Build a Dashboard That Runs Your Day

0:00 As Jud mentioned, you know, when we say the dashboard, it's the first thing you see when you log in. Um, if you're just getting started with Check Cherry, you know, if you don't have any data in your account yet, um, there won't be much there. You know, obviously we don't have much to show you. But, uh, once you've got some data in there, once you've got, you know,

0:16 some volume, some messages coming in and bookings and all that type of stuff, that's where, um, it becomes more important. And um I would say kind of the main things, you know, we have a a default one when you sign up, you know, it's it's kind of s basically, you know, what we've had since almost since day one, you know, kind of a graph when you first um you know, see there and then your

0:37 upcoming bookings and some common things and and generally that works pretty well for most people. Uh but you know if if you're if you like to kind of customize things, if you want to really dial in um what you see, uh the dashboard configuration is a great way to do that. And it um it's worth kind of considering like what it is you want to achieve. You know, is it better visibility

1:00 into your numbers? Um is it uh you know, some people prefer to see more of a calendar view and you know, everything revolves around the calendar, so they don't want to have to go to another place. And then some people just kind of want to see more information, you know, I want to see all my proposals, all my bookings, and who I need to kind of work on. And so, yeah, what's

1:18 next? Right. Exactly. Yeah. And so, um, whichever, you know, whichever kind of matches your style, matches what you're going for. Um, you can kind of configure it to do that. So, I guess to to start, we'll just kind of go into some of the basics. So, um, the dashboards currently, uh, it's worth mentioning admin. This uh only applies to the admins. Uh currently the staff have a fairly um

1:44 not a lot of flexibility. Like your staff accounts are going to be pretty hardcoded. And um you know that's something maybe we'll we'll talk about a little bit later, but basically um part of the reason for that is we want to only show staff what they have access to. And um you know it gets tricky with with all the different widgets and who should have access to what and

2:06 um so some more customizability there is something we do want to tackle but for now dashboards are mainly for your admins and mainly for just getting a highle visibility into your business. So to kind of start with customizing you know you'll see this link in the top right that says either something like switch dashboard or customize dashboard and that's where you can kind of get started. And so,

2:29 uh, to start, let's go to let's go to show all dashboards. Um, one thing that's worth mentioning, you know, if if you've haven't done anything with dashboards before, you're just going to have a single dashboard in your account. I think it's called something like classic. And, uh, that's all there is. You know, it's just a single dashboard. Um, but what you can do

2:49 is you can create additional dashboards. You can duplicate what you have and customize it. And you might want to do that for a couple of reasons. Um, first off, if you know, if you like this one, but you you want to play around with something, you might feel better just duplicating it and editing the copy and kind of dialing that in rather than um, you know, trying to build it from scratch. Uh,

3:11 the other thing is that if you do have multiple dashboards, you can quickly switch between them. And so all of your dashboards will show up there and, you know, it makes it real quick. you know, if you're kind of in scheduling mode, maybe you switch to that that calendar view or if you're in um you know, organization mode, you switch to something else. So, um so keep that in mind. Um

3:35 you can have a few different options and those can be tailored for different, you know, kind of sometimes Yeah, sometimes you have to wear multiple shoes or wear, you know, it's just, you know, I like this. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. And so, um so yeah, so that's kind of the first thing to mention. Um, next thing is just kind of the general idea of how it works. You know,

3:55 if you customize your dashboard or you go into any of these and and uh start editing. Um, you'll see a few things. So, first off, all of the widgets have this little thing where you can um, you know, some controls in the top right. So, you can close things, you can um, edit settings on them. If I click the uh, the the pencil, it'll show any settings

4:18 that might that there might be. Um, and you can drag and drop to move things around, too. Um, you can also have different like blocks for the dashboard. So, um, as an example on this dashboard, we've got this full width widget here. And then if I scroll down, I've got kind of a a 2/3 width layout, and then I've got a one-/ird width layout here. And then, um,

