Slay the Day!
Hey Loves!
There are so many things I want to to share with you when it comes to mompreneur life. As a stay-at-home mom, I have a lot of running around to do and a lot of juggling between my 1 year old and 5 year old all while finding the time to work. So with a lot on my plate, finding a system that helps reduce the stress and free up some of my time for the kids is a must! So here is a little look into how we manage our day-to-day with the biggest help from Dubsado.
Because me and my sister started this business together, we each have our own strengths and talents that we bring to the business. My sister is by far the artist and everything creative. Me however, I can barely draw a stick figure, sad I know…but anyway my strength is the business end of the things. The numbers, paperwork, bookkeeping, and set-ups is all me. I love organization and giving everything its purpose and assigning things and making lists! If you see my sister’s workplace or if you know her, then you know she is allergic to organization. She’s has got better with it but it’s still a work in progress with her, but what can I say she’s an artist and thrives in a mess, whereas I have a minor stroke whenever there is a mess which can be a problem at times with having kids…I’m working on letting it go when it comes to them though.
I digress…anyway with having a lot going on because let’s face it life is just overwhelming sometimes, especially with little ones so finding Dubsado was a godsend! Before I would use Excel to make the proposals and save it as a PDF and send that off to the clients. If they approved, I would save that proposal as their invoice and email them a copy for their records. Then I would manually input everything in QuickBooks so that I could track all the accounting, expenses, and payments in there. Now when it came to payments and the client contracts, that was a whole other ordeal, and thank you to our earlier clients so much for bearing with us through this process. Our contracts were saved in PDF form where they could add their signature but we found many of our clients had a hard time signing it electronically so we would end up making an appointment with our clients to collect the contracts and payments from them in person instead. Which means my sister had to travel quite a bit to collect payments and signatures, since our business is located in Indiana and I live in Colorado. We use Square for payments and because they do take a higher percentage out when you manually enter payments, we just figured if clients wanted to use their card we’ll just meet with them to collect the contracts and payments in person.
This process was very tiring and time consuming to say the least, and I know you’re probably thinking why not use QuickBooks for invoicing, and you’re right we could’ve, but I would have still needed to do the proposals separately, and honestly as a starting business, I selfishly wanted to retain as much of the profits as we could so we could use it to continue to grow our brand.
For me and my part in the business, this is where Dubsado comes in handy and has saved my life so much time and I believe has made it completely simpler and easier for our clients as well. Now all I have to do is create the packages to add to the proposal and send. Once the client receives the proposal, everything else is right there on the top of the page, the invoice for them to make a deposit if they approve the proposal and the client contract to sign that is automatically inputted with the package they approve. Everything is there for them on one screen essentially and is sent all at once. That alone eliminated so much back and forth for us and saved us hours of work. Also, no more manually entering clients order in QuickBooks, because yes Dubsado just got more awesome and is now compatible with QuickBooks Online with just one click of a button! That’s right, I just click one button and our client’s invoice and profile is linked to QuickBooks so I don’t have to enter anything. All I have to do is apply their payments to their QuickBooks invoice and done. Sooooo much easier than before. So kudos to Dubsado for making my invoicing jobs that much more simpler.
Dubsado has streamlined everything for us and has given us an edge with our clients that I can’t thank them enough for the client portal. I don’t have to code anything and everything is right there for our clients, what more can I ask for? This has been the major game changer for us, especially for my sister when it comes to sending design proofs. Clients can just login to their client portal and see all the documents and forms, their invoices, payments, emails and all their design proofs right there in one place. It’s definitely a nice perk and completely user-friendly.
On top of all this awesomeness, whenever I have a quick question or issue, their customer service team is there and are super quick in helping me with anything no matter what. I can’t tell you how many times I contacted them in the beginning when I was getting everything set up and getting our feet wet with this program and they were so patient with me and understanding it was so amazing and refreshing to have a customer service line that actually cared about you and making your business succeed, so shout out to Becca, Joleena, and most of all David and Cameron for helping me out so much with all my silly questions and set up, you guys rock!
With living so far away from my sister and where our business is, Dubsado has made it so easy for me to do what I have to do remotely and still succeed. If you’re a business owner, whether you’re a photographer, consultant, designer, public speaker, whatever it is you do, I highly recommend using Dubsado for your business. It is such a time saver and just makes running your business smoother and simpler. Trust me, when I had my daughter last year, this system helped so much in automating emails and processes that I otherwise couldn’t have done with having a newborn.
I highly recommend checking them out, go to their website and read about all they offer and how they can help you and don’t forget to use our affiliate/referral code: xoxoinvites to sign up and receive 20% off your first month!
Shout out to all the mompreneurs finding ways to make their lives easier because we all know that these kids drive us crazy ;)