5 Things You Can Automate in Your Service-Based Business Using Dubsado
When I started my first business as a financial coach back in 2018, I spent countless hours researching the best scheduling tools, comparing email software, and creating PDF proposals and contract templates.
I remember sitting at a cafe for 8 hours one day just integrating all of my software tools and trying to automate my client onboarding process.
Luckily for me, that’s the stuff I love. (Hence why I do it for a living now!)
But most business owners, maybe yourself included, don’t enjoy spending hours researching new tools, learning how to use them, and trying to set them all up to work together.
It’s time-consuming, and it can be really confusing figuring out how to piece it all together in a way that works for your process.
And even if you’re able to Frankenstein your systems together, you now have a fragile ecosystem of half a dozen or more tools. If one thing goes wrong, the entire system can break.
Back then I didn’t know that tools like Dubsado existed. Dubsado is client relationship management (CRM) tool that can help you automate your entire client experience, from discovery call all the way through delivery and offboarding.
Of course, there are the obvious things you can automate with Dubsado (and many other software tools these days) – scheduling, appointment reminders, follow-up emails. But it’s a lot more powerful than those individual features.
How Dubsado Automation Works
First, we need to cover some Dubsado terminology. If you haven’t used Dubsado before and you jump into the next few sections, you’re going to be very confused.
Dubsado has a lot of individual pieces. The main ones we’re going to talk about are:
Schedulers
Forms (contracts, lead captures, questionnaire, and proposals)
Canned emails
Packages
Payment plans
You can create some level of automation with these individual pieces, like setting up reminder emails on a scheduler or tying a proposal, contract, and invoice into one single element.
But the real power of automation with Dubsado comes with workflows, which is what we’re talking about today.
Heads Up: Most of the examples below are from the workflows I use in my Done-for-You Dubsado Setup service. I know that’s super meta, so please bare with me.
Okay, let’s get into how you can automate your client experience with Dubsado.
1. New Client Acquisition
When I say “new client acquisition,” I don’t just mean having a lead sign up for a free discovery call and sending appointment reminders. You can automate your entire acquisition process – from lead capture/that initial point of contact all the way through signing the contract and paying the invoice.
My discovery call workflow is pretty simple since it’s a shorter phase of my process. The way it works is:
Someone signs up for a free discovery call on my website (using a Dubsado lead capture form).
Dubsado creates a todo (action item) for me to review their form responses.
Dubsado creates another todo for me to create a custom proposal/contract/invoice after our call.
I have a Dubsado proposal template for all my services. It only takes me a few minutes to customize and send to each new lead, and the proposal includes a contract and invoice for them to sign/pay, so there’s no back and forth sending emails, signature requests, invoices, etc. They can review the proposal, sign my agreement, and pay all at the same time.
The project status updates to “Proposal Sent” after all of the above action items are completed.
Here’s what it looks like in Dubsado:
Note: This isn’t the most automated way to do this, but it’s what works for my current process. If you want to automate it more, then you can include a lead capture form on your website that doesn’t have a scheduler attached. Then in your discovery call workflow, you would create a step to send an email with a scheduling link after someone fills out your lead capture form.
2. Onboarding
In my process, onboarding is everything that happens after the client pays the invoice (this is when the project actually begins) through our kick-off meeting.
During that time, I need the client to do two things: schedule our meeting and complete an onboarding questionnaire.
I use Dubsado templates for all of my project questionnaires, which makes it super easy to automate email reminders if a form hasn’t been completed.
My onboarding workflow is a bit more intensive than my discovery call workflow (and too lengthy to fit into one screenshot!). But in a nutshell, here’s how it works:
A payment made on the discovery call workflow triggers the onboarding workflow to begin.
Dubsado automatically updates the project status and tag (depending on the type of service, since I offer multiple).
A todo is created for me to create Google Drive folders for the new client.
This step can be automated with Zapier, I just haven’t done it yet since it only takes me ~30 seconds to do myself.