4:43 under that, it looks like we've got room for like a three layout. Um, you can change like these, you know, you can kind of tweak it to to match how you want. So, if you click on this little um this little edit symbol here, it'll show you a um a preview, you know, and you can switch it to a uh to more of a a 2x one or a full width or, you know, one by two and things like that. So,

5:09 um so you can kind of get in there and customize things um to to work better. And Matt, you can put any component in any column width, right? I mean, it's basically the format changes a little bit, but it doesn't matter. It's just how prominent do you want to make it. Yep. And the the um the components will adjust based on that, too. So, like,

5:30 as an example, this this recent messages widget here, if I drag this up to the full width, um I guess that doesn't change too much, but some of them are able to show a little bit more information. Um, I think a a good example of that is the uh which one? The the uh Well, the charts I know, dude. Yeah. And the the checklist is a a real good example of that. You know, if you're in

5:56 um this little this little one by three area, we just don't have much room for a checklist. But if I go to full width, um you know, I have a lot more room and I can show like wider controls and things like that. Um, also it's going to, you know, kind of depend if you're on mobile or desktop. Um, but basically the widget should resize to kind of handle what what we have room for. So,

6:19 you know, when they're on mobile, they'll have a little bit more compact view and then when they're on desktop, um, they can be a little bit um, you know, take up more room, show more information and things like that. So, um, so feel free to kind of play around with that and, you know, see what works well. Um, you know, when you're on your your main dashboard, like

6:37 you'll kind of find like, you know, that first widget is going to be what I call above the fold. You know, it's the first thing you're going to see. So, it totally makes sense to, you know, maybe you can squeeze something else in there that maybe your past due widget fits in here or um your checklist or kind of the most high priority things. Um, and then as you scroll down,

6:55 you might have more stuff under Yeah, you could drag and drop and and place things where you want. I think the higher it is, the more you're going to see it. Obviously, the wider the width, the more obvious it's going to be. Um, and I think you really got to, you know, everybody's got to define what is it they want to see a lot. I think past is a great one. I like Yeah. Yep. Like remind me

7:16 who owes money or who's passed to. I don't want to forget about that. Let me keep up with them. Yeah. Exactly. Forget that. And then um another thing that's kind of interesting or or worth knowing is you can have multiple copies of the same widget. So, you know, I've got this revenue snapshot. Um, you know, I could add another one over here. And you know, that seems I really like my

7:36 sales. Yeah, I really want to see these sales. [laughter] Um, which seems pointless at first, but one thing that's that's kind of interesting is we'll save. Like if I switch, you know, over here, I'm showing my scheduled payments. Um, and you can toggle between pretty quickly, but um, you know, if I leave and come back to this page, it's going to save the settings. So,

7:58 if I set this other one to payments, um, now I've got two widgets that kind of show different views, um, just at a glance. And so, you know, you can see things like, you know, customize them, set filters, you know, maybe a a plus or minus three months or last three months or things like that. So, um, so just another little little thing that can kind of come in

8:18 handy sometimes. Um, every widget persists in in terms of the settings like that. And then um and then you can have multiple copies of the widgets that won't won't interfere with each other. So I like it. Yeah. Is that a good segue into the widgets? I think so. I like it. So let's go to um let's customize one of these dashboards. And um click delete this one.

8:43 And once you you know once you have a layout here um basically you can add a widget anywhere. And of course you can move it around later. But basically, um, when you click that add, then you're going to see a preview and description of all the different widgets that are available. Um, and so we're going to kind of go through these, um, you know, one at a time or group by

9:05 group, but lots of things in here. Um, they're kind of organized by different categories. So, um, so we'll just kind of kind of dig into some of them, but uh, the first one is the revenue snapshot graph. And that one you've probably already seen. It's the default one that comes with your account. Um, but let's go uh let's take a quick look into

9:25 uh some of those settings. So, the revenue snapshot has has three different modes or views or whatever you want to call them in the top left here. Um, and what that what that controls is base it bases it on like like what type of view we're trying to get. So, let me switch to plus or minus 3 months. So, um, where this one can be useful is seeing like like

9:48 both past and future um, revenue. And so, in particular, I can see like, okay, I've got, you know, X dollars past due. I've got this money passed due. And then what what do I have projected in the future? You know, in June here, we've got it says $3,600 projected. And basically what that means, those are events that are scheduled to happen in June that you haven't been paid for.

