I want to talk to you about a magical all-in-one tool where you can take care of all of your client management needs and more! You’re probably thinking it’s too good to be true… but this tool is summed up in one word and you’re going to love it. The world of boss life magic calls it… Dubsado!
Dubsado can help you manage leads and projects, get contracts signed, receive payments on invoices, send client questionnaires, and so much more. If you’re wondering what Dubsado can do for your business, this Dubsado walk-through tutorial is just for you! I’ll be showing you around this unicorn of a tool, so that you can decide if Dubsado is the right client management tool for you! Let’s go!
Dubsado Dashboard + Brand Settings
When you log into Dubsado, the first thing you’ll see is your dashboard. Your dashboard houses all of the treasures you need to manage your client tasks each day or get setup in Dubsado for the first time.
In the dashboard you’ll see:
- SEARCH BAR: All of the clients and projects you have in Dubsado are searchable in the search bar.
- INBOX: This is where you’ll be able to see your recently received email from clients. If you were to send any emails through Dubsado, any emails that you receive back from the client would show up here for your visibility, and for you to reply back to as well.
- BELL BUTTON: If you see a red dot over the bell icon, this means that you have a notification from a client completing a form or making a payment.
- QUESTION MARK BUTTON: This is where you can access Dubsado’s help center, and write to them if necessary. You can also access their free Facebook community, as well as view Dubsado’s release notes so you can stay up-to-date on new features. There’s a contact button to contact them directly too. Amazing, right?!
- GEAR ICON: The gear icon is where your settings are. This is where you can make changes to your brand settings, add users, integrations, set up emails, time zones, and so much more.
- FINANCIAL GOALS: If you want to set financial goals for yourself, you can do so to track your progress as clients pay their invoices through Dubsado.
- OPEN INVOICES: This amount is based on the number of open invoices you sent to clients that have not been paid yet.
- REVENUE INDICATOR: This indicator projects how you’re currently doing based upon how you did in the last 30 days up until this point on payments received.
- RECENT: This area shows any invoices that have missed payments. You can also review contracts that need your counter signature, approve workflow actions, and see the latest updates from the Dubsado team.
- CALENDAR: On the calendar, you can view your calendar in either a weekly view or monthly view. The calendar overview allows you to see what’s ahead, what you’re currently working on, when you’re supposed to work on a project, as well as how long it lasts and other project details.
- FINANCIALS: This is where Dubsado tallies how you’re trending up or down for income and expenses for a week, month, or any given custom time frame.
- TASKS: You have the ability to view and add tasks straight from the dashboard that you need to work on for client projects.
Projects
In the Projects area, you have the ability to view your leads and your client projects all in one place. On your list of projects, for each client project you can see:
- TITLE: The title that you’ve given your project.
- CLIENT: The client’s name.
- DATE: The date a project is supposed to start.
- INVOICES: Invoices pertaining to that project and how much has been paid at a glance.
- CONTRACT: Gives you a quick view of if the contract has been signed.
- WORKFLOW: Shows if a workflow is active on a client project.
- STATUS: Where you can change the status of a project or lead.
- ACTIONS: Gives you the option to archive or delete a project or lead.
- PROJECT STATUSES FEATURE: This feature allows you to know how many people you have in a particular phase of your workflow at a time, or where you can have quick lists. Statuses can be created for leads and projects.
- TAGS FEATURE: You can assign a tag a name based on a client’s current project status, or what type of service they’re getting with you.
Reporting
Dubsado also allows you to view financials and marketing sources in the form of reports. Here’s a peek at some of the types of data reports you can review.
- PROJECT SOURCES: In this section of Dubsado, you’ll be able to add and review any project sources that you have so that you know how new leads are finding out about your business.
- PROJECT BREAKDOWN: This is where you’ll be able to see in different time frames, how many of your current projects came from a specific source.
- INVOICES: You have the ability to look at any invoices that have been sent out to clients, and get a notation of if they’ve been paid. You can look at a list of overdue invoices too so that you can follow up with clients in a flash.
- TRANSACTIONS: In this section, you can view money that you’ve received from clients, as well as keep track of other business-related expenses.
- CHART OF ACCOUNTS: You’re able to add any accounts that you want to document for your accountant or for tax purposes. These can be income categories by service type or expense categories like: advertising, taxes, or software.
- REPORTS: This section where you can view your expenses as well as get a full breakdown of income that’s coming in and expenses that are going out to generate a profit and loss statement.
