The Monday morning ten minutes
The scenario. It is Monday. You have a shoot on Thursday, some vague sense that an invoice is late, and a suspicion you have forgotten something. This is the ten minutes that answers all of it without opening your email.
Every other guide here is a project. This one is a habit, and it is the thing that makes the rest of the app worth having — a record you never look at is just typing.
1. Open the Dashboard and read Needs Attention
Dashboard
Needs Attention is the whole point. It is not a feed or a summary — it is a list of things that have gone wrong or are about to, assembled from every module at once.
What can appear there:
Money
- Overdue invoices
- Invoices drafted but never sent — the most common reason a photographer has not been paid
- Studio deposits due before the hire date
People waiting on you
- New enquiries from the last 48 hours
- Leads that have stalled
- Clients delivered to over a week ago with no review asked for
Paperwork
- Contracts unsent, unsigned, or not linked to a booking
- Model releases still pending
- Permits pending, or close to expiry
The shoot itself
- Crew who have not confirmed
- Deliverables due, and deliverables overdue
- Bookings approaching the end of free cancellation
- Hired gear overdue for return
- Gear due or flagged for service
2. Work top down, and actually clear them
The list is ordered by urgency, so start at the top and do not skip.
Most rows take under a minute:
- Overdue invoice → open it, the chase is already written, send it
- New enquiry → the reply is already written, send it
- Unsigned contract → a nudge, or a phone call if the shoot is this week
- Crew not confirmed → one message
- Delivered, nothing asked → send the review request
The ones that take longer — a permit application, a service booking — put in the diary rather than leaving on the list. An item you skip three weeks running stops being information and becomes wallpaper.
3. Look at the week ahead
Dashboard → the week’s bookings
For each shoot in the next seven days, glance at three things:
The conditions. Open the booking. If the light or the tide has moved against you since you scheduled it, Monday is when you can still do something — move the start time, warn the client, change location.
The people. Is everyone confirmed? Has the call sheet gone out?
The kit. Is anything on it away being serviced, or hired and not yet collected?
4. Ten seconds on the money
Business → Profit & Loss, or the dashboard’s revenue card
Not a full review — just the shape. Revenue this month against last, and what is outstanding.
The number worth watching weekly is what is unpaid. Everything else can wait for the quarter.
5. Once a month, look further out
Add one question to the Monday routine on the first of the month: how full is the diary in three months’ time?
That is the earliest warning you get. A thin April discovered in January is a marketing problem you can still solve; discovered in April it is a thin April.
With Pro, Insights answers this properly — how enquiries are trending, where they stall, and how far ahead the diary is filled.
Why this beats a to-do list
A separate task list has to be maintained. Needs Attention is derived — it is worked out from the records themselves every time you open it, so it cannot go stale and there is nothing to tick off.
Pay an invoice and it leaves the list. Sign a contract and it leaves the list. Nothing to keep in step, which is the only kind of system that survives a busy season.
Modules used
| Module | Guide |
|---|---|
| Dashboard | Dashboard |
| Invoices | Invoices |
| Leads | Leads |
| Bookings | Bookings |
| Insights | Insights |