I'll try to explain quickly - I love the Graphistudio order tracking. It shows you when the order was placed, received, when it's in printing, binding, shipping back to you - VERY easy to follow where your order stands.

I wanted something like this for clients. Something I could tell them up front - just login to xxx and you'll be able to track your WHOLE order through every step. BUT I didn't want to pay someone to set that sort of thing up for me and since I don't speak SQL I thought I was SOL (ooh geek humor, I AM in a good mood)

ANYWAYS

I did it!

If you've seen my Taskfreak demo you know that I use Taskfreak to do list to track all of my own work. Why do the work x2? Why not just SHOW clients where I am on THEIR project!!

Go here:

http://pictureinfinity.com/taskfreak/login.php?

First thing you'll notice - it's on my domain. I have full control of this. I also branded it with my logo & everything.

Login name = sample
password = wedding

When you get in, you'll also see that it's branded with our blues & greys. Very consistent with our site!

Once you're in you'll see 3 tasks and various percent complete projects. The due date is on there, and the logged in client can see their tasks as well as under view, sample wedding, past tasks - everything we've already completed!

They can't edit anything or change due dates. All they can do is view the status.

I can also give the CLIENT jobs such as "approve final album design" and due dates! I can't imagine that they will blame us for not getting their albums quickly if they know this status thing is update whenever they do anything.

WOW.

Ok, so now the question is - do you like it? I'm not worried about giving the client too much info and this is *almost* no extra work for me because I use this task list to direct my day anyways.

I'm super excited about this! haha I'll be doing a tutorial on it later.

HAHA

I just registered http://www.myphotographersrock.com and http://www.myphotographerrocks.com as the link I'll give clients.

Oh Matt! you continue to amaze us all! Congratulations!

Was that way too much info all at once? lol

Sorry.

I also just updated my masking so it may take a minute to go through. Instead of seeing the domain pictureinfinity.com/taskfreak all the clients will see is "myphotographerrocks.com" instead.

this looks really cool. so you can set different user permissions for them to see only their wedding tasks? COOL

very cool! i hadn't seen taskfreak before, but I will absolutely be looking into it!


your client interface looks very professional, very easy to understand and get into! and I bet your clients like having that kind of information instead of just hitting "refresh" on the blog a hundred times to see when the photos are up.

i'm not sure I'm brave enough to show my status (or my notes on clients, lol) but this looks like it will work really well with your process!

My only comment is that some clients may be confused by some of the options/information there. Some of it - it's not clear what it's indicating. don't know if you can limit or provide some kind of explanation for them. Like - what are the boxes on the left end of the tasks? And the "Com." column?

Okay, and what do you do if your due date changes? or if you get behind? obviously the client may have seen your earlier due date, and wonder why it's changed, etc..?

sorry, don't mean to be nitpicky, but just curious...i think it is a super idea...i just want you to work out the kinks for me ;-)

Yep exactly - AND I can assign them tasks like approve final album design. So if THEY are late, I can call them on it. (That was actually inspired by something jk said about "pointing them to the facts" before)

They can't edit anything, add anything, etc. All they can do is view order status.



taskfreak is fantastic! I love it for getting stuff done! It's motivating to me to have the list AND I can log onto it from anywhere.

I'm not sure we're brave enough to do this either - but I have to try. I want to set myself apart from the locals and basically do something "professional" as you said. If Graphi can do this, album companies, distributors, everyone has something like this so you can check exactly where your order is - I think this is important for us.

Plus we get things done for clients blindingly fast - I'm going to set the deadline for weddings to our contracted time - 4 weeks. I get previews up in 3 days. Imagine how freaked out they're going to be.

M

Now I feel bad about buying a dry erase board to keep track of stuff. Baby steps... right?

I definitely want to simplify it if possible. I literally figured this out 45 mins ago so I'm still playing with the PHP, etc. I'm sure I can turn some of those columns off - especially the ones I don't use like priority and com (comments).

If the due date changes, I'm late and I probably DESERVE to be yelled at. I want to use this to motivate myself NOT to get behind. But if I do, I think it's fair that my clients know where they stand. I don't change a due date once the clients have seen them. I'll leave it - it turns red if it's overdue. They will know it's overdue, so will I...but I don't plan for anything to get there.

