Meet Dubsado - my digital virtual assistant
Imagine this: you get an inquiry from your dream client. You want to reply right away and show your enthusiasm for working with them, but you are away from your desk or on a call with a client or maybe on a holiday.
But never fear, you have an assistant that will look after this for you. It will reply, send all the necessary information, set up a phone call if desired and put reminders in place for the potential client so that they won’t forget your scheduled appointment.
Too good to be true? Nope. Meet Dubsado.
Dubsado is a Client Relationship Management Tool (CRM) that does all of this:
• invoicing,
• scheduling of tasks and calls,
• canned emails, client forms,
• financial reporting and tracking
• and so much more!
Dashboard
From my Dubsado dashboard, I am able to see at a glance, my calendar overview, my year to date financial summary and notifications about missing payments or signatures on contracts at a glance.
Projects and Leads
The Projects tab allows me to see the current projects that I have on the go where I can see forms that are needing to be filled out by the client, our email dialogue, invoices and one of the most powerful features of Dubsado: workflows.
One thing that is so helpful is the ability to keep track of different client leads as well. You can separate the leads by the type of inquiries and apply different workflows to them. You can easily schedule follow up emails, or check in with leads that have not responded yet.
Workflows
Since all of my web design projects follow a similar process, I am able to set up workflows that take the client step by step through the process. I change the dates for the particular client, enter in all of their personal details and apply a work flow for my web design process. This process has canned emails that will emails the client the appropriate form, instructions or questions at the appropriate time in the schedule. I can either set these up to go automatically or I can add an “approval” option so I can have a chance to customize the emails even more.
Part of the workflow allows me to add reminders to myself so that I do not forget any details of a custom web design project.
Payments
Another powerful feature of Dubsado is the ability to automate payments. I set up my web design projects with the following payment plan: ⅓ due at booking, ⅓ due at start of project and ⅓ due at the end of the project. With Dubsado, I am able to automate this schedule. If the client is late with a payment, a reminder email will automatically be sent without me having to lift a finger! If they have paid it, the reminder will not be sent.
I am not a fan of having to remind clients about payments so this is something that gets removed from my workflow and I love how Dubsado automatically handles it for me.
Canned emails
If I have to send the same email message more than twice then I know it is going to be an email I add to my canned emails in Dubsado. No more energy wasted repeating instructions to multiple clients or trying to come up with the right wording.
It is easy to include these canned emails in a workflow or to just send them manually when necessary.
Forms
As part of my web design process my clients have to fill in a few different forms to share information with me. For instance I have one form that collects information about their SEO keywords and dives into that topic. I am able to create the form once and add it to my workflow so that the client receives it at the appropriate time in the project. Once they have completed it, I get a notification that it has been filled out. So easy!
Dubsado also includes a bunch of already prepared forms that you are able to use as is or modify for your business.
Built in Scheduler
As part of my web design process I offer an online discovery call with potential web design clients and strategy calls with clients that have hired me. Since I work with people all over the world, scheduling a call at a time that works for both of us can be complex, but with the Dubsado scheduler it makes it so easy.
I simply set up my availability for the type of call that I am offering, set up a “canned email response” and it’s ready to go. I can also set a lot of options such as how many calls a days maximum to schedule, how much time should be allowed in between appointments and best of all, I can have reminder emails sent at whatever time intervals I want.
Having this scheduler in place has saved me so much time!
Branding
One thing I love about Dubsado is that you are able to add your own branding everywhere to customize the client experience. Some CRM’s insist on leaving their own branding, but not Dubsado!
Customer Service
The folks at Dubsado are SOOOO helpful! Let’s face it - there is a lot of work to do when setting up your CRM initially. It is overwhelming. But they offer 1:1 services to help you through that, oodles of training videos and their live chat is so quick and helpful too.
They will even set up quite a bit of your forms for you if you send them what you want your forms to have. I love that it started out as a small husband and wife team and they have just kept growing and becoming more popular and now have added quite a large team. They still have a family feel to them though and are all so approachable.
There is also a facebook group that is very helpful for ideas and suggestions.
Client Portal
The client portal is where my clients can log in to see all of the forms, emails and invoices I have sent them. It is so handy to have it all in one spot to reference everything for our project.
Can you tell I love Dubsado????!!!!! I have been using it for 2 ½ years now and I can’t imagine being without it. It has truly made a difference in keeping me organized in my business and creating a seamless process for my clients.
If you are interested in trying Dubsado out, you can use my affiliate link here to receive 20% off your first month or year! You can try it free for up to 3 clients before you have to purchase it.
Honestly, it’s the cheapest assistant you can buy!!
I did not include screen shots in this post as every page has personal client information on it, but if you have any questions feel free to reach out!
*this post has my affiliate link which means there is no additional cost for you but I will receive a commission if you make a purchase using my link. You will enjoy the benefit of my discount on your purchase and I will receive a commission. Thank you so much!