10:12 And so with this view, you can kind of get an idea for, you know, how much money is, you know, you're waiting on, how much money you're expecting, and um kind of just the the eb and flow of how busy your business is. So, you know, over over time, you know, you can see, you know, if we go back like a year, we can see February was really busy on this account. Um,

10:34 but we really didn't uh didn't collect any money. Uh January was a good one. You know, we've got lots of money, but we've still got some past due and lots of past due on this account. So, um hopefully your account isn't full of red like that. Yeah. [clears throat] You can also projected revenue what was say projected revenue is booked but not collected.

10:53 Correct. Yep. Or past due. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. And so typically you're not anything in the future. I mean you're not going to have future money past due and you know unless based on the due date I guess. Yeah. It's based on due date. Yeah. Um, and a common question we get is like, okay, well, it says I've got like, you know, 19 bookings. How do I know what those are?

11:14 Generally, you can click it and it'll take you to the report with those filters enabled. So, um, so you can see kind of what what those are. If it doesn't match exactly, um, a lot of times it's because you have like a canceled event or something like that, but that should give you a pretty pretty good overview of, and always you can chat with us and ask questions. We can help you.

11:36 Um and then uh yeah, so the um and then of course you can group by, you know, quarterly, you know, see last several years and do custom date ranges, all types of stuff. Um but I kind of like the monthly view the best. Um payments are so this is based kind of anchored based on the event date. So if I'm holding an event in December, um it's going to show up on this calendar for December.

12:03 payment date is when you received payment, right? And so that's going to be um there's generally, you know, unless you're doing payment plans, there's generally two payments you're going to receive. Uh deposit and then the final payment. And this will show you all the revenue you got during a month. So in February, we collected 25 grand.

12:22 And maybe that was deposit amounts, maybe that was final payments, uh maybe scheduled payments, but that's going to show your um actual revenue that you know, basically what hit the bank, so to speak. Um that's also typically going to be what you're going to pay taxes on. So um you know, that's this is ultimately the number that matters. You know, how much money did you really collect?

12:44 Um whereas the scheduled is a little bit more like forwardlooking, I think. And then the last one is based on date booked. And this I think is more useful from like a sales perspective. So um so instead of like looking at the payment date or the event date, it's going to look at your closing date exactly like when what are we closing? You know, who

13:08 how much did we close in February? Um how much did we close in March? And that's, you know, that's kind of your, uh, you know, if you're tracking like month- over-month sales or comparing to last year around this time. Um, this one is super important because this is kind of the most actionable, right? Like this is, okay, last year in February we booked, you know, 100K. This

13:28 month we're at 50. What's going on? We need to to, you know, see what's going on. So, and so, yeah, you can't do year-over-year comparison with this chart in a on a month-by-month basis. I mean, obviously, he can change the group by a year. But you probably want to know, hey, look, I mean, February of last year, are we are we on track, you know, behind? Where are we at?

