How We Use Honeybook’s Online Business Management Software to Book Clients
When you are running a wedding planning business, to say you have a lot of responsibility would be an understatement. Because, in addition to making sure that your clients’ weddings are picture perfect (and the million tasks, emails, meetings, and phone calls it takes to make it happen), you have to make sure that your own business operates like a well oiled machine. Today, then, we wanted to talk about how we stay on top of it all at LVL Weddings & Events. Specifically, how we use Honeybook’s online business management software to book clients and stay organized through it all. Read on to find out what our favorite tools are and how we use them in our own wedding planning business!
Lead Management Tools to Keep Organized
Whether you have 5 active leads or 50, making sure that you are moving things along at a timely pace can be a challenge. And, one of the reasons we love Honeybook is because of how their lead management system helps the LVL team stay organized and on top of each lead.
Things we love:
The ability to embed the contact form on website so leads land right in our lead manager
Getting an email notification letting us know about new lead inquiries the moment they come in
Keeping conversation threads organized within the lead (we love the option to reply to emails from our Gmail account or from within the lead manager)
Being able to assign a lead to a team member responsibility for the lead or add them to the proposal team
Always being in the know about where each lead is in the booking process
Proposals That Streamline the Booking Process
Proposals are an important part of the booking process for wedding planners, but they also tend to be very time consuming to put together. Not with Honeybook! Now, we can customize and send proposals to potential clients faster than ever before – which is great since couples expect short turnaround times.
Things we love:
Being able to build templates (we have lots of templates depending on the level of service we would be providing, scope of work, for destination wedding, and even for specific venues we work at frequently!)
In addition to creating a proposal from scratch or from a template, you can duplicate a recent proposal you created and work off of that
You can add a header image to make the document more interesting (our ideal clients expect very a custom experience, so we usually will add a photo of the venue they are considering)
The ability to bundle the proposal with the payment schedule and contract is great for those highly motivated clients who are ready to sign on the dotted line
Easy to Use Contracts with Electronic Signature
The days of sending, printing, signing, and scanning contracts are gone! Modern couples expect for things to be handled online and the contract process is no different. We love the contract tool because:
We can get initials on sections as opposed to just one signature at the end (this helps us make sure potential are paying attention to specific clauses in our contract and helps to establish good expectations and boundaries right out of the gate)
We can see when they look at the contract and get notifications which saves time on following up
"Honeybook has been a game changer for our business. Before Honeybook the proposal, contract, and invoicing process took us a good hour and a half from beginning to end. Now it takes 15 minutes! It has also helped keep my head on straight since I manage multiple team members and their projects." – Lindsay Longacre, Founder of LVL Weddings & Events and Co-Founder of LVL Academy
Invoicing and Online Payments That Make Getting Paid Fast
As a business owner, making sure the books are well managed and that payments are being received on time is an important task to oversee. And, chasing down payments or sending reminders to yourself to send reminders to clients about upcoming balances due is just not a viable solution. Using Honeybook to send invoices and receive payments online has been great for our business and has helped me be a better CFO!
Things we love:
Honeybook integrates with Quickbooks to help make booking as easy as it can be
You can send invoices in the proposal bundle or individually (we usually end up building an additional invoice for clients that includes all of the purchases we made on their behalf and need to get reimbursed for)
You can create invoices from templates or recently created ones to save time
You can add items with pictures, descriptions, and quantities
You can schedule payments!
Did you know? HoneyBook has an in-house team managing all payments processed through the HoneyBook platform. They keep all your financial information safe and secure with 2 Factor Authentication and monitors all payments for fraudulent activity. In the case that any credit card payment made to you is disputed, HoneyBook will advocate on your behalf and be there every step of the way to guide you through the process. This means you can spend more time working on what you love and less time worrying or fighting for your pay-check.
Using Honeybook’s online business management software has helped us be more organized and scale without having to add more people or systems to our plate. Want to streamline your own wedding planning business? Use the code lvlacademy or sign up through this link to get 50% off your first year!