Their first workshop in Santa Barbara, California was a HUGE success!  ”We loved keeping the workshop small so that each attendee’s business was able to be discussed and we could spend quality time with each photographer in regards to camera settings, lighting discussion and other important day of wedding details” – Sara Kauss.

Sara Kauss (http://sarakauss.com) and Josh Newton (http://joshnewton.com) have teamed up to create the ultimate in a wedding workshop.  Faux/Tographers is more than just a training session, it’s a hands-on experience for new photographers looking to get into wedding photography.  Check out their website for more details:  http://faux-tographers.com (and don’t forget the dash!)

Here’s a couple testimonials from their first workshop:

“I had such a blast with you guys… My mind cant stop spinning!” – Matthew Cotter

“I really enjoyed hearing your stories of how you started your businesses.  It was so encouraging and inspiring to hear your ‘beginnings’ and to see where you are today – INCREDIBLE! Overall, I am so encouraged about the photography profession as a whole and just wanted to thank you both for sharing your time and talent with the workshop group!” – Lisa De Jager

“I had an awesome time at the fauxtographers workshop in Santa Barbara. It was so great to be able to work closely with successful photographers and learn what steps they take on a wedding day, and other aspects of the business.” – Jamie Hudson

What are you waiting for! Visit their site and reserve your ticket today!

I am not meticulous. I have more ideas running in my brain than outlets for them. I would have had a separate task list to remind me to reset every software program with the correct workflow status for every order.

I noticed something different this summer. Now that my workflow is flowing, and everything is tracked in Táve I spend less time doing icky business stuff. I use ProSelect to process my orders, then I import into Táve, and right there I can assign it to the correct client, the correct job, and fix the pricing errors that I made (cuz I make errors sometimes). I send my order, create a task so I can see in my task list that it’s in process, and wait for my order to arrive. Cool part is that those are just some of the features that Táve has condensed into one program for me, and there are many more programs from which you can import orders, and to which you can export data.

Then I sit at my desk wondering what I have forgotten to do. Nothing. I just spend less time on each task, and I don’t forget things. It’s hard to believe. Well not that hard to believe since my task list, calendar, and upcoming jobs are all right on my homepage.

We’re looking for a few subscribers to help us review the change by logging in to a special testing server and verifying that everything is exactly the same as it is in production. If you have some time to spare this weekend and would like to volunteer, please email team@tave.com. Seats are limited. Due to the need to be familiar with the current production system, trial accounts are not eligible and Lifetime subscribers will have priority seating.

We know testing to make sure everything is exactly the same as before is a bit dull, so as a reward, active volunteers will be the first to be invited to test and review future (and far more exciting!) pre-releases.

Update: Wow, we didn’t expect so much interest! If you’re chosen to participate, you’ll receive an email from beta-announce@tave.com with instructions when we’re ready to get started (probably early tomorrow). Requests to volunteer will still be considered up until then.

Update 2: The beta signup is now closed and all seats filled. Thank you to all of our volunteers, you rock!

Update 3: We released 2.9.0 and are now at 2.9.2 (as seen at the bottom of the page inside the app). A few hiccups, but overall a great release!

Hi everyone! Táve will be visiting our friends up in Canada this summer!

We’ll be in Vancouver on Friday, July 16th and would love to meet up with you! If you’d like some details on where we’re going to be meeting up and would like to join in, please email us at team@tave.com for more information and to RSVP!

This is a 48-hour notice for a planned 2-hour downtime event on the Wednesday night (Thursday morning) starting at 1AM Eastern (10PM Pacific, 0500 GMT).

Jason and I will be performing system maintenance and server upgrades in preparation for our big summer releases and all systems are affected.

While these upgrades are a necessary precursor to the Táve 3.0 release, no software is being released during this maintenance event. If you’re longing for news on Táve 3.0, please be sure to sign up for our Táve 3.0 announcement list (as we’re not quite ready to announce anything more on that front just yet).

Status: Maintenance complete.