13:50 That can be really helpful. And we have some other widgets that help with the the Euro comparisons. Exactly. Um, and then a couple of last things. You know, these are pretty self-explanatory, but um total revenue, that's going to show um you know, basically how much revenue uh did you, you know, of your bookings scheduled in this time range, you know. So, we've got it last

14:11 12 months of all the bookings you had in in the last 12 months, you know, how much revenue were you supposed to get? How much did you actually get? Um, and how much are you still waiting on? Uh, similarly, this will show anything past due. Um, postponed is kind of not super widely used, but say somebody calls up and they're like, "Hey, we just lost our venue. You know, can we

14:33 we move, you know, can we use we don't know the date?" Yeah. Yeah. We added this during co I mean that was kind of when when everything was postponed so it's this one is less common now but still occasionally useful. And then um some people like to track the average per booking. Uh that can be useful for just kind of keeping an eye on like you know well what you know what do we make on

14:52 an average booking. Um I think that's less useful if you have a lot of different types of bookings. Um but still sometimes useful. Mhm. The one last thing um that we can't see in this account, but you may see in yours is there is a brand filter. So, if you have multiple brands, uh you can uh you can switch between them there. So, um so that can be helpful as well. Um I might actually because I

15:17 think it'll be useful for this webinar, I might add a quick brand to our uh to our account. Um, we're going to have something called demo events and demo@acample.com. We're all watching you type. Yeah. [laughter] So, we'll go back to here and now now I can switch between these brands and uh and it'll filter based on that. So,

15:43 um helpful for, you know, if you do have multiple brands and again that filter will stick. So if I leave and then come back, um it's going to stay on that filter. So you know, you might even have a a graph for each brand that you just kind of leave on leave on there as well. So um next one under the uh um and again basically you'll see all these when you go to add a widget,

16:05 but the next one in the list was the revenue growth chart. And that one is pretty similar to this, but it's more for tracking year-over-year changes. And it's got the same options. you know, it's got your payment date, your book date, your schedule date, but it's going to show how that compares to last year. And I guess in this account, we don't we don't have any

16:25 activity for last year, but this is our new fancy demo account that is is less than a year old. So, yeah. But what you can do is you can see, okay, in February, you know, we've got uh 16 bookings, you know, six 96k in revenue, and then the previous period was zero. I didn't think of that. Um there would be another colored line basically. um that would show you last year. Yeah, this little

16:49 uh flat gray line is is what that would be your last year line. So um and again you can kind of change that for um based on payment date or book date or things like that. And so maybe if we do like the last month by week we need Yeah. What's our cash flow compared to last year? How many sales are we closing compared to last year? Yeah. Right. So anyway, um, next one that

17:16 we're going to look at is the lead activity. Um, and again, that's going to be a year-over-year or, uh, you know, kind of period over period type of graph. And what that's going to show you is lead count, um, by date created. So, if you want to track your lead activity, you know, how many people are submitting leads, how many people are filling out your contact form, um you know,

17:39 however you kind of bring your leads into Check Cherry, uh this is a great graph for that. Um and that'll show you based on when the leads came in. Uh date scheduled, similar except it's going to be based on the scheduled date of the event. So, if somebody fills out your contact form and says, "Hey, I've got an event in February." Um you can see you know you can compare that over time.

18:02 I got a question from Rick or a comment. He says the lead activity it would be nice to have to see the conversion comparison as well. And so uh lead converted yeah to to a proposal or I guess booking ultimately. Yeah it's an interesting idea. Yeah the lead conversion rate that's something that people have have asked for a few times and it makes sense. Um the thing that's a little weird

18:25 about with Check Cherry, we don't not everybody comes in as a lead. You might just directly create them a proposal or um they might come in through the online booking. So um so I don't quite know what that what that number looks like or how we how we get there, but um but I agree. Some way to kind of track like your uh your conversion rate over time, I think would would totally make sense.

