Oh how I love technology! They make running a business so much easier in this day and age! Here are 8 online tools I use every single day in my wedding floral design business. They help me run a smooth and efficient business and definitely tools I cannot do without!
Before we continue! A couple of the links below are afflicted links (marked with β*β). Now that thatβs out of the way, letβs dive in!
Dubsado* is a robust Client Relationship Management tool. Since I started using it in 2016, it’s been a game-changer in the way I run my business! They have so many amazing features and they continue to come out with innovative ones. I only use a small percentage of their features and it already makes the world of difference. I will be writing an in-depth blog post on all the features I use in Dubsado soon. Stay tuned for it! Meanwhile, where are some of the features I use:
- Canned email templates
- Proposal templates
- Contract e-signing
- Appointment scheduler with automatic Google Meet link generated in my Google Calendar
- Intake form that embeds to my website contact page
- Automatic upcoming payment due reminder
Quickbooks Online is the accounting software I use. I must have tried at least 5 other accounting software (at a lower price point), but non measured up for my complicated books. Not only do I have all my business bank accounts and credit cards synced to Quickbooks, but also Dubsado invoices and Etsy shop sales. It allows me to record all my expenses and reconcile the accounts every month. This makes it so easy for my bookkeeper and accountant to go in there and do their thing. Before Quickbooks, it was all on Excel and everything was a mess! The more services and products you offer, it becomes messy, so it’s best to invest in a software like Quickbooks. It also allows multicurrency management as I do charge both Canadian and US dollars in my business.
Clickup is a task management tool I use to manage my day-to-day, client workflows, content planning, and using it to delegate tasks and communicate with my team members. I am very forgetful so my life is all written out in there! The top feature I love most about Clickup is that I can create a template with a list of all the tasks I typically need to take care of for each wedding. I then let Clickup know when the wedding is and it will automatically set the due dates for the tasks! This is an example of my client workflow:
- Send proposal
- Follow-up after 3 days
- Follow-up after 7 days
- Client signs contract & 1st payment sent
- Send client welcome card & Starbucks gift card 2 days after contract signed
- Touch base with client 3 months prior
- Confirm staff 2 months prior
- Final acount & payment due 2 weeks prior to wedding
- List of things to purchase 1 moth prior
- Order flowers 2 weeks prior
- List of things to prepare 1 week prior
Canva is a graphic design tool that makes it easy for anyone to create custom graphics, even if you know nothing about graphics design. It also allows you to create templates and for us, wedding floral designers, it is perfect to create professional-looking mood boards within seconds. Literally. I ditched photoshop as Canva is quick and simple to use and saves so much time, it’s really just drag ‘n drop! The free subscription is sufficient for creating mood boards, Pins, Instagram posts/stories, and even logos and business cards. It also has an Instagram scheduler!
Onlypult* is a social media scheduler. I know there are a ton out there but rewind to a few years back, this was the only app that allowed me to schedule to other platforms all-in-one, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google My Business. I have 3 Instagram accounts to manage and really believe in posting to Google My Business so this was the app I chose and never looked back. It was also one of the first to allow users to actually preview what their IG feed will look like once they schedule the posts.
Google Meet is a video conferencing tool I love to use over Zoom. It’s right there in your Google Calendar! It integrates seamlessly with the Dubsado scheduler. As soon as my clients schedule a meeting, it automatically generates a meeting link on my Google Calendar, I don’t even have to do anything! In managing a business, automation is king!
One Drive is a cloud storage service by Microsoft. I learned the hard way to store everything in “the cloud”. My laptop once died on me without warning, it didn’t want to turn back on. Period. That time I lost all my files since my last backup one month prior. Right away I set up my files to sync with One Drive. If you’re already paying for a yearly subscription of Microsoft Office apps, One Drive is included so make good use of it!
Photoshop is a photo editing software. I have a subscription to Adobe Creative Suite since I use a lot of their design tools (Illustrator, XD, PDF, InDesign, etc). As a floral designer, you might not want to pay for Photoshop, however, you do need a photo editing software and should learn how to use it well. Often you will be taking images of your beautiful work with your phone. Phone images come out darker and colors need to be corrected. You’d want the photos of your work to look professional, more “appetizing” and less “iPhone photo” vibe.
I hope you have a good glimpse into these tools and apps if you don’t already know of them. I believe that in order to run a sustainable and profitable business (not only wedding floral business – any business), you need to invest in the right tools to help you along the way. Do you use any other tools, apps, or software in your business that you cannot live without? Share them with us below!
Cheering you on!
