The Frugal Business Owner’s Guide to Running a Service-Based Business

If there’s one thing that’s of the utmost importance to new business owners, it’s saving money. Heck, even we–who’ve been in business together going on 6 years– are very frugal with our money. We only like to spend on necessities or tools that we can see will help us grow our business even more.

The thing is, you don’t have to spend hundreds per month in expenses for all of these fancy tools and platforms to run your business. In fact, there’s one secret weapon we believe every service-based business should keep in their back pocket. It’s an all-in-one software that will eliminate the need for racking up on 17 different subscriptions, and it goes by the name Dubsado.

Client Database? Check.

Before we get into all of the other things Dubsado can do, let’s start with the most obvious and probably most important function: a robust client database. As a CRM, Dubsado makes it exceptionally easy to store, maintain statuses of, and care for your clients. You can collect leads, convert them to paying clients, and keep tabs on them all from within Dubsado. 

There’s also a function called Project Statuses that allows you to organize your projects by status, almost like milestones that you get to create and customize yourself. You can learn more about statuses here.

Scheduler? Check.

Dubsado has its own built-in scheduler, so you can book appointments with ease. You’re able to create multiple types of schedulers, too. Maybe you have one for discovery calls, but another for monthly check-ins. If you’re a photographer, you probably need to book sessions and follow-up viewings. As a wedding planner, you may need to book appointments for 90- and 30-day-out check-ins.

Your appointments show up right on your Dubsado calendar (that you can also sync with other calendars you may use, like Apple iCal or Google Calendar!) so you can easily see when appointments have been booked. 

Project Management? Check.

There are task lists and boards inside Dubsado, so you can keep track of all your todos. Lists are just as they sound– simple todo lists. Task boards work very similarly to Trello in that you can have multiple columns with cards inside those columns if you like your tasks more organized visually.

If you have multiple users on your Dubsado account, you can assign tasks to them, and you can even share your different lists or boards with your clients. They’ll be able to access todos you’ve assigned to them from within their client portal to make everything easy and streamlined.

For a full breakdown of task boards, head here.

Bookkeeping? Check.

Yep, Dubsado even has native bookkeeping tools, so tracking your finances has never been more simple. You can generate income and expense reports, track project sources, income from those sources, view a chart of accounts, and more. Even though Dubsado integrates directly with Quickbooks, if you’re a new business just starting out that doesn’t need fancy bookkeeping software, Dubsado’s tools will work perfectly. We cover everything you need to know about bookkeeping with Dubsado in this blog post.

Invoicing and Payments? Check.

You can connect Stripe, PayPal, or Square with your Dubsado account and get paid, and Dubsado takes no additional fees from your payments either! You can send invoices straight from Dubsado and get paid immediately. You’re also able to add payment schedules to projects and split up invoices in whatever way you want, plus even add gratuity.

As a service-based business, you may also be tracking your time for clients. Dubsado even has a native time tracking tool for that, too! You can either use it to track time for yourself, or you can apply the time tracked to a project, and Dubsado will generate an invoice based on that. (Mind. Blown.)

Forms? Check.

We don’t even want to imagine the headache of having to build different forms for your business. You may be able to add a contact form to your website if you have one, but then you have to worry with getting it connected to who-knows-what. As for questionnaires, you would have to use something like Typeform which you can brand if you pay for, or Google Forms which is free but totally limited in branding options. Even your proposals are likely PDFs, which can add a whole new layer of stress to your plate.

Instead, you can house all of these forms within Dubsado. Their user-friendly builder makes it beyond easy to create beautiful and branded proposals, questionnaires, lead capture forms, contracts, and subcontracts. They give you shareable links to all your forms, plus embed copy for your lead capture form and proposal (if it’s made public), so you can embed it on a page of your website.

Dubsado also allows you to send the proposal, contract, and invoice all at once in an easy 3-step process for your clients. Say goodbye to having to build a PDF proposal, send a contract through DocuSign, and an invoice through Wave. Dubsado makes the process of getting booked easier for both you and your clients!

Client Portal? Check.

You may be using something like Google Drive or Dropbox to keep all your clients’ information in place for them, but Dubsado can take care of that for you with the client portal. Your clients are able to view documents, links, invoices, emails, forms, tasks, business info, and more all within the portal. 

You can either share a link to the portal with your clients once you’ve activated it (you  can also set a password if you want), or Dubsado gives you embed code so you can add it to your website.

But How Much Does All of This Cost?

We know this seems like a ton of features (and there even more), so what can you expect to pay for all of this? A low price has to be too good to be true, right?

Wrong! Dubsado gives you your first 3 clients for free with no time limit and no limited features. Once you’ve used those clients up and need to upgrade, it’s only $35 per month or $350 per year. That’s already insanely inexpensive for all that you get, and you can bring the price down even more by using our link and saving 30% off your first month or year.