18:47 Um and then the last one real similar to the lead activity, but it's proposal activity. So how many proposals were created um you know how many uh based on either the creation date or the schedule date and you can compare that over time. So looking at this we actually have some data here um you know four proposals in April and then one proposal last year. So that's great you know

19:09 uh big increase on that. So um so those are kind of the graphs um that we support. Um the next section, um if you're kind of going through, you know, when you click that add item, um we looked at the charts and graphs. Uh the next section is down in the scheduling. So rather than adding these individually, I've just got these kind of pre-loaded on on some uh

19:35 on some dashboards here. But the uh the next one is the calendar widget. And all this is is basically it's what you see when you go to sales calendar. Um, but you know, some people were like, "Hey, I you know, I don't want to have to go there every time I log in." That's some people I can't tell you how many requests we had for that. They were like, "I just want to see the calendar when

19:55 I log in." Yep. Totally makes sense. So, Yep. Absolutely. So, uh, so yeah, same basic view. Um, if you go to a smaller uh view, it'll get a little bit more compact. I don't think you can get this one all the way to the smallest view. I think there's there's not room for it, but um but you can get a little bit smaller with it. And on this one, um you know, pretty similar to to

20:18 what you see on your sales calendar, but keep in mind again the the settings are sticky. So if you do have like, you know, if you do have something for like one brand or something, you know, if you have some configuration, um you might have a couple different versions of the calendar or, you know, things like that and those settings will stick just to this dashboard. Um and I don't know

20:38 that there's anything much to talk about it. Um, you know, you can go forward and back in time, see your confirmed events, your proposals. Uh, this one, you know, if you want to see like your expired proposals or things like that. By default, they're hidden, but you can toggle those on. Um, leads, pretty self-explanatory. Any um any leads based on the event date, so those

20:59 will only show up if you have a date for your for your leads. U mini sessions, appointments, um blockout dates. That's going to be for your like business businesswide blockout dates where you're, you know, out of town, you're traveling, you're not taking bookings. And then staff off is going to show any um basically anything that staff is scheduled off. So that might be,

21:20 hey, they take, you know, they're off uh they're only available from 2 to 6:00 p.m. or they're out of town on Monday or things like that. So that one can get a little bit messy if you have a lot of staff, but um but sometimes useful. Um, next one we're going to look at is this activity um for a date. And rather than a full calendar, this activity thing is kind of useful for just like

21:45 at a glance seeing what you have going on. Um, I think this is a good one to have like, you know, along with maybe your your revenue dashboard in kind of the top right or something. And basically what it'll show is any proposals you have scheduled for a date, any leads, um, you know, appointments, uh, or actually I don't think it includes appointments. I think

22:03 it includes any any customer activity that you have. Uh you can also click the title and go straight to a date. So if I go straight to the 26th, um I can see or I guess that's June. If I go if I want to jump straight to June 26, I can see oh I've got two proposals on there. Excuse me. And that's a good one again for when you're like on the phone with somebody,

22:25 you know, somebody calls up, hey, are you you know what's go do you have any availability? and then you can just jump there uh real quick and see see uh what you've got going on that day. Um appointments, same thing, you know, pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any appointments for a date, um that's helpful. Um again, that might be a good one to leave on your when you

22:45 first log in, you know, toward the top. Uh and that way it only shows up if you maybe you only have this show up if you have any appointments. Um go into the settings on on one of these. So, one thing that you'll see too for um for some of these is when you go to add them, there'll be some options in there. So, you might want to like filter by brand or filter by uh you

23:10 know, show either all appointments or just the ones that you're assigned to. Um so, definitely when you when you go to add a widget, it'll take you to a settings page or you can always edit it later and and see the settings. So, if you want to see all appointments instead of just yours, uh that's a a toggle you can do on the settings. Um, some of them have settings, some of them

23:27 don't. Most of them have at least a brand filter, uh, but some of them have more advanced things. This next one is staff activity. Uh, if you've got a lot of staff, this one can be really helpful. Uh, basically, it'll show you for a given date, you know, what's what's going on. You know, who's who's available, um, who's not available. Uh, you know, if they're assigned to something,

23:49 you know, Sally's partially available. She's available for 2 to six. um you know if they're assigned to an event it'll show that as well. Uh if they're out of town or something that'll it'll show that as well. So again you can jump straight to a certain date if you need to you know hey what's going on the 4th of July and you can see how how busy everybody is.

