booking, and you have the option to attach a contract. - Send your clients an onboarding questionnaire
Once someone has signed their contract and made their deposit, you can use Dubsado to send them a questionnaire to gather details. This is also the perfect moment to send a welcome packet that outlines your policies and tells them what to expect next. - Remind clients to complete forms
When you build a workflow within Dubsado that includes a form, you have the option to send your client a reminder email if it’s not completed by a certain date. - Gather the details for a wedding timeline
Once you’ve collected their wedding details in a questionnaire, you can actually build an entire timeline inside Dubsado using custom-mapped fields—this blog post from the Creative’s Companion explains how it works. - Send reminder emails in the lead-up to their wedding
For example, when I work with elopement photographers, we often create a series of automated emails to remind them about planning tasks that need to be done in advance (like applying for National Park permits). - Remind couples of upcoming payments
Your clients are juggling a lot of to-dos in the run-up to their wedding, especially if they’re doing some or all of the planning themselves. You can attach payment reminders to any invoice in Dubsado that go out several days before an invoice is due. - Remind them of past-due invoices
Of course you need to remind people when they haven’t paid their invoice. But when you automate it, it takes emotion out of the equation on both sides. (Seriously: don’t bother customizing this email template. It’s fine for it to sound impersonal and automated.) - Set up card-on-file payments
If your clients need to make multiple payments, they can save their credit card information so that the payment can automatically be taken out on the due date (Dubsado refers to this as autopay). Depending on how you prefer to run your business, you can even make autopay required.
Important: Dubsado charges the same processing fee (2.9% + $0.30) for autopay as for one-off payments. This is a major difference between Dubsado and Honeybook, which charges 3.4% + $0.09 for card-on-file payments. For a $10,000 fee split into 4 payments, the difference amounts to roughly $40. - Sync your financial data with QuickBooks or Xero
Dubsado has integrations with both QuickBooks and Xero, so if you use either of those tools for bookkeeping, you can easily sync your payments and invoices. - Track your monthly revenue and other metrics
Dubsado’s dashboard shows your monthly revenue, how many inquiries have converted to projects, and your top sources of leads at a glance. If you use it to track your expenses, you can also get more detailed financial reporting that includes your net profit. - Request reviews or feedback after a wedding
The easiest way to make sure that you get reviews or feedback is to automate asking for them. Dubsado lets you set up an automated email to go out a certain number of days after the event date, and you can either build a feedback form inside Dubsado itself, or send them a link to review you on Google.
As a website copywriter, I’m obligated to tell you that reviews and testimonials are important for so many reasons: SEO, social proof, swiping good lines to use in your website copy. - Send model releases
Depending on the type of wedding business you run, you may need clients to sign multiple legal docs. Dubsado only lets you assign one contract to a project, but its “sub-agreements” feature can be used for additional documents. For example, you can add a model release to get clients’ permission to use their images in marketing material. - Create templates for emails you find yourself writing again and again
Dubsado’s Canned Emails feature allows you to save email templates to be used in workflows, but you can also use a template any time you’re composing a message to a client. Rather than type out an email every time you have to turn down an inquiry because you’re already booked on that date, you can write it once. Then just save it as a template and select it from the list next time. - Send out of office emails to all your current clients
Dubsado just added a Bulk Emails feature that lets you select multiple clients and send them each an email. You can still use Smart Fields in the email, so it’s personalized to your clients. One of the easiest ways to start with this feature is by sending an email to all your clients before your next vacation, reminding them of the days you’ll be OOO. - Email past clients about a new offer
The Bulk Emails feature lets you reach out to past clients as well. If you’re a wedding photographer, for example, you could send clients an email about a sale on prints, or about holiday mini-sessions.
Interested in trying Dubsado? Use my link to save 30% off your first month or year.
Photo credit: Julianne Donelle Photography for Dubsado.
