Proposals are a very important part of a service-based industry. I remember before Techie Mamma, running DC Sites, I loathed the idea of proposals. They were so cumbersome, long and took forever to complete. I kept thinking there has to be a better way. Our hourly rate is always the same and what the client wants is always a combination of x, y, z, those things that we are good at accomplishing. When I found Dubsado, I instantly fell in love with how easy proposals were to send out (and everything else with the Workflow).
Magic in Workflows
Proposals are one of those things that have a lot of moving parts. You have to put things into packages and each package can have multiple items. I finally figured out the most efficient way was to make a couple of base packages and then have other options for add-ons or optional items. Once you have this set up then you can go in and start creating a form, adding fields for information you need to gather and then some options for your packages. With the nice select or checkboxes that you can add in Dubsado can easily tally up the options the prospective client picked and create an on the fly invoice for them.
Let’s See How
Contracts, Too
One very tedious step and the steps of sending the contract and invoice all done in one fairly simple step. In the video above I go through creating a proposal. It is longer than it really takes because of my explanations and because we explore all the field options. With Dubsado it is so easy to create a proposal in 15-20 minutes. Especially once you have your packages set up and a few templates set up, sending the proposals out gets cut down to a few minutes mostly for writing your nice introduction to the client (if you have met already). With Dubsado the crazy part is that you don’t even need to make contact with the client at all, you can set up the form on your website and someone can potentially find you fill out the proposal, sign the contract, and pay the invoice without even getting in touch. You will be getting jobs left and right with no hassle at all. Dubsado just became your sales pitch and tool!