I was in that awkward phase of my business: busy enough that I could use an extra pair of hands to help run my day-to-day operations, but still small enough that I couldn’t afford to hire an assistant. Or if you’re anything like me, too much of a control freak to trust anyone to the task! A lot of what I do is not the actual picture taking for clients. It mostly involves communication – prior to the session/event and afterwards. Even though I’m a one woman operation, I want to make sure I treat each of my clients like they are the only ones and this is where 17Hats came into play. And in case you’re wondering, this is not a sponsored post (I wish!). This is something I’ve used for the last two years and it’s been a life saver. It’s the best investment I’ve made in my business thus far and so, I’m happy to share my thoughts with you if it could help yours too!
17Hats is a business management system that caters to small business owners. Instead of using multiple apps and programs to keep track of your business operations, you can manage everything in one place: calendar, invoicing, contracts, email communication, questionnaires, expenses… Pretty much anything you need can be managed in this one platform! There are too many features to go into detail here, but these are a few that I love:
Projects: I have a contact form on my main webpage that integrates directly with 17Hats system, so new leads go directly into the program as a prospect along with their contact information (so it already saves me the step of entering their information into the program). From there, I can create individual projects for that client and store anything that pertains to them under their project, including email correspondence (which is a biggie for me – hello paper trail!), contracts and invoices. It’s nice to have everything organized in a central location for each client and eliminates having to dig through emails or computer folders to find what I’m looking for in a pinch.
Workflows: Every business has a workflow (whether you realize it or not) to maximize your time and efficiency. The workflows feature makes it easy to manage the tasks assigned for each client and automate the process. Once you create a workflow template with all the steps you take on a typical assignment, you can assign it to new projects and 17Hats will prompt you when the next task is due on your dashboard. This is incredibly helpful when you’re trying to keep track of several projects at a time and lets you know exactly where you need to be with each.
Templates: The ability to create templates has given me my life back! You can create templates of anything you know you’ll be doing more than one time. Once you create a template (for emails, contracts, invoices, questionnaires, etc…), 17Hats will automatically input the client’s information into the documents to save you an extra step and you can send these items out to clients faster! This is especially helpful for email inquiries. No need to type the same email over and over again when the information stays the same. Just tweak to answer any specific questions they asked in their inquiry email and send. Not only is this a major timesaver, clients are so impressed with your quick turnaround!
Customization: Another feature I love about 17Hats is the numerous customization options, which makes all your business correspondence look professional and consistent with your branding. You can add your logo to contracts, questionnaires, quotes, invoices and email correspondence. You can even change the colors of the buttons on your client correspondence to match your business colors, which in my opinion is a small detail that makes your business look like a million bucks (spot the gold colored button that goes with my branding!).
Mobility: I love that I can manage my entire business on the go using the 17Hats app. Even though you can’t get all the countless features of the program on the app, you can view your workflows, projects and manage your tasks right on your phone. You’ll also receive alerts when clients have completed their tasks, such as paying their invoices or submitting their contracts.
I could go on and on about all the other awesome features (including e-signable contracts, online payments, email syncing, integration with QuickBooks), but this post is already too long so I’ll leave it right here for now. If you want to learn more, check out the 17Hats website and let me know what you think!
