Unfortunately, sometimes our clients cancel our services after they have already paid a retainer towards a wedding, event, or session. Retainers tend to be non-refundable, so thankfully we’re not completely out the money for the date that we’ve blocked out!

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.

There are a few ways to create a new client or a new lead, but by far the fastest way to enter a lead into Táve is to use the yellow “New Lead” box on the Home Page.

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.

Visit the Settings section and you’ll see we’ve added a link to the blue Client Access module, called “Track agreements.” Click on the link to create contracts and amendments.

Once you publish a contract for use, you can attach it to a job, mark it as signed, and print it from the job editor’s Financials module.

When the full Client Access system is released in the coming days, your clients will be able to electronically sign their contract online!