I totally love this idea!

Kaitlin is right about having the tasks be meaningful sounding to the client rather than a confusing type of shorthand. My own taskfreak is pretty muddled looking since I haven't cleaned house and really organized properly since yay those many months ago when you set it up on my server.

I *really* need to get back to using it again, or it's kind of futile -- a tool that doesn't get used really isn't terribly efficient and I have a bit of a time disciplining myself to use TF on a regular basis.

Absolutely. We're working out things now for our workflow that will make sense to the clients like:

Schedule couples session
Shoot couples session
Edit couple's session previews
Put couple's session previews online
Shoot wedding
Edit wedding previews

etc. Once the client understands their list, they'll be able to follow the updates regularly.

M

MATT ANTONINO!

So cool! I so need this and yes, I always thought the Graphi thing was cool to use for clients...and you made it happen!!!!

This does look pretty spiffy -- I like it.

(It also seems like something that with a little tweaking and add-on modifications that it could be something you could license out for other photographers to use who don't know how to set it up for their own domain)

You bring up an interesting question:

What would you guys pay for something like this? Because I'd set it up - but I'm not sure what to charge to make it worth the time for me but worth the setup for you.

Someone said $50 to me privately. Does that seem way high way low, sorta close? It would include the domain, setup and color branding.

M

Hrm, I see what you're saying. But here's what I was saying.

You allow all photographers to login and clients to http://www.myphotographerrocks.com/ (or the additional domain they wish to purchase). If they choose to purchase their own domain the front page can have their own logo, otherwise it could have a general logo.

Once logged in, all their branding can be displayed as they wish (just have a setup page to allow them to upload their own logo, and set the few colors they wish it to be). This might even already be allowed by the multi-user version without any tweaking required on your part, I haven't looked into it.

This way you the only additional 'setup' you would have to do for additional photographers would be to add them into the system, and possible add their new domain if they wish to purchase it, rather than have to set it up individually for each person.

But your idea definitely works too! As for the price, not sure.

I'd say you should charge your "go somewhere and shoot architecture" rate for 2 billable hours, plus a 2 litre of Pepsi.

Because if providing services to photographer clients takes time, it's time you could be spending on shooting etc. Don't shortchange yourself!

So let's say your hourly rate for shooting something is $100 and it takes you two hours to set up a BrideFreak, then you should charge at least $200 for it, especially since you'd be setting up all the fiddly little bits and the branding and so forth.

It's a specialized skill, the customizations, and all the branding stuff. Bill for what you're worth!

Leann

the only problem I see with the above is that an admin is an admin - just that. I'm not sure I can setup a project for you that leann as a user couldn't edit... does that make sense?

That does make sense. But I "suspect" that you could add a third level of permissions -- in between admin and user, let's call it photographer -- that could do that. *Assuming* the code is well written for TaskFreak (I say this without having looked at it), I would think it would be relatively simply to add in checks to allow this photographer permission to have local admin privileges on their own shoots/projects.

This might require a little more time to settup the whole thing on the front-end, but will require much less time for each additional photographer you add.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents here as well. I thought Matt's idea was great right from the start and watched to try it right away so I banged through it and set it all up.

If ya'll want to try it out it, just like Matt's, it's:

myneumyer.com
username: wedding
password: sample

The system works great and it only took me maybe 30 mins to set up (with just a few simple questions from Matt). If you're at all versed in mySQL and php, you should be able to figure it out.

If not, send Matt the $$ and he'll handle it for ya.

Kudos, Matt. Great idea!

I'll definitely check into it.




Thanks Scott! It's not really *that* difficult to setup. The best thing is that it's customizable to your need.

Anyhoo - thanks again!

This is so cool and I am so interested in this. Not sure I need it for the clients to be able to view, but I for sure would like to have that program to keep my self more organized.
Keep us posted on the progress on this one.

Matt you are so freaking amazing! how do you do all of this????

as a tribute, I am going to honor you with one of my favorite songs.

ODE TO MATT and a SONG THAT I LOVE.