For Photographers

I really have no business writing a ShootQ review yet, so I’ll call this a preliminary look. I’m just so excited about it that I can’t wait to share. I have been using ShootQ for a month now. I’m still barely scratching the service of it, but I have my leads system in place, and am starting to do basic client management. I also just got the pricing page setup and started showing it to wedding inquiries a few days ago.

For those of you that don’t know, ShootQ is a client management system for photographers. It lets you have everything in one place, on cloud storage, easily accessible from your computer, phone, or ipad. Many people argue this isn’t necessary because you can set up something similar for free using Google Drive and spreadsheets. You can, and I have done this for years, but I think ShootQ is going to save me more than enough time to justify the monthly fee.

Organization

ShootQ keeps track of my leads, my invoices, my bookings, my tasks, my workflow and more.  I can just keep it open as I work at my computer, and quickly get to anything I need.  The list on the welcome tab is a great motivator for me to give me a quick look at what I must do.  Anyone who has ran a photography business for some time knows we spend more time in front of the computer than behind the camera.  I feel like ShootQ is going to make the most of those hours.

Consistency

I had never thought about consistency until a seminar I attended last summer.  The speaker was talking about how she had photographed two sisters weddings, within a year of each other.  She knew the second one had very certain expectations.  For the last four plus years, I’ve always made sure each client received the paperwork needed but I never had an exact schedule for each item.  I recently had a bride review me as being extremely organized, and was so thrilled to hear her say that because I’ve always felt a little bit of chaos in the back-end of things.  With ShootQ, I am able to make sure each task happens at a specific time, and for my clients this means consistency in experience.

Lead tracking and reports

I have to admit, I very rarely used to follow up on an inquiry, if I did not hear back after my initial response.  I just assumed they weren’t interested.  Now I have a setup for when to followup, and all it takes is one click to do so.  Best is that it allows me to keep track of it, so I don’t bother a potential client, and only contact them a set number of times, a specific number of days apart.  I can also within an instant see how many inquiries I am getting and how they are getting referred to me.  One of my favorite bits is that it lets me create notes, so after I talk to a client, I can jot dot everything we spoke about and have it to look back on.

Financials

I use another software for my detailed financial information, but ShootQ has some resources that I find valuable.  I really like being able to quickly look and see how much income is due for each month of the year.  Invoicing clients directly through their client portal is another big time saver, and the invoices look much prettier than my previous ones.  There are also a lot of tools devoted to pricing products and packages, instantly displaying profit on each.

Client Portals & Questionnaires

If I was a bride, and I didn’t have a wedding planner, I think I think it would be very difficult to keep track of it all.  There are so many people to get details to, payments to remember and much more.  ShootQ lets me create a private web portal for each client, where they can easily update wedding details, fill out the custom questionnaires I’ve created and view their invoices.  Though I don’t have it setup yet, payment can be accepted with a credit card right through this portal as well.

Overall

I have a little bit of class A personality that loves order.  The artist in me constantly fights the class A side.  ShootQ creates the organization I crave, down to every last detail, while letting me spend more time taking photos, playing with my family, and doing the other things I love. This is just really a first look at ShootQ, so I’m sure I missed a ton of important aspects.  If there is interest, I’ll write a followup post in 3-6 months.