If you travel to provide services to your clients, there is a good chance you've considered implementing travel fees. In this article, we'll cover everything you need to know about travel fees and provide some actionable advice to ensure you're doing it right.

What is a travel fee?

A travel fee is an additional fee added to your standard pricing. Often, travel fees vary based on the distance one travels. The further one travels, the higher the travel fee. 

👉 Use a quality online booking system with travel fees built-in, like Check Cherry, so you can automatically calculate and charge clients travel fees. It saves a lot of time and ensures accurate billing.

Why do people charge travel fees?

If you package your services, there is a good chance you've factored some travel into your pricing. However, if a client needs you to drive 62 miles, your standard pricing may no longer be profitable. Travel fees allow you to service a larger geographic area by offering clients the option to compensate you for travel.

Should I charge travel fees?

If you're open to traveling further distances to work and leveraging packages to sell your services, you should charge travel fees because they will ensure you are operating profitably.

If you are unwilling to travel outside a smaller area or send proposals with custom pricing to each client, you might want to lump all costs into one price to ensure each booking is profitable.

👉 Travel fees give more people the opportunity to hire you because it expands the geographic area you are willing to serve.

Distance-Based Travel Fees

We often see our customers include a free travel range with all packages. For example, the first 30 miles are free, and if they must drive more than 30 miles, it's $2.00 per mile. Distance-based travel fees are outstanding because they are granular and account for time and fuel costs best.

Flat Rate Travel Fees Tiers

Some people like to charge a flat fee for travel. For example, one's travel fee structure might look like this:

0-25 miles - FREE

25-50 miles - $35 Flat Fee

50-100 miles - $125 Flat Fee

This option is much less popular. One positive aspect is you can make one tier meaningfully more expensive than another.

Round-trip or one-way?

The majority of Check Cherry customers charge one-way travel fees. If a wedding venue is 55 miles away, they charge a travel fee based on 55 miles (single trip). Another option is calculating based on the length of getting to and from the service address (round trip).

One-way calculations make it easier for the client to understand your fee structure because most clients will not think to double the distance. If you opt to charge on a one-way basis, consider increasing your per-mile fee to account for the trip back home.

On the other hand, the round trip calculation will make the per-mile fee appear lower than a single trip fee. This may be helpful during the initial sales process. Round-trip is also a more accurate representation of actual costs associated with you traveling on behalf of a client.

Should I just use the rates provided by the IRS?

Each year, the IRS releases Standard Mileage Rates. In 2022, the amount was 58.5 cents per mile. Check with the IRS or your tax professional each year and track mileage for any business purposes. Regardless if you charge travel fees or not, you can deduct the cost per mile that you travel for business. Talk to your accountant about how to do it right.

Remember that the number provided by the IRS each year is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile. It's probably a mistake to charge clients based on rates set by the IRS.

How much should I charge my clients for mileage?

This answer will vary by market, service type, and ideal customer profile. Here are three factors to consider when calculating a travel fee:

Travel time

One of the more significant expenses is your time, and travel will effectively increase the time you need to dedicate to complete your service. If you have staff, you probably want to pay them for travel time to ensure they want to work a booking or event.

Fuel costs

Gas prices are outrageous. Do a rough calculation to see what it goes to drive 15, 25, or 50 miles based on your fully-loaded vehicle.

Vehicle wear and tear

The more you drive a vehicle, the more it costs to own due to depreciation, interest on your loan, insurance premiums, maintenance, and repairs. Estimates can be as low as $0.21 per mile and more than $0.62 per mile. You can use this handy calculator to get an estimate for your vehicle.

Example Travel Fee Calculation

Here is an example of how one might estimate the true costs of travel.

Fuel - $0.206 per mile

Cost per gallon of fuel: $4.33

Miles per gallon of fuel: 21

Fuel cost per mile = $0.206 cents per mile ($4.33 / 21)

Wear & Tear - $0.66 per mile

5 Year Vehicle Wear and Tear = $49,515

Vehicle Wear and Tear Per Year = $9903 ($49,515/ 5)

Per Mile Wear and Tear = $0.66 ($9903 / 15,000 miles)

Staff Costs - $0.517 per mile

Distance to Venue: 38.7 Miles

Travel Time: 1 Hour

Hourly Rate: $20

Cost per mile = $0.517 ($20 / 38.7 miles)

Estimated Travel Fee

$1.38 per mile ($0.206 + $0.66 + $0.517)

Automatic Travel Fee Calculations

Watch how Check Cherry makes it easy to calculate and charge travel fees. You can create multiple travel zones, limit bookings outside your service area, and more.