Prior to this release, we showed all tasks for a deliverable in two places in the job viewer; collapsed under each deliverable and also in the general task list. The idea behind it was you’d want to see all of your tasks for a job in one place and yet be able to dig into the individual progress of a deliverable. In reality, it meant that the task list would often get too cluttered to be usable and downright confusing if the same task was created for different items.

Here’s an example of the Tasks and Deliverables sections prior to 2.8.0, courtesy of Karen Lisa:

Now with 2.8, your general task list for a job is limited to tasks you create manually and tasks created when non-deliverable products are ordered.

Here’s a look at at the same deliverables and tasks above in 2.8.1 (Karen has delivered some of the items since the screenshot above was taken):

You’ll notice that we now group the deliverables by order and include a handy progress meter. In this case, Karen has 3 orders with deliverables booked for this job.

To make it easier to see what tasks are coming up next for an order, we show the next task for each deliverable even when collapsed.  Click on the deliverable name and it expands to show all tasks and even the item configuration:

The “next task” is based on the task order, so you can always drag and drop the tasks into a new order by grabbing the dotted grips on the left side of the tasks (any time you see those dotted grips in Táve it means you can drag the item using it).

Flosites Integration

If you’re lucky enough to have one of those sexy Flosites, then it just got even better, as we’re proud to announce that Flosites has added support for your contact form to create new leads directly inside of Táve.

Learn more on about setting up your Flosites website by clicking on the “Flosites Integration” link in your Táve settings.

RedCart Order Integration

We’re expanding our RedCart integration to now automatically queue up any orders made through your RedCart proofing website for import into Táve.

Our RedCart Order Importer will help you match up each product to your advanced Táve product configuration, add costs, and record a payment.  We’ll even record any custom cropping as part of the deliverable configuration so you have it handy from inside Táve.

Besides creating a sales order for your client, you can optionally import it as a sales receipt for a subject or other contact, which will keep it from showing up in your Client’s Client Access portal.

If you’re selling sessions from your RedCart, you can also create and book a new job based on the order.  When you go this route, we’ll create a sales order rather than just a sales receipt, letting you send them to your Client Access portal to sign a contract, make additional payments, etc.

ProSelect Order Imports

If you use the ProSelect presentation software to increase your presentation sales, it’s time to upgrade! Time Exposure has just released version 2010r1 with a new “Standard XML for Web” export format (older versions will still import but lack some of the new features).

We’ve been working with Time Exposure to enhance their existing exports to do exciting new things like add image previews to the export.  They’ve answered with a great new export just for you.  Once you have the file exported, head on over to Settings and click on the ProSelect Orders link, where you can now upload the XML file. We’ll help you quickly create a new sales receipt, complete with image previews, that will help you fullfil the sale promptly and accurately.

We’re quite excited to be the first web-based studio management system to accept ProSelect orders and it’s just the first of many improvements we’re making for portrait studios.

Custom Imports

We’ve always provided a free manual import to studios who purchase an annual or lifetime subscription, but now all studios can import their data on their own with our new vCard & CSV import tool.  So get started with your contacts in Táve from the moment you sign up to really experience Táve.
*Available soon.

New Lead API

Some of you have noticed the new “Webservices Integration” box in your studio settings and wondered what that was for.  There are several uses for this, the newest one being our “New Lead API”, which you can learn more about in Settings by clicking the “New Lead API” link in the yellow box under Integrations.

We’ll be expanding this even more as we go, so if you have some suggestions let us know!

2.8.0 Release Notes

In addition to the above features, this release includes:

• We’re now automatically creating expenses for PayPal merchant fees for Client Access payments.
• Deliverables are now grouped by the sale it was created for.
• Deliverables can now be clicked to instantly view the configuration of the ordered item.
• Tasks for deliverables are no longer included in the Job’s general task list.
• You can now mark an entire order as delivered with one click.
• Tax rates and names are now being saved with each order so that they remain unaffected by changes to your tax setup.
• Added {{Date.today}} to the contract editor to automatically enter the current date (until signed).
• Making it clear when a job needs a date in order to create the list of available payments for Client Access.
• No longer waiting for all items on a page to load before fetching the content in Client Access.
• You can now print receipts for your subscription payments from the subscription manager.
• The navigation now stays on-screen as you scroll down long pages.
• Fixed issue where “Unavailable” time was always listed as an all-day event.
• The sunrise / sunset link in the event editor now changes based on your locale, with new pages for studios from Australia, Canada, and Great Britain as well as a new world-times link for other locales.
• The sunrise / sunset link in the event editor now changes based on the event start date for US, CA, and GB locales and the studio city and state are sent for US studios.
• The “Public.app” web service has been merged into the main “WebService.app” web service endpoint, the old URLs (for calendar feeds, exports, etc) will continue to work but you should update your links when possible.
• General bug fixes and improvements.

Here’s a couple photos from the show floor:

A big thanks to Carli for helping out at the booth and to all of you that came by and said hi!

WPPI Screencast Preview of Táve 3.0

If you’re active in our user forum, follow our twitter, or are a fan of our Facebook page, then you may have seen that Jason and I recorded a short screencast at WPPI going over just four of the exciting new features in this summer’s Táve 3.0 release…

Watch the video on our YouTube HD channel.

We thought these four items would illustrate the depth of changes and how we’re delivering some of the most requested features in Táve 3.0 and doing it in a way that’s faster, more intuitive, and more flexible than we could with the current system.  Some of you may ask where our email integration and workflow features are in this screencast—we felt that showing off features in the Settings section wasn’t appropriate for the high speed trade show environment, and those features deserve more than just a few seconds of high-speed high-level review.

All subscribers will be able to try out and get familiar with the beta later this summer and as always with Táve, the 3.0 upgrade will be free and the application will still be just $25/month.

Our tradeshow flyer best described the Táve 3.0 upgrade…

Táve 3.0 is a revolutionary new version of the most powerful studio management system available,
delivering unlimited questionnaires and forms, email integration, advanced new calendar tools,
a redesigned contact manager, even more advanced workflows, a streamlined proposal system,
and a sexy new interface.   Every single feature has been reimagined in Táve 3.0.

We’ll be removing the option from the website on Thursday (March 4th) when we leave for WPPI 2010.

If you’re attending WPPI, you’ll have a few more days as we’ll be offering the lifetime subscriptions in person on the show floor while supplies last.  The lifetime subscription will not be discounted or prorated at the show and we’ll only have a few to offer, so your best bet is to buy online this week.

If you aren’t attending WPPI, then you have just a few days left to take advantage of the unbeatable lifetime subscription option!

As you should know by now Táve is an official sponsor of this year’s Wedding and Portrait Photographers International convention, lovingly referred to by all as WPPI. The first year I went I was so intimidated that I brought a non-photog friend with me. Not everyone has that luxury so if you are striking out on your own (or even with a buddy) I would like to offer some helpful info and ease your first time fears.

1. Everyone was freaked out their first time: And if they say they weren’t they are dirty liars. The advantage to everyone’s having freaked out is that 90% of the people you run into there are willing to give you helpful advice so you don’t feel so alone. The other 10% are hacks.

2. Wear comfy shoes: Everyone there will be wearing comfy shoes. We all know they are ugly, and we are all over it. Merrell’s, Soft, Born, etc. One year I spent 20 minutes in a vendor’s boot chatting about comfortable foot wear. MGM has some very long hallways.

3. If there is any way you can, stay at the MGM: The long walk back to a hotel is not worth the money you save, so unless you get a killer deal or find a room across the street stay in the hotel at which you are convening.

4. Don’t make commitments the first day of the trade show: You will go broke doing this. Grab the flyer, make a note, take some time to sit in your hotel room mulling over your options. I always make my last trade show day “shopping day.” This is unless you know exactly what you are going there for, or unless it’s Táve. Commit to that right now.

5. Take advantage of Platform Classes: They are included in your registration so you should hit as many as you can. If they weren’t what you were needed or expecting you can always slip out the back and hit another one.

