The Ultimate Guide to Creating Dubsado Workflows
One of the ultimate ways to make Dubsado serve as your very own Virtual Assistant is to utilize Dubsado Workflows. Workflows are our absolute favorite feature of Dubsado because we’re able to automate so many aspects of our usual client process. In turn, this frees up so much time to allow us to give our clients and their projects the attention that they deserve without worrying about chasing down payments, sending off emails or forms, scheduling meetings, and so much more.
Keep reading to learn more about workflows, how they work, what you should do before creating them, and how you can be using them in your business right now!
What are Dubsado Workflows?
Workflows are a powerful CRM tool that automate your client process all within Dubsado. When you apply a workflow to a client (called a “project” in Dubsado), Dubsado will automatically run every step for you. You’re able to add action steps like:
Sending emails, forms (proposals, contracts, questionnaires, subcontracts), and appointment schedulers
Creating todos
Changing the project status or adding tags
Creating and sending invoices
Activating the client portal
Archiving the project
Start a new workflow
Hold actions or pause the workflow until a specified trigger
From there, you can choose when the workflow should trigger those actions. You can choose either a fixed date or a relative date, which is a specific number of days, hours, or weeks in relation to the trigger. The action triggers you can choose from are:
After all previous actions are complete (immediately)
After the workflow has started
Before or after a project start or end date
After a form is or isn’t completed (can only be used if the form is sent inside the same workflow)
After the invoice is paid in full
After an invoice installment is paid (can only be used if the workflow has a default payment plan applied to it)
After the contract has been signed
Before or after an appointment start or end time (can only be used if the appointment scheduler is sent inside the same workflow)
Now, we don’t want action triggers to be confused with the actual workflow trigger. Workflows can be triggered from a lead capture form or public proposal being submitted, they can be started from another workflow, or they can be manually added to a client’s project.
What You Need Before Building Workflows
There are some steps you should take before creating workflows to make the process easier for you. No two businesses will have the same processes, so it’s important that you take the preparation to build workflows that will work for you and your business.
STEP 1: WRITE OUT YOUR PROCESS
Write out every step in the process of working with your clients. You might have multiple processes if you offer multiple services, but start with the easiest one. Each of these steps will serve at the basis of your workflows, so really think hard about this to make sure you’re including every step. Note each and every package, form, email, scheduler, payment schedule, and manual task that is involved, as well as the timing of each step.You might want to jot these down as you work with clients, because it’s sometimes difficult to think back on all these steps after the fact.
Once you have everything written out, group parts of your process into main chunks. As a rule of thumb, your chunks should be New Lead (from inquiry to booking a call), Proposal (sending the proposal with the contract and invoice attached), and then Onboarding (once they’ve signed and paid). This is how you’ll build it into Dubsado as these separate workflows, making it easier for you in the long run to catch errors or make edits.
STEP 2: CREATE YOUR MATERIALS
Based on the processes you have outlined, highlight each material that you’ll need to set up in Dubsado, if you haven’t done so already. This will include:
Every form in your process (lead capture forms, questionnaires, proposals, and contracts). For done-for-you form templates that are one-click add to your Dubsado account, check these out.
Any schedulers you’ll need. This is plural because you may have a scheduler with a lead capture form or one that is just the scheduler.
Emails you send that can be canned responses. Remember that canned doesn’t mean they can’t change, which is what we’ll discuss later in this post.
Payment schedules, if applicable.
STEP 3: TEST YOUR PROCESS MANUALLY
We’d recommend creating a sample client using an email address of yours that you can use when running through your process manually at first as both the client and business owner. Understand how the system works this way by filling out a lead capture form as the sample client first and noting how this is inputted into Dubsado, as well as sending the sample client your proposal, contract, and invoice.
When you run through the process manually, you have more confidence and a better understanding of how your workflow will actually work. Dubsado will just be completing the same steps automatically that you already know how to do yourself. This also gives you the opportunity to catch mistakes or missing steps in your process, as well as take notes on any content that may need to change.
When completing forms as the client, be sure to open it in an incognito window, or else Dubsado will recognize you as the business owner. When wanting to simulate paying an invoice, you can manually apply one within the sample client’s invoice tab without having to actually pay yourself.
How to Build Your Dubsado Workflows
Now comes actually building out your workflow. This may seem intimidating at first, but remember that this is all just trial and error! Don’t worry about the first time being absolutely perfect– treat it more like a rough draft. Build it out with the basic steps to get the structure in place first. Remember that you don’t have to do very much guessing at this stage since you’ve already written out your usual client process beforehand. What you’re doing now is basically just plugging in the steps.
THE FIRST STEP
The first step of your workflow will depend on what it’s for. If this is for onboarding, chances are that it will start once a lead capture form is completed. Note that you won’t be able to add the trigger for it within the workflow builder. Instead, you’ll need to build the workflow from the first step that will happen after the form is completed. Then, go to the form’s settings and apply the workflow to it. The same applies if you’re using a public proposal– you can add a default workflow to apply new leads to in the proposal settings as well.
Since you’ll be splitting your workflows up into those main chunks, be sure to add the “Start workflow” action at the end of each one.
APPROVAL STEPS
You might be thinking, “But what if I want to edit an email first before it automatically sends?” Don’t worry, you’ll be able to edit any emails before they send off by marking the step as “Require approval before completing this action”. This is super useful for canned responses that you want to make more personal to the client, especially if it’s an inquiry reachout email responding to their lead capture form submission. Any step of your workflow that requires sending anything that has an email with it, you’re able to mark is needing approval first, so this also applies to Send Form or Send Invoice steps as well.
You can also achieve something similar by utilizing the “Create todo” step. If this is in the workflow, Dubsado won’t continue with the next action until the task has been checked off.
REFINING YOUR WORKFLOW
If you want to refine your workflow even further, you can by adding project statuses, tags, and todos to your workflow. Project statuses allow you to organize your projects even further by categorizing them into different statuses of your choosing, like “Proposal Sent”, “Deposit Paid”, “Contract Sent”, etc. Otherwise, they’ll only be classified by the default statuses in Dubsado, Lead and Job.
Tags allow you to take that organization one step further. With these, you can classify projects basically however you want, but many people find it helpful to create tags based on the type of project they are/the type of package they purchased. Check out this blog post we wrote that’s all about project statuses, tagging, and todos if you want more help.
Testing Your Dubsado Workflows
Once you feel somewhat confident in the structure of your workflow, test it out on your sample project, but remove the forms that you applied when manually testing your process first. You can enter the workflow as a sample one of two ways:
If this workflow is going to start immediately once your lead capture form is submitted, you could fill out the lead capture form as the sample client (using the same email address as before to ensure you don’t use up all your clients, if you’re still on the free trial). Then, the workflow will be applied to their project for you and start running.
Manually apply the workflow by going to your sample client project > Workflows > Choose the workflow form the drop-down menu > Apply. This way, you’ll need to manually start the workflow by clicking Force Now.
Either way is fine, but the first option will give you the chance to see how it functions as “genuinely” as possible.
Rinse and Repeat
Now that you have your first workflow built and tested (Yay!), you’re ready to build out any additional workflows that you may need. Like we said before, it’s all about trial and error, rinsing and repeating, so don’t worry if you find that things change. As you get better accustomed to the system, odds are that you’ll find more ways you can refine your workflows even further.
If this is your first time hearing about Dubsado and want to try it out, you can learn more about it and save 30% on your first month or first year right here.
