The Best Photography Scheduling Software for Your Business

Booking gigs is the name of the game. Photographers are constantly working their magic to find new customers, but what happens when prospects are ready to book? Many photographers, just like you, get tripped up.

Do we text back and forth, sending unprofessional emojis to build rapport?

Do we go back and forth with our paper calendars?

Do we send them a Google invite for the wrong time?

If you’re having these problems, you aren’t alone. Having an updated appointment scheduler is an essential practice in a successful photography business. To make it easier on you and your prospects, you’ll need:

Calendar Integration
Invoicing/Payment Method
Customizable Instant Booking

Let’s review a few top schedulers so you can make booking gigs an easy and efficient process.

Bloom

A platform that has easy client booking can help you master time management by eliminating the excess fluff. Bloom is a crisp CRM that has extensive instant booking features that can also help you organize the way you make money by removing monotonous admin jobs and automating essential workflow tasks. It’s an all-in-one situation.

Bloom contains a few essential features that can help you book your dream clients.

Easy Calendar Integration & Setup

Setting calendar parameters is comparable to giving yourself open office hours. Bloom allows you to create a unique calendar that reflects your availability. For example, you can set it up to be a reoccurring 9AM-5PM timeframe or block out certain days or hours that you’d like clients to be able to book. With calendar integration, your schedule within Bloom will automatically update when you book non-photoshoot blocks as well. You wouldn’t want someone to accidentally book during next week’s dentist appointment.

Customizable Instant Booking

Part of coordinating a successful booking is getting paid. It may seem obvious, but many of the schedulers out there will simply allow you to fill your calendar, but not give you a way for your new customer to lay down a deposit for the session. As flaky millennials start to get married and have babies, you’ll book photoshoots with them… but also need to start requiring a deposit. Bloom makes it easy for your new customers to pay with ACH, Zapier, Stripe, and Square integration.

Invoicing/Payment Method

When potential customers land on your site, they may need some coddling… but what if they are ready to book, right then and there? Using Bloom’s instant booking forms allows you to specify specific parameters for different types of sessions. You can adjust prices, time length, tax, add a discount, or even block off specific days for different types of photography or mini sessions. Watch this video on Booking Mini Sessions.

Clean & Crisp User Experience

Bloom is known for its simplicity and professional flare. If your goal is to make the booking process flawless, the UX for Bloom’s platform is pristine.

Picktime

Picktime is an online booking system that works best for multi-user small businesses. You can manage staff schedules and schedule appointments. Though it is not geared towards freelancers, it has some helpful features for managing your photography business.

CRM

Picktime is a free client relationship manager where you can maintain your customer database. The platform removes the need for spreadsheets and multiple contact storage locations.

Calendar Integration

When it comes to booking new customers, Picktime offers a personalized booking page or embeddable “book now” button on your website. The app is easy to setup and an excellent choice for beginning photographers.

Playful User Experience

The Picktime interface has fun colors, vibrant color-coded appointment pages, and a distinct purple and pink theme. This platform is excellent for running your business in a stress free way with a large dashboard overview to keep your business on track.

Acuity Scheduling

At the heart, Acuity is simply an appointment scheduler. If you are looking for a client relationship manager that can book appointments, Acuity is simple and effective. Unfortunately, they don’t have a way to invoice, send contracts, or manage your photoshoot projects. They do, however, have a really spectacular user experience for a simple scheduler. It is important to note that Acuity is used across 20+ industries and not specifically designed for freelancers.

Appointment Scheduling

Acuity is known for its easy appointment scheduling and management. They have a Mobile App that allows for on-location updates with easy daily maintenance. Just a quick tap and you can schedule, reschedule, or cancel.

Contact Management

Searching and keeping track of your client information is essential. Acuity allows you to filter the client list to only show recent or inactive customers. When a client books an appointment, they are added to the client list automatically. You can also manually upload a CSV from another program, which is a huge plus.

Booking clients is the lifeblood of your business. Choosing the best appointment scheduler for your photography business could mean the difference between booking 10 shoots or 100 shoots in a given year. Make it easy on yourself. Make it even easier on your clients. Get a full service CRM that handles all of the admin work for you, so you can spend your time doing what you love; taking photos. Bloom is our recommendation for the best scheduler for freelancers like you to manage your business scheduling online.

Best Photoshoot Scheduler for Photographers