6. Save money on food: Bring snack bars and water bottles to carry with you. There is a drugstore right down the strip if you don’t want to fly with them. I also like to find someone to split meals with. Vegas portions are huge and cheap meals are hard to find there.

7. Leave space in your suitcase for the SWAG you’ll be taking home: Catalogs, buttons, pens, magnets, maybe some prizes or trophies. You just never know.

8. Rockstars are people, too: Don’t act silly or giddy around the famous photographers. You will see them everywhere. They are human beings like you and I. Treat them with respect, smile and wave. Don’t whisper and point. Outside of this industry no one knows who they are. They carry around the same crappy point and shoot cameras that we do and their snapshots look just as bad.

9. Bring business cards, lots of them: You will want to give them to vendors and other photographers you meet.

10. Be yourself: Don’t try to be cooler than you are in real life. Dress up if you want to, but only if you will be comfortable. Everyone loves a show, unless they can tell it’s just an act.

See you there! I will be giving out free hugs to anyone who wants one* If you have some AWESOME WPPI tips to share please do, but only AWESOME tips, please.

*Limit one per customer. Certain restrictions may apply.

I have an Android phone and my life is in it. Including Táve!

It may be called Táve iPhone Access, but it works swimmingly in my Android browser, which is awesome when you are running late for a bridal shower and have to access your client list to postpone your location session because the rain is pouring down. The only regret is that I did not discover until recently the awesomeness of the mobile feature, which lets me access my account quickly from anywhere.

Just visit www.tave.com in your iPhone or Android browser and you should be automatically taken to Táve iPhone Access at tave.com/iPhone.

There are a bazillion reasons why I love Táve, and eventually I’ll share them all with you, but one of my favorite things is that it’s helping me “go green.”  A lot of people will sneer at that, but for me being green isn’t a marketing angle.  It’s how I was raised, and it’s how I live my life.  I’ve got solar panels on my house, I recycle or reuse anything I can, and I try not to waste.  Before Táve I swam in paper.  Notes to myself, phone messages, client records were stacked all over my office.  Táve allows me to store most of that in that big beautiful cloud.  My contracts are signed and stored digitally, I can add any kind of note you can imagine to the clients’ files, I can forward email correspondence directly to my client files so I have records of what I told who and when.  The best part is that I can actually FIND the information when I go looking for it.

Not only have I decreased my paper usage, my ink usage, my trash output and my storage space needs, I am also reducing my own and my client’s carbon footprint, by using the client access system.  A new client used to mean a consultation in my home, then after their decision was made, another trip back to my house to sign paperwork and pay the deposit.  Now I send them quotes online before we meet, so they can see the system, meet with them, and explain how they can use the online system.  They go home, log in, pick their package, sign their contract, make their payment and they don’t have to make another trip.  May not sound like a lot of savings, but if each photographer saves one trip per client per year that’s a lot of gas and emissions we are eliminating.  I now email my clients their statement with a link to the client access and all of their payments can be made online.

We’d love to hear from those of you have used Táve to “go green” and what changes it has made for you on that front.

Visit our booth at the WPPI trade show in Las Vegas, March 8th – 10th, to take the new Táve 3.0 for a spin yourself.

Visit tave.com for more info and to sign-up for our Táve 3.0 newsletter.

As a reminder; since Táve is a web-based system, all accounts are always up-to-date with the latest fixes and releases at no additional cost.   So if you subscribe now, your account will be automatically upgraded once Táve 3.0 is released.

We’ve called it a game changer.

We’ve talked about a few of the new features, such as the advanced new quoting system, the unlimited questionnaires, an amazing new address book, a fresh new look, and streamlining everywhere.

But all that is only the beginning of what’s new in the most powerful studio management system, reimagined.

Lifetime Subscriptions now start at $995

Additional user accounts on the lifetime plan are just $200 each.

If you bought a lifetime subscription and have fewer than 5 employees, we’re going to refund the difference.  Yeah, we’re cool like that.

