10 Reasons Why We Love Dubsado
Some products are worth their weight in gold. Every once in a while, you come across something that saves you time, money, or headaches. When you find something like that, you pay whatever you need to have it because it makes your business that much better. For us, that is Dubsado. Some of y’all are probably shocked to hear this. You’re probably thinking, “Dubsado? You mean that accounting program like Quickbooks or Honeybook?” But, that question demonstrates how underrated Dubsado truly is. It is underrated because few realize it is so much more than bookkeeping software. Dubsado has revolutionized many parts of my business from contracts to client communication, and so much more. Here are the 10 reasons why we love Dubsado and are confident that you will too.
10 Ways Dubsado Supports Small Businesses
There are many service-based businesses, such as web design, coaching, bookkeeping, tourism, event planning, private school, after-school programs, salons, spas, medical, plumbing, etc. If you have a service-based business or any other small business that requires contracting, invoicing, and follow-up, then Dubsado is for you and here are the reasons why …
Scheduling
Dubsado allows your clients to smoothly book an event with you and also capture their information to drop into your CRM smoothly. Their scheduler can do this. While their scheduler is still in beta, there are a lot of appealing options within their existing scheduler. Plus, it is only going to get better over time. Some of the helpful things you can do with the scheduler are:
Take free and paid calendar events.
Manage attendance for free seminars, paid workshops, or anything else that will require free or paid reservations.
Attach a contract to a scheduler if necessary.
Examples would include an attendance requirement for tutoring, refund policies, and beyond.
Link it to zoom to create unique zoom links and events for your virtual meetings.
Attach a form to a request.
For example, if someone is requesting a free estimate, you can attach a form that will drop that information into their lead portal. This means that when you are building out their proposal and invoice for that estimate, all the info you need is there.
Link Dubsado to multiple calendars.
This allows multiple professional and personal calendars to sync and more effectively manage your availability.
Package Building
If you have set packages you offer, you can bundle them into proposals for quick invoicing. Send more concise invoices faster. You can build long term, short term, and ‘buy now’ packages. If you are selling a digital product, you can set those ‘buy now’ packages to automatically send an email with access to their product offering. All the packages go out as proposals and can also have an e-contract attached to them.
Automated, E-signed Contracts.
When someone agrees to your proposal they can be automatically directed to sign contracts and complete payments in agreement with the signed contract. Don’t worry, they don’t pay without signing the contract. We all hate having to deal with the nasty reality that a contract is the only way to protect both you and your client, but because it is, having those automated is a huge peace of mind for both parties. The best part is that it saves into your client portal. You can even have your employee contracts and paperwork automated and stored within Dubsado. This includes employees and 1099 contractors.
Payment Plans & Automated Invoicing
If you have recurring clients, you most likely have monthly or annual service agreements. You can have these automated to where they are in their client portal and they can set the invoice to automatically pay. This makes contracts, payments, and invoicing a seamless process. For instance, if you are a company like a pest control or HVAC that has annual service agreements, these can be automated. On top of that, if you have a workflow that starts with each payment of annual agreements, you can automate that process so your team is notified. From there the schedule is planned and started for them to get their agreement met.
If you are a creative such as a photographer or web designer, you can set up payment plans to accept a deposit and require final payment upon accepting the final product. For other service-focused businesses that have cancellation policies such as a salon, spa, or medical facility, Dubsado is perfect. You may opt to ask for that cancellation payment as a deposit for upcoming services and not have to worry about the client dispute over that fee for holding the appointment.
Client Portals
Create client portals in Dubsado to help keep all of your clients’ information in one central location. Clients have their own login so they can use this to track how much they have spent with your business. It’s particularly useful for those private schools and after-school projects where parents are trying to keep track of that spending for tax write-off purposes. An excellent example where this is useful is for after-school programs. Parents can keep track of their spending, automate their payments, and have all the necessary information and documentation they need for tax purposes in one easy to use place. If you have monthly and/or annual contracts and clients who like to track productivity and billing, this is also a great option for them.
Custom Branding
You can brand all the Dubsado URLs, colors, and fonts to be in line with your company branding. Anytime you can brand your company, domain, and logos, take advantage of it! Many programs force you to choose between function and form, but Dubsado doesn’t.
Canned Emails
If your company uses a series of messaging for upcoming meetings, review requests, form feedback, etc., your team can access, use, and automate these emails in Dubsado. Maintain consistent communication with your clients based on parameters you think are important, such as anniversaries, nearing the end of subscriptions, or new products.
Custom Workflows
The workflow options within Dubsado are what you make of them. No, it can’t send out that major email blast to 100% of your clients at once, but if you know that on day 7 their trial ends, you can automate that.
Project Management
This is my personal favorite feature because you can log in and see a complete snapshot of the work completed, emails, and messaging sent to a client. You can see how long they have been your client and where they are at in their journey with you. Create workflows and automate tasks inside of Dubsado by the project. Additionally, you can also sync Dubsado, with Clickup, Monday, or any of the other task managers out there using Zapier so you don’t have to change your company's workflow to keep up with client communication about their projects.
Client Retention
Of course, this is the real gold star. If your workflow comes across as professional, naturally you garner more respect and appreciation from your clients. This increases referrals and the overall impression your brand leaves people with. We all get busy, check that email, and forget to respond. Miss sending out an invoice or forget where you put that client contract. Dubsado solves all of those ongoing issues with client communication, ensuring your company stays on target with productivity.
Final Thoughts
Don’t get caught up on whether Dubsado is the perfect software for keeping your business’ books. The sooner you stop thinking of Dubsado as merely for bookkeeping and start looking at its other applications, the sooner you will see all the possibilities. I am thankful for all of the ways Dubsado has helped transform my business and I hope it does the same for you.
