7 Reasons to Love Honeybook
This year will be my seventh year using Honeybook so today I’m sharing 7 Reasons to Love Honeybook with a referral code at the end so you can save 20% on your Honeybook subscription!
For those of you that don’t know, Honeybook is a client management system for those in service based industries, and it integrates and automates so many things that business owners need to handle in the day to day tasks of keeping things afloat.
Through the years, I’ve seen so many iterations of Honeybook, and with their recent unrolling of the “Smart Files” feature, it’s literally better than ever. Today I’m going to share all of the ways I use and love Honeybook, and I’ll only be talking about the features I actually take advantage of. Trust me when I say… there are more… which seems crazy because I’ll be mentioning… a lot…. D:
So here we go, these are seven reasons to LOVE Honeybook!
Invoices & Payment Plans
This is hands down my most-used feature in Honeybook. Apart from a handful of clients, I pretty much use this for every single invoice I need to send to clients. They allow you to customize your invoices according to what you’re selling, including descriptions, and saved products/services. Of course you can add sales tax as necessary, and the best part? All invoices include a payment portal, so clients can pay directly through their invoice. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to clients who actually seem relieved that I’ve made purchasing so easy.
Even better - should you invoice involved payments at different times - I for example require a 50% deposit for sessions as well as the remaining 50% one week before a session - Honeybook will automatically e-mail a reminder to your client and send them a payment portal when their payment is due. The seamlessness is to die for darling.
2. Contracts
The contract system in Honeybook is a fillable form that clients can fill out right on their computer. You can customize any contract by adding whatever you need, and they have a variety of options for adding information that suits your needs. Which brings me to my next favorite feature of Honeybook:
3. Proposals
Proposals bundle the invoice, payment, and contract so you can send your client a single document. They’ll be able to review the services requested, the total cost and payment plan, as well as the contract. This makes booking as transparent as it is seamless.
4. Contact Form
Just this past year I started using Honeybook’s contact form. I’m able to customize it as much or as little as I want so I can gather all the necessary information I need from clients before we even have our first conversation. And the bonus? It works beautifully with my Squarespace site, so I can embed it right onto my booking page. This automatically integrates with lead tracking, so that I have better data in regards to where my sessions come from as well as what types of inquiries I typically get.
5. E-mail Integration
Honeybook’s e-mail integration pretty much goes hand-in-hand with the contact form. As soon as someone contacts me through Honeybook, it creates a new “Project”. My e-mail is seamlessly integrated between my business e-mail and my Honeybook account, so I can message directly through my account when I get an inquiry, and it will also synchronize with my e-mail account. This means that more data is stored and organized in Honeybook.
6. Automations & Templates
With the introduction of Smart Files, Honeybook now allows it’s users to have an array of automations and templates. For me, that looks like having an e-mail template for every session and invoice I send, which integrates data from the client’s project. Typically when I send a session invoice, I like to also include the details we’ve agreed upon regarding their session - and you can use Honeybook’s features to automatically integrate that into e-mail templates you’ve created. It saves me time, and it also helps me communicate more clearly with my clients.
I also use this feature to automatically include files with people are inquiring about prices. In Honeybook, I’m able to store my client guides (which I make separately then upload to Honeybook), and then I use their nifty e-mail template to ensure that my pricing guides are automatically added to my e-mails. Wedding inquiry? Hit that wedding e-mail template, adjust information according the inquiry, and automatically have that file added to your e-mail. No more awkward “forgetting to attach a document” shenanigans.
7. Scheduling & Calendar Integration
What saved my quality of life as a photographer last year, especially during the busy fall season while planning a wedding, was taking advantage of their scheduling and calendar integrations. Their scheduling system allowed me to create a dedicated link for all of my fall sessions, so that when a client reached out to book a session, all I had to do was drop a link (which was included in my e-mail template made specifically for fall sessions), and it led them straight to the scheduling platform. It saved me SO MUCH TIME, because we weren’t going back and forth trying to figure out what time worked for both of us. They could simply look at my calendar, find what worked for them, and then voila. Once they scheduled a session, I’d invoice them (through Honeybook of course) so we could make it official. And all of that information - our communication, the info & invoices I sent them — would be stored in their project folder.
While setting everything up took me time, in the end, it simplified my process, allowed for more clear communication with my clients, and made everything easier for both of us. Thankfully, Honeybook is really focused on a beautiful, user-friendly experience so that things can go as smoothly as possible for both business owners as well as the people they’re serving.
Honeybook is just one of many client management systems out there, but it’s the only one I’ve used, because I love it so much. If you’re ready to simplify your workflow, I’ve added a link in the description to a code which will grant you 20% off the purchase of a one year membership to Honeybook.
In the meantime, keep finding beauty in the everyday, and growing in business, life, and love.
Use this code for 20% off your 1 Year membership to Honeybook! http://share.honeybook.com/gLtrR
See the full video on this topic over on YouTube (below!):