Overall, 2021 was a great year here at Check Cherry: improved market conditions allowed our customers to thrive. While the first quarter was still slow, the rest of 2021 showed substantial booking volume. 

Around this time last year, revenue collected for our customers was down 54.3% Y/Y. That steep drop was the direct result of the pandemic and canceled events. I'm happy to share revenue collected on the Check Cherry platform is up 294.1% when compared to this time last year.

Platform Developments

We made meaningful progress on improving Check Cherry's online booking software last year. Just like the previous years, we listened to you, implemented customer feedback, and laid the groundwork for more exciting changes to come. A big thank you to all of you who took the time to let us know how Check Cherry could be better.

Here are some highlights from 2021:

Payment Enhancements

We redesigned the workflow for making payments and added support for Apple Pay and Google Pay. You can also save client cards and charge them at a later time. We strongly believe payments are a core to Check Cherry and represent one of the more significant opportunities to help our customers grow by making it easy to get paid. In 2022, we want to continue enhancing payment features.

Flex Pricing

Developing a system that encourages a standardized way of selling with packages yet offers enough flexibility to reflect real-world situations is one of the more considerable challenges we face.

In 2021, we introduced Flex Pricing, so you can automatically add surcharges or discounts based on several factors. Common examples include increased pricing for high-demand dates such as New Year's Eve and discounts for bookings scheduled on less demanding dates such as weekdays.

Flex pricing has been a popular feature, and we see more opportunities to help you hone in one of the perfect pricing strategies so you can maximize profitability.

Multi-date Bookings

We finally added support for multiple dates and times per booking. It was a long outstanding feature request, and it required quite a bit of work to make it happen. It feels good to get this one behind us, and we see more opportunities to leverage the underlying changes to make Check Cherry better in the future.

So if you're booking multi-day events or selling two packages to the same client with different start and end times, Check Cherry has a solid solution to help manage more complex bookings.

Custom Booking Questions

Another frequent feature request was to allow you to collect more information during the booking process. I'm happy to say we found a paradigm that meets our need to standardize data and offer high-fidelity software with your need to ask questions specific to how you do business. 

With Custom Questions, you can add optional or required questions to the booking engine. This first iteration is only available during the online booking process, but we plan to bring them to proposals and mini sessions in the future.

Date Only Scheduling Mode

Most of you bill hourly or at a flat rate per package. However, some charge a daily/weekend rate for event space or equipment rentals. In 2021, we added a new scheduling mode allowing for packages to bill based on a daily rate. We're always excited about expanding the usefulness of Check Cherry and look forward to seeing how this feature develops in 2022.

Unit-Based Pricing

A common feature request from event space owners, real estate photographers, and caterers was an elegant solution to vary pricing by quantity, such as guest count or square footage.

New in 2021, you can now configure packages to charge based on Unit Pricing. This new option also works well with Check Cherry's add-on system and allows an opportunity for add-on prices to increase as the number of units increases.

Better Mini Sessions

In 2021, our mini session scheduling feature set continued to improve. For example, you can now sell add-ons with mini-sessions giving you another option to help maximize revenue. We also added the opportunity to offer discount codes giving you another marketing tool to sell better. Check Cherry's questionnaires were also brought to mini sessions, so it's easy to collect more data after the initial booking. We made the process of rescheduling mini sessions a lot more intuitive, and mini session clients can now save a card on file for future use.

Performance Improvements

Fast page load times matter, and I'm happy to share 95% of Check Cherry web requests are complete within 735ms or less. That's the result of work we performed in 2021, including improved image processing, upgraded servers, more robust message processing, and more. 

Reporting Upgrades

Giving you excellent access to your data has always been important to us. This year we added support for saving reports for frequent access. We also added shortcuts to standard periods such as "Last Quarter", "Last Month", and "This Year". There were also several smaller changes such as sorting by booking total and filtering by staff or customers account.

Better Booking Attachments

We enhanced features for attaching files to bookings adding both client-level and staff-level permissions. You can now add attachments to be seen only by staff members or admins. You can also add an attachment that links to a document stored in the cloud, such as Google Drive, which is a great way to share a document such as a staff guide while managing it in one place.