Calendar
I mentioned the calendar briefly, but want to reaffirm that you can view the calendar in a monthly, weekly, or daily view. You’re able to review appointments set from your Dubsado based appointment scheduler, scheduled and prospective project dates, and more.
Tasks
Tasks are so helpful to use in Dubsado. You can view the following:
- MY TASKS: Tasks that are only assigned to you from the main user of the account.
- ALL TASKS: Tasks that are assigned to all of your team members.
- BOARDS: This is where you can create and manage tasks in a kaban board view. It’s sort of like a Trello board of tasks.
Utilities
This area helps you manage any past or present client or lead in Dubsado as well as the forms you’ve sent out to clients, and the time tracker. Here’s the feature breakdown for this area in Dubsado:
- FORMS LIST: Houses any form that you sent out to a client, whether its been completed or not completed by a client.
- ADDRESS BOOK: Consists of all of the clients that you’ve worked with, clients that filled out a contact form, as well as those who booked a consultation call or meeting with you through Dubsado’s appointment scheduler.
- TIME TRACKER: This very helpful for anyone who does work by the hour, and you want to bill those hours after the work has been done. Simply track your time while you work on the project and invoice the client as billed hours later on an invoice.
Appointment Scheduler
With Dubsado, you can send your calendar out to clients so they can access available times that you have open to book a meeting or a call with you. You’re able to create your own custom meeting types and set your availability. Clients can only book those meetings during those available times on your scheduler.
Overall, this eliminates a lot of back and forth emails with clients to schedule a one-on-one meeting. A major plus is that you’ll be saving money by not having to use Calandly or Acuity for bookings. That’s at minimum $120 in expense savings per year.
Forms
The forms space can be found in the templates area. Here you’re able to use this space to create contracts, subagreements, questionnaires, proposals, and lead capture forms. A lead capture form is just another name for a contact form that you can embed on your website; the embed, of course, would come from Dubsado. So anytime a client fills out your contact form on your website, they’re filling out a lead capture form that’s created in Dubsado so that you can automate an email to go out to them with the next steps for booking with you!
In addition, you can also create proposals to send to clients. This is by far one of my favorite tasks to complete in Dubsado because you can send a proposal, contract, and invoice all in one swoop. The client can complete all three tasks on one screen without you having to send 10 emails one by one.
You can do so many other things with forms and proposals but the two examples I’ve given are surefire ways to save your boss life.
Canned Emails
Canned emails can be found in the templates area as well. This is where you can create canned responses, and save them as email templates to send to clients in a flash whenever you need them. This is a big help from Dubsado so that you don’t have to write the same type of email over and over every time you get a new lead, or when you have to send a proposal or questionnaire to a client.
Packages
Packages can also be found in the templates area of Dubsado. In the packages area you can create all of the services that you offer as unique packages so that you can easily and quickly add them to proposals and invoices. This saves you a lot of time because you don’t have to take hours to create custom proposals in a pdf, Canva, or a word document.You’re able to add all of your packages to custom proposals, proposal templates, and invoices in no time.
Payment Schedules
You guessed it. Payment schedules are found in the templates area too! This is an area where you can create different payment plans for clients. You can attach these template payment plans to proposals and invoices so that clients can pay a percentage or specific dollar amount on a schedule without you having to remember when payments are due.
Here’s another cool perk. You can assign an email to remind the client about an upcoming payment on the payment schedule based on a fixed due date or a relative date like 10 days after the project start date for example.
Workflows
The workflow area is where you can create custom automated client experiences as well as lists of tasks that you need to complete with every client as you fulfill the services you’ve been hired for. In other words, you can streamline those repetitive tasks you used to do manually into an organized list of emails, forms and tasks that automagically happen at specific time frames in your workflow without lifting a finger; unless you were sipping mimosas at that moment. It’s sort of like having a virtual assistant without having to pay the fee every month. Amazing, right?!
Ready to sign up for Dubsado? Use my affiliate link: https://www.dubsado.com/?c=superwoman
I hope you’ve enjoyed this walkthrough of Dubsado! It’s really great for those who are newbies to this amazing platform. Also, if you need help with Dubsado form design or setting up Dubsado workflows take a peek at my services right here. If you’re a DIY kind of girl, get access to my Free Resource Library full of Dubsado tips and business tools to help you save time and be more productive in your business each day!