Dubsado activates the client portal, adds a scheduler, and sends the client a canned email to schedule our first meeting.
Once the meeting is scheduled, Dubsado sends the client an onboarding questionnaire to complete before our call.
Dubsado creates a todo for me to check that the onboarding questionnaire is completed three days before the call.
When our kickoff meeting ends, Dubsado starts my implementation workflow.
All of this happens without me lifting a finger. Dubsado creates a task and alerts me when I need to do something (check the onboarding questionnaire or create Google Drive folders). But apart from that, my workflow takes care of the rest.
3. Service Delivery
Now, obviously you can’t automate the actual delivery of your service (unless you outsource the work, but that’s not what we’re talking about here).
But you can automate everything in between – sending homework, reminders to your client, and setting reminders to yourself.
My DFY Dubsado service has a fairly lengthy implementation questionnaire, so I have my workflow set to send three reminders to my clients it if it’s not complete 5, 7, and 9 days after I first sent them the form.
Then I have Dubsado create todos for me to send an email update after each phase of the project is complete:
Note: You could also click the “Require approval…” box in the screenshot above to do essentially the same thing, but I prefer to create a todo and getting an email reminder so that I don’t forget to check the workflow to keep it moving forward.
So the purpose of this workflow is to:
Send the implementation questionnaire to the client
Send automated reminders for the client to complete the implementation questionnaire
Make sure I don’t fall behind on communicating the project status/sharing updates
That last point is key. My DFY Dubsado setup is a premium package that comes with premium-level service and support. Part of that is providing clear and consistent communication throughout the entire project so my clients know exactly what’s happening and when.
Having these reminders in my workflow ensures that I don’t lose track of time and fall of the wagon with my communication. The last thing you want as a service-based business is for your clients to feel abandoned because of your lack of communication.
4. Offboarding (and Follow-Up Support)
Just like you can automate onboarding, you can also put most, if not all, of your offboarding process on autopilot with Dubsado.
This is especially helpful if you have a support period following any of your services. For example, I offer 30 days of support with my DFY Dubsado package. During that period, I have automated emails that are sent to my clients reminding them of where we’re at in the support period and giving them suggestions of what to work on that week.
I also send out a Next Steps Guide and an automated email that includes my feedback survey so I don’t forget to ask for a testimonial.
Note: I DON’T use Dubsado to collect client feedback/testimonials. There’s no great way to organize and filter the data, and you can only view one feedback form at a time. So I include a link to my Google Form survey instead. This means that I can’t send automated reminders based on whether a client hasn’t completed the survey, but it’s worth it for me for the convenience of being able to filter and organize the data and view all testimonials in once place.
5. Recurring Payments
All of the items on this list above are workflows that I have set up for my DFY Dubsado (and other) services. I included this as a separate item because, at this point in time, you can’t start a recurring invoice from a workflow.
Womp.
But recurring invoices are still a great Dubsado automation tool. You can use them for any ongoing service you offer – coaching, social media management, website maintenance, etc. I use them for my Online Business Manager (OBM) retainer clients.
For this service, I still use the discovery call workflow above that includes a proposal/contract/invoice for the first month’s retainer. Once that’s paid and the client is set up, I manually add a recurring invoice to the project in Dubsado:
Clients have the option to enroll in autopay for recurring invoices, which means neither of you have to deal with invoicing, payment reminders, late fees, etc.
Dubsado’s Automation Possibilities Are Endless
This really only touches the surface of what you can do with Dubsado. Especially when you combine it with Zapier to integrate with other software like Airtable, ConvertKit, ClickUp, or whatever tools you use, the possibilities are too many to count.
There are a lot of CRM tools out there, but when it comes to automation (especially for service-based businesses), Dubsado takes the cake.
Looking for help setting up, mapping out, or cleaning up your Dubsado account? I offer Dubsado Strategy Sessions to help you map out your workflows/kickstart your DIY account setup. If you’re looking for a more hands-off solution, I also offer COMPLETELY Done-for-You Dubsado Setups.