If you have an active monthly or annual subscription and your term isn’t over yet, we’re now prorating any unused pre-paid time you have and applying it to the lifetime subscription, so it’ll actually be cheaper than $995 for you.  Click here to see the rate for your studio.

Limited Time Only

The lifetime option isn’t going to stick around forever, so be sure to upgrade now.

This is a very different type of workshop from your usual photography workshop. “For the Love” is designed as an All-Inclusive retreat with the benefits of photography workshop. If you are longing for a break from the stress and a place for inspiration, then you should consider coming to “For the Love”.  This workshop will renew your mind, refresh your spirit, rejuvenate creativity, and open your eyes to new ways of seeing things.  You will remember why you signed up for this amazing career.  You will remember that it was all for the love…the love of God…the love of life…the love of creativity…the love of photography.

If this sounds like something you’re interested in, please make sure you visit the For the Love website and see if this workshop is right for you!

If you’ve pulled up a job profile in the past couple days you may have noticed something new in the conversation module…

Each job now has a dedicated email address that lets you send emails directly to the profile from any email client by adding the email address as a BCC to an email to your client or simply forwarding an email that your client sent you.

Once you send an email to the BCC address, you should be able to pull it up again directly inside your email application based on the job name.

You can also go to settings and click on the “vCard Job BCC Addresses” link (or the combined export) in the yellow box on the right.  As with all vCard imports, we suggest importing the contacts into their own folder/group to make it easier to manage them later. Once imported, you’ll be able to pull up the BCC address directly from your email client without visiting Táve first.

Other Email Features

The email bcc feature is meant as a convenience and is not what we’ve been referring to as “Email Integration”.  Full email integration (with templates, themes, reply and bounce handling, auto replies, parsing, etc) is still coming in a future release.

This feature was created outside of our normal development process so we could get it out there quickly (since we’ve had many requests for it) without having to wait for the next big release…

Our Next Releases are Game Changers

We’ve mentioned that Questionnaires (our top requested feature) is very close to rolling out, but we’re going to hold back for a bit and merge it into the next release.

Why?

Two main reasons.  First, we don’t want to change Client Access that much in the middle of what is a busy holiday season for many of our studios, and second, our Questionnaires go so far beyond anything available today that we expect a huge surge in new users, and that’s not something we want just yet.

Wait, what?!?!

We’re doing some amazing things right now.  Some of the upgrades are so impressive and so massive, that many won’t even recognize the application when they stop by our booth at WPPI in March, that’s how huge the next few months are going to be for us.  We’re improving the way you work, the way things are organized, and the speed at which you can work.  More emphasis is being put on jobs; from the way client access is set up and managed to the way you create and propose quotes.  We’re making the whole application more intuitive, the workflow faster and far more flexible, and a whole lot easier to start using from the get go.  Not to mention, we’re adding the most requested features from our users like Questionnaires, Email Integration, and more.

So even though it’ll remain fairly quiet on the Táve front for a bit longer, know that it’s because of some truly revolutionary improvements coming up.

So, what happens in Táve when a client cancels the job? Let’s take a look at the following booking below.

In this case, the client has ordered coverage for a birthday party and has paid $200 for a retainer. Now they’ve called and said they’d like to cancel while they still have a $224 balance.

Táve tells you that you can’t delete or cancel a job with a non-zero balance.  Simply deleting the order and recording a refund like the popup suggests isn’t appropriate here because you’ve received a retainer and you want it to still show up as revenue. If they had not paid a retainer, you could in fact follow the advice in the popup and stopped there.

So, what do you do? How do you cancel the job while still still showing the retainer revenue?

First, click “New Quote” in the orange Quotes and Sales Orders Section.

On the Quote page, you’ll select to add a Manual Entry item, and add something like what I’ve created below:

When you’re done, click “Save” at the top of the page to return to the Quote.

In the price section, as you can see below, I’ve created a negative amount opposite of the balance that was still due when they canceled. In this case the client owed an additional $224 towards her event coverage so I entered -224.

Now, save your work and click the “Client Accepted; Book it!” button on the top of the page.

