It's 10pm. The kids are finally asleep. You sit down with your laptop and see three new bookings to set up, and you know exactly what comes next. You write the welcome email, attach the contract, build the invoice, and queue up the questionnaire. Then you do it two more times.

By the time you close your laptop, it's almost midnight and you haven't even started on tomorrow's actual work.

That was me, before I had a real Dubsado workflow. I was running a photography business one manual email at a time. Sending contracts by hand, building invoices from scratch, writing session reminders every single morning. I thought that was just part of the job.

Here's the deal: it doesn't have to be that way. The moment I built a real Dubsado workflow for my photography business, my client communication stopped being something I managed and started being something that just happened. And I want to show you exactly how it works.

The Booking-Night Email Problem

Most photographers are writing the same handful of emails over and over: the contract, the invoice, the questionnaire send, the session reminder, the gallery delivery. Same content, every client, night after night.

That is a solvable problem. Dubsado solves it. And once it's set up, you genuinely don't have to think about those emails again!

How much of it runs without me? Close to 90% of my client communication is automated through Dubsado. My associate team served over 650 families in eight different cities in one year, and the reason we were able to do that volume is because of this right here. It happens automatically. Can you imagine having to create and send 650 contracts and invoices by hand? That would be physically impossible.

Why I Use Dubsado

There are tons of CRMs out there. HoneyBook, Session, Sprout Studio, plenty of others. Dubsado is the one that I absolutely love because of the capabilities of customizing automations and workflows. It is the most customizable!

If you already use a different CRM and it has automations, use them! That is the real point. But everything I'm walking you through here is how I run it inside Dubsado.

If you want a shortcut before diving in, I have a free PDF that covers five things most photographers don't know Dubsado can do. Grab it here! It will save you a lot of wandering around in the platform.

Where My Workflow Actually Starts (It's Not Where You Think)

Here's the part that surprises people. My client workflow does not start when somebody fills out a contact form. It starts at BOOKING.

From the time somebody says yes, “I want to book, here's the date and the time, here's my email,” the rest of it until the time of their session is pretty much automated.

And the thing that kicks it off? My team fills out a Dubsado form ourselves once the client says yes. We have a Dubsado form that my team fills out, so when somebody books with us we collect their name, their email address, their phone number, the date and time of their session, and the session location.

I do it this way on purpose. Instead of having a scheduler or a form that our clients fill out, we fill it out for them. We've found that schedulers tend to really just get in the way. People don't finish the process, we aren't able to follow up with them. So it's best for us to fill out the form ourselves. It gives our clients one less thing to do.

So when you're picturing this workflow, picture it starting the second a booking is confirmed and that form gets submitted. Not at inquiry. At booking!

The Steps That Run Without You

Here's where the magic is. The second we hit submit on that booking form, the workflow starts. These are the steps that, once you set them up, you genuinely never have to think about again.

Contract and Invoice, Sent Together

The second we hit submit, Dubsado sends our contract and our invoice. Together. In one email.

This is the part where I do things differently than a lot of people teach. I don't reveal the contract first and then surprise them with an invoice later. I like to send my contract and my invoice together, so the client can sign and pay in one sitting.

Inside the invoice I build a 50/50 payment schedule: 50% is due now, and 50% is due at the time of their session. That first 50% is a non-refundable retainer that holds their spot.

This is the first part of any good, solid photography workflow. Once it's built, the contract and invoice go out the second the booking form is submitted, and the project status changes so my team knows it's been sent.

The Client Questionnaire

A day after the contract is signed, Dubsado automatically sends the client questionnaire. Their answers help me personalize their session and be as prepared as I can be beforehand.

Let me tell you why I will never skip this step. One time I was posing a family and I said, “Let's do some shots with just Mom and the kids.” Imagine my embarrassment when one of the kids then referred to the mom by her first name. They were a blended family and I had no idea!

Now my questionnaire asks if there's anything special they'd like me to know, with a blended family as one of the listed examples. The questionnaire is where you learn kids' names, ages, family dynamics, what they're hoping to capture. Getting this ahead of time makes you a dramatically better photographer on the day!

The Client Experience Guide

In that same email as the questionnaire, I have it set to send my Client Experience Guide. This is a separate thing from the questionnaire, and it's worth knowing the difference.

The guide goes out a few weeks before the session (I send mine about three weeks out) and it covers styling tips, location tips, and how to get little ones to cooperate. The questionnaire pulls information FROM them. The guide gives information TO them. I link the guide as a PDF in the email through Google Drive.

The Final Info Email

One week before the session, my famous Final Info Email goes out automatically. It reminds them of the date and time, gives specific directions, and shares the details for that exact location: parking, where to meet, all of it. Every location has its own details.

