As the saying goes, “with great power comes great responsibility.” How does this translate to Dubsado, exactly? Dubsado is a powerful software with a lot of capability; when you’re working with something that comprehensive with many moving parts, there are inevitably going to be bumps in the road to watch out for as well as features that you may not have known about. In this post I’m going to dive into six things to know about your Dubsado account to maximize your experience on the platform.

6 Really Helpful Things to Know About Your Dubsado Account That Probably Aren’t on Your Radar

#1: availability updates on your master scheduler template don’t push out to existing projects like workflow actions

It’s helpful to think of all of the content in your template library (emails, forms, schedulers, etc.) as your master copies. Any time you apply that content to a workflow or a project, you’re using a carbon copy.

When it comes to your scheduler(s), you likely have at least one template in your master library. If you apply that template to a project, it becomes a carbon copy. This functionality is helpful because it means you can customize all kinds of content for each project or client without it affecting your master copy.

But, that functionality goes both ways. It also means that any changes you make to your master copy will not go out to carbon copies you may have on your projects. This means that if you have any changes in your availability, you’ll need to manually update schedulers that are already attached to projects pending a scheduled appointment (don’t bother doing this if your client has already booked a slot and doesn’t need the scheduler anymore!) — as well as your master scheduler template.

#2: Finding and creating custom mapped fields

Many people I talk to have heard of custom mapped fields (and if you haven’t, you’re in for a treat!), but aren’t really sure what they are, how they work, or where to find them. This is a huge thing to know about your Dubsado account! It’s an amazing feature that allows you to customize even more information to your liking.

These are fields you can create to “map” information from a client to their project. Default mapped fields already in your account include things like: client first name, client last name, alt contact phone number, etc. With a custom mapped field, you can create your own field that maps to a date or short answer!

If you want to dive into all things custom fields, learn about where to find custom mapped fields in your account and how to set them up. Once you’ve got a handle on them, get inspiration from seven creative ways you can use custom mapped fields to make your life easier.

#3: Editing canned emails doesn’t automatically update the copies in workflows

Emails that are added to any workflow steps you create have the exact same functionality I described above with schedulers: changes you make to the master copy will not go out to the carbon copies used in a workflow. This is even more of an unfortunate part of Dubsado because most users have far more emails they’re using than schedulers.

While it would be ideal for any changes you make within your master template library of canned emails to push out to your workflow actions, it unfortunately doesn’t work that way. And although updating these emails within your workflows is a bit tedious, it’s fairly easy to do — you’re simply going to “refresh” the email in the appropriate workflow action you’ve already created.

How to Update Workflow Emails

To update an email that shows up in your workflow (assuming you’ve already made the desired changes to the email), navigate to the workflow step with that email included. If you scroll through the body text, you’ll notice it displays the previous version of your email. To pull in the new changes, you’ll click into the dropdown under “Email to send.” You can either scroll to find the right email, or type in keywords that you know are in its title. Once you find it, click it, and voilà! The new changes you made in the email will populate into the dialogue window. Repeat this process for any other emails you need to update in other workflow steps. Just make sure to scroll to the bottom of the workflow dialogue window and click “apply” to save your changes!

#4: The contract smartfield works on your end as a hyperlink

Are you someone who regularly forgets to countersign their contracts? No shade if you are: it happens to more people than you think. While this isn’t the end of the world to forget to do now and then, it is really important to sign your contracts at some point. Many times, contracts aren’t legally enforceable without both parties signatures on it. If you find yourself in this place, this tip will be game changing for you!

You know how you can use the contract smartfield in your canned emails to send that document to clients? On your end it’s embedded within braces as {{job | contractLink}}, but you know that it will display as a hyperlink to the client for them to click on and access.

Guess what? This functionality will work on your end as well! My favorite trick to address the forgetfulness of unfinished counter-signatures is to create a to-do in a workflow that triggers immediately after the client signs the contract. You can add any text/reminder you want into the to-do, but make sure to include the contract smartfield and check off the box at the bottom to send yourself an email reminder. Now, when you get a signed contract back you’ll have a reminder waiting in your inbox to countersign the document with a link straight to it! This eliminates the friction of remembering to login to your account and navigate to your dashboard to access the contract.

#5: set up categories for your services so you can view your income breakdown in reports

This piece falls in line with tracking your referral sources. Data about your business is Queen. And a huge piece that’s really important to know is where you’re making the most money in your business so you can make informed decisions about whether to stop offering a service or lean more heavily into your money makers.

Setting up categories is really simple. Head to Templates –> Packages to do it. Go in to edit each individual package; at the very bottom of the editor is a spot to select a category for that package. You can either choose from existing categories you’ve created, or create a new one.

To see your income breakdown once you’ve attached categories to all your packages, head to Reporting –> Chart of Accounts. They’ll be listed alphabetically with line item dollar amounts so you know exactly how many pennies each of your services/offers/products are bringing in.

#6: You can perform a keyword search in your canned email library to find emails faster

If you’re like, “Wait, hold up… you can do what now??” I know. That was me too. For so long, any time I wanted to find a particular email in my template library, I would scroll through my multiple pages (yes, really — I’ve reached the bottom of page 4 lol) to find a specific email I wanted to edit. My emails are well organized by title so it was always fairly easy, but still definitely time consuming if I had multiple emails on page 3 to edit. (as I’m sure you know, once you click ‘save and close’ on an email, it brings you back to page 1.)

And then one day, I discovered the search bar by accident. At the top of your canned email list, right above the Title sorter, it says “Filter Emails.” That’s the search bar! This is a really helpful thing to know about your Dubsado account because it’ll save you some time and headache as you make copy updates. You can thank me later for this trick. 😉

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There’s a lot to grasp and discover, but I hope these things to know about your Dubsado account gave you some clarity and make your experience on the platform so much smoother!

Now tell me, was there anything here that absolutely blew your mind? Drop it in the comments so I can join in your celebration of “holy hell this just made my life so much easier.” 😎