QR Codes Everywhere

It seems like QR Codes have officially hit the mainstream. In 2021, we added the option to insert QR Codes in Automated Messages, and anywhere you can copy a link in Check Cherry, you can also generate a QR Code. So if you are looking for an easy way for people to start the online booking process in person, just grab the QR code and drop them right into the booking engine.

Questionnaire Improvements

To reduce confusion, we renamed Forms to Questionnaires. We added signature and file upload field types as options for your clients and staff to complete. We also added an option to upload an image as a label, giving customers more context when filling out a questionnaire.

New Integrations

Check Cherry integrated with the popular photo booth backdrop provider PB Backdrops in 2021. Now you can pull in hundreds of awesome backdrop designs to give your clients more options. You can also set prices for all backdrops in a category, so it's easy to charge extra for any backdrops you don't already own, but include the ones you already own for free.

Better Client Accounts

We enhanced features for user accounts, and you can now add multiple client accounts to a booking. Furthermore, there are options to hide pricing for client accounts and prevent a specific client from receiving automated messaging, which can be used to give wedding planners and other third parties access to the booking.

Easier Automated Messages

We updated the UI for managing Automated Messages. With tags and previews, it's now easier than ever to review, preview and organize your email and text message templates. We also added the option to pull in some templates when manually crafting a new message from Check Cherry.

Proposals Builder Enhancements

The process of building proposals is easier than ever. Check Cherry is now more thoughtful about which options will be shown and required based on your package settings.

Tons of smaller stuff

As usual, much of the software development work completed was smaller in scope and not highlight-worthy. However, these minor changes add up in significant ways, and over time they make Check Cherry more enjoyable, more reliable, and just overall better.

Looking at 2022

We're excited about 2022. Check Cherry has come so far over the years, and we'll have an opportunity to continue improving our service and making it even better. 

Thank you for being a customer and helping us create something unique. We love seeing our customers do well and are excited to introduce new ways to help you thrive in 2022. 

Selling out your mini sessions is key to making them an effective of your photography business. It's also great marketing because it shows people you are in high demand.

The first step in selling out your mini sessions is to get the word out to your audience. Often, this means posting advertisements online and sending a flyer via email to past clients. In both cases, this first impression of your mini sessions will make or break them. 

In this article, we'll cover practical tips for making your mini session flyers more effective so you can book more clients.

Promote The Location

Your mini sessions should be convenient for both you and your clients. By advertising the photoshoot location, you'll help people know how far of a drive it will be for them. 

Share The Date(s)

Along with the location, people will need to know which date you plan on hosting your mini session. If you have multiple dates for the same theme, make it clear there are options.

There is no need to get bogged down and list specific time slots. Leaving a reason for people to learn more is a great way to gauge interest.

Make The Purpose Clear

The best mini sessions have a purpose or theme. Let people know why they need to stop what they are doing and book a slot by today. For example, is this an excellent opportunity to get pictures for Christmas cards? 

Suggested article: Ideas For Mini Sessions

Provide A Sample

One of the most effective ways to convey the value of a mini session is to provide a sample photo of what one should expect from participating. While many mini session templates online have slots for multiple images, we recommend leading with one great photo. It will help your flyer feel less cluttered, be more prominent and give you room to focus on other important details listed in this article.

Include Deliverables And Price

Provide a brief description of what is included with the mini session, along with the associated cost. Common deliverables are the number of finished images, usage rights, and turnaround time. While it's wise to offer optional upsells as add-ons, you should avoid cluttering up your flyer with too much info and show more options later in the sales process.

Include A Call-to-action

Now that you've given people enough information to let them know if it's a good fit, it's time to let them know how to proceed. Don't be coy or shy here; include short instructions covering how one can book. Call-to-action examples include:

"Text to book | 555-909-2360"

"Call For Avalalbity | 555-415-1212"

"Book Online Now | https://rainier.checkcherry.com/mini_sessions"

"View Available Slots | https://rainier.checkcherry.com/mini_sessions"

Offer Online Scheduling

Let people know that securing a spot is hassle-free by using a quality mini session scheduler like Check Cherry. By showing the real-time availability of time slots, you'll save clients the frustration of going back and forth to secure a spot. You'll also be able to display optional add-ons during the booking process, which leads to more money in your pocket.