This alone has basically eliminated the “wait, what time was our session?” texts. Clients feel taken care of, and you didn't have to remember to send it. I also reiterate that they can't be late, because my sessions are back-to-back. (I go deeper on getting clients to show up fully prepared in my system for making sure clients actually show up prepared. Worth bookmarking.)

One thing I'll note here: I have a separate workflow for every location I shoot at, even within a city. That's how the location-specific final info email auto-populates with the right parking and meeting details every time.

Gallery Delivery and Testimonial Request

Once the images are ready, the gallery delivery email goes out. I keep it warm and personal, and I remind them about purchasing additional images from their gallery in a way that stays casual and non-salesy.

A request for a testimonial is built into the workflow too. We don't have to create and send the final info email, or change the product status, or send a request for testimonial. We don't have to do any of these steps. It all just happens.

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If you want to skip the hours of setup and just use the exact Dubsado workflow I've been running in my business, I have that for you. It's my complete portrait workflow with all the automations and setup instructions already built out, ready to copy into your account. You can grab it here.

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How These Automations Actually Get Built

Once you understand one idea, the whole platform stops feeling like homework. The basics of a workflow are that there's an action and a trigger. The action is what happens, the step you want to happen. The trigger is when that thing is supposed to happen.

So the first action I usually add is a tag to organize the session type, applied immediately (zero days after the workflow starts, because I want it to happen right away). Then every step after that is just another action with its own trigger.

Your triggers can be relative to dates. You can have something trigger one week before the project start date, or two weeks before. Just know there's a difference between project start date and appointment start date. If you use a scheduler through Dubsado, you can't use project date, you have to use appointment date.

You can even trigger on whether a form was completed. If a form isn't completed after, say, one week, you can have Dubsado resend it. That's the whole system: action plus trigger, repeated for every step of your client experience.

Mini Sessions Are a Different Animal. Here's How the Workflow Adapts

Full sessions and mini sessions are not the same thing from a workflow standpoint, and understanding that early saves you a lot of headache.

With a full session, my team fills out the booking form. But minis are the one place where I let clients self-book, because you're managing a whole day of families all booking 15-minute slots at once. For minis, I use Dubsado's built-in scheduler. No Calendly or Acuity needed. You can have a scheduler right inside Dubsado and it's all connected, and it can trigger a workflow, which means automating your minis process.

Here's how I set it up. I set the appointment duration to 15 minutes. I shoot my minis back-to-back, so I do NOT set a buffer time between sessions. (A buffer just makes families think those minutes belong to them.) The booking form is intentionally minimal: I literally just ask for their first name, last name, and email. I want to make this as easy as possible for them.

The scheduler's additional form is what triggers the workflow. As soon as somebody selects a time slot, it triggers the workflow to start. The form's “default workflow” setting is the key connection. That's the workflow that's going to trigger as soon as that scheduler is submitted.

One thing I learned the hard way: I do NOT use the scheduler's built-in invoice feature. Clients were able to select a time slot and not pay their invoice, and then I didn't have a way to resend it, so it got really complicated. Instead I put the invoice in the workflow, so it still gets sent automatically and right away.

And yes, build a separate workflow just for minis. Keep them separate so the right automation fires every time.

Doesn't It Feel Robotic?

I hear this from photographers all the time. “Won't clients notice it's automated?”

Here's the truth: your clients cannot tell the difference between a well-written automated email and a personal one. What they notice is when communication is inconsistent, slow, or disorganized. That feels impersonal. A warm, timely email feels like great client service, whether you hit send or Dubsado did.

Writing those templates in your real voice is what makes it work. Write in first person with contractions. Use the client's name (Dubsado has a merge tag for that, zero extra effort). Reference the session type by name, so it's “your fall mini session,” not “your upcoming session.” If you wouldn't say it out loud in conversation, don't put it in the template.

If you want the actual templates I use, my Email Templates product has all of them: inquiry through gallery delivery, written in this same voice. Find it at store.rebeccaricephoto.com/email-templates.

Where to Start If You're Building This From Zero

Don't try to do it all at once. Before you touch Dubsado, write out every step of your client experience on paper. Then highlight what could be automated.

From there, implement one automation at a time rather than trying to build everything simultaneously. Maybe you start with the contract and invoice going out together at booking. Once that's running, add the questionnaire. Then the final info email. Then your minis scheduler.

You set this up one time and you never have to touch it again. We just rinse and repeat. That's the whole beauty of it!

The thing I hear most from photographers who have finally done this: “I wish I'd done it sooner.” Not perfectly. Just sooner. Friend, you don't have to be at your laptop at midnight building the same contract for the hundredth time. That season is done. Go build the workflow that lets you sleep.

And if you'd rather not build it from scratch, my exact portrait workflow is ready to copy into your account. Grab it here.