Now your orange financials box will look like the one below. It will show the money that you were paid, and the remaining balance will be zeroed out, which means we can now cancel the job.

Then you can go ahead and mark the job as cancelled.

You can add locations to any job, but let’s consider adding locations to a wedding. In this example, we have a rehearsal dinner, ceremony, and a day-after session at different locations.

First, find the “Edit Profile” button at the top of the Job Overview page.

Once you’re in Edit mode, you can do lots of things! You can change the way the “name” of the wedding is displayed, for example: Maya & Sparky’s wedding. You can edit which brand you’re using, change which type of session it is, and also edit the date. And most importantly, you can edit the Venues, Vendors, and Source. Venues are the locations you’re shooting at for the job you’ve booked. Vendors are the other companies that you’ll be working with – such as Florists, Caterers, Entertainment, Makeup, Hair, etc. The Source is how the client found you, and the sources listed in the drop down menu can be customized in the Settings section.

In this case, we’re adding Venues. If you’ve already added some venues, the ones you’ve added will show up as soon as you start to type their names. If you’re adding one that you’ve never added before, our system will prompt you to add them. You can always go back and fill in the information later by visiting the Vendors section if you’re working quickly with a client on the phone or in front of you in your studio.

Now that we’ve added additional Venues as shown above, it’s time to add them to our sessions as Locations.

In this case, I’ve added a Session for the rehearsal dinner for this wedding. I can see all of the possible locations that I’ve added to the job when I click on the Location drop down menu, and I’m able to select the correct location for this particular session. The other locations I’ve added are for the wedding itself and for the day-after session.

Hope this mini-tutorial helps when setting up multiple-day and multiple-location jobs!

When you use the New Lead box, it will automatically create both the client and job entries (Note: If you’re simply adding previous clients, and do NOT wish to add jobs, just use the “New Client” button inside the Clients section).

In order to add a new lead, all you need to enter is the person’s name and the Job Type (e.g. Wedding, Portrait, etc). From there, you can continue to edit the details of the job or jump right into a quote. Other information such as the lead’s contact information, event location, additional subjects, and more, can be collected later inside the Job profile as you chat with your prospective client.

Aside from being a quick way to get started with a client, it’s also quite useful.  Once you enter a date, a mini-agenda for the date will appear in the right half of the New Lead box, quickly telling you if you already have something on your schedule for the date, so you never run the risk of double-booking yourself.

It’s a good idea to select the Source as soon as possible, as it can be easy for your client to forget, but is huge for you, especially with our reports that break down your revenue and leads by source.

Product-based automation

The first step in setting up your workflow is to create a product. Let’s assume that you’re creating an album. For your album, you have 4 steps – to design the album, send the client a proof, order from your vendor, and deliver the album once it arrives. This is easily set up in the brown box labeled “work to create when ordered.”

You can set which job phase you want the tasks to start in – Booked, Processing, Presentation, Fulfillment, or Completed. In this case, I chose for some tasks to start in the Presentation phase and one in the Fulfillment phase. When editing each task, you can also set more precise due dates if you prefer. It just depends on what you are comfortable with in your workflow!

Quickly creating similar products

When creating similar products that have the same tasks, I’ve found a really great tip. On the Products page, we include a “duplicate” button for each product. It’s the one that you see below that looks like two boxes, a blue one on top of a white one.

If you click this button, it will duplicate the product and all information inside of it, including your workflow tasks. This will save you some time for items that are similar, as you’ll simply need to click on the copied item and edit it to be a separate product.

Not only is this helpful for your workflow tasks, but if the items are very similar but just differ in price, then adding all of the options or add-ons is one less thing you’ll have to do to set up the next item on your product sheet!

Job-specific tasks with Deliverables

The next time a client books a quote with this product, a Deliverable will be created for the product inside the Job’s task module.  As you progress through the job phases, the tasks will automatically appear.

As clients request special work for the album, just click on the New Task link to create a new task for the deliverable to keep it all organized.

I hope this little tutorial helps as you set up your products and workflow a bit faster!