Project Management Platforms

If you’re a service based business then chances are you are currently using or will be using a CRM or Customer Relationship Management tool. A CRM can help you organize customers, projects, notes and streamline estimating, billing, contracts, and all kinds of administration tasks. It helps so you aren’t doing redundant work for weekly or even daily tasks and, for me at least, has been a life saver as I’ve grown my business.

Full disclosure, at the time of writing this I’m about 9 months into my CRM, Dubsado. There are several CRM’s out there but after doing my own research and some recommendations by trusted fellow biz owners, I made the jump. I will continue to add information and opinion to this post as I get further in my journey.

WHICH INDUSTRIES ARE THESE BEST FOR: This is probably personal preference for many business owners so for sure do your own research. If there are others in your field of work that you can reach out to, find out what others are using and pros/cons. Most CRMS offer a free trial period as well. During this trial, my recommendation would be to focus less on setting up real clients in it but rather use yourself as a test client, poke around, and watch some general tutorial videos to see if you like working in the system and if it’s a good fit for what you need it to do.

DUBSADO

WHAT I LIKE ABOUT IT: Once I got all my clients input and my contract and base proposal outlined it has cut my time on executing these tasks in half and I know the more I put in here, the better it will get. I like the automated billing option if you set start and end dates but the scheduler has been a life saver! All of my contact forms are now created in Dubsado and embeded in my website. This ensures clients get put into a specific workflow and I no longer have to copy/paste info from separate plugins or emails – everything is organized in one place.

SETUP: Be prepared to set aside a good chunk of time to setup your account and have patience that you won’t be able to complete EVERYTHING in one sitting. What I found to be helpful was to focus on one task at a time: inputing all current clients in, creating my proposal templates, writing canned emails, etc. Dubsado is very process driven so you’ll need to have smaller things setup before you can go into more robust features like Workflows. I’ve definitely been frustrated but it’s only been because I wanted to be up and running ASAP.

ASSISTANCE: Dubsado has a LOT of tutorial videos and the best part is they are all short! Super easy to follow and digest and on most they also write out under the video the steps so it’s a great quick reference. Once you sign up you also receive 2 – 30 minute help sessions each month which you can schedule. They send you a recording of these sessions afterwords too.

If setting up is more than you want to do, there are Dubsado setup experts you can hire (separate from the company itself) to do it for you.

The link below is an affiliate link. If you sign up (after trial) with code PDSSAVE20 you’ll receive 20% your first month or year and I will receive a small credit.

CHECK OUT DUBSADO

HONEYBOOK

WHAT I KNOW: Almost every photographer I know uses Honeybook. In fact, I’ll reach out to a few of them to give me their thoughts on pros/cons about the system and why it works best for them. At the time I was looking, Honeybook didn’t have as many variable features as Dubsado did – which I really need since every project I do is unique. Again, I highly recommend doing your own research and some trials before committing to a paid subscription.

CHECK OUT HONEYBOOK