24:08 Um so those are kind of the scheduling widgets we have. Um, next let's go to um we have a bunch of like just kind of informational ones. And these ones are a little bit more like, you know, just kind of dry like just information, you know, like, hey, what are my upcoming bookings? So, I think this is one of the default ones we have on your account.

24:33 Um, and it just shows, you know, the next 10 or however many you want uh bookings to show up. So, in this case, you've got 10 total upcoming, but we've got it filtered to show three. Um, under those settings, you can change how many you want to show. You know, if you want to bump it up to five or 10 or something, you can. Um, you'll also see this option a lot of times,

24:52 hide this widget if no results. And basically, what that'll do is is um, you know, say you don't have any upcoming bookings. If you hide it, then it just won't won't show any placeholder. It won't show anything. It'll just kind of disappear. Um, and just comes down to preference. But sometimes, you know, like for uh for certain things, you you might um you might only want to show the widget

25:13 if you have something to show there rather than a bunch of placeholder data. But upcoming bookings, those are your future confirmed, you know, things you have out uh scheduled. You know, maybe you put that on your homepage. Make sure you don't forget to show up to something and and so it's right there. Imagine that's why you got check now. Yep. Yeah. That's a that's

25:34 a [laughter] yeah, I've heard that a lot of times from people like, you know, I forgot to I missed an event or I almost missed one, so that's why I signed up. Um, similarly, recently booked will show things that came in recently. Um, pretty self-explanatory, but uh, you know, if somebody booked you, uh, you know, the last week or or, um, I I think it'll basically show, uh, um,

25:58 yeah, I think that'll show the last, you know, three or five or however many you can you show uh, bookings. So, you can see who the most recent ones are. Um, so that's, you know, sometimes useful. Um, past bookings. Uh, this one's probably less useful, but if you do need to see like, um, this will be sorted by most recently. So, uh, you know,

26:19 these are the ones that you might need to, uh, post-processing. Yeah. Exactly. Yep. So, you need to attach a gallery or send them a follow-up email or something like that. Awaiting next contact. Um, could go over to let's go to our leads for a second. So, say you've got a, you know, you've got your leads coming in to check Cherry. Um,

26:42 one of the features that we've had people ask for is just kind of like, you know, maybe when they're adding a note, you know, hey, uh, I called them up, you know, talked to them. Um, they said, you know, not sure yet. Follow up next week or something. And you need a way to remember that. You know, you might set a next follow-up on that lead and it'll show a little note in the

27:05 in the notes. Um, but where that's useful or you know where that ties into the dashboard is um you might want to see those on your dashboard. You know the ones that are awaiting that next contact. So what this will do is anything that's awaiting a next contact, you know, it has a next followup date in the past. Um it'll show here. So you can see that make sure that you know you're

27:30 not forgetting anything. Um, again, that might be one that that's good to hide unless you have anything there. Um, and then that way if something is passed to or, you know, does need to be need to be handled, um, this will pop up and and you don't forget about that. We've got another comment here. Twilight says, "I'm new to Check Cherry. Where do you suggest I start for a photo booth company?"

27:52 And probably the default is probably pretty good, which you have already in terms of the dashboard. Mhm. Um, is that does that answer your question or you just is that a more general question and feel free to comment, but if it's more general, um, you know, you I would schedule a welcome call and chat with us. There's also tons of videos. Chat with us, ask questions,

28:13 um, add your packages, that type of stuff, but feel free to clarify. Go ahead, Matt. We we'll hop back. Yeah. Yeah. And I think with um, you know, if you're just getting started, I would generally I would just use the default dashboard. you know, it's kind of what we think is the the best for most people. Um, it's really when you start to,

28:31 you know, you have a ton of data or the other thing is if you're coming from another system and you're just used to seeing things in a certain way, you know, maybe in in that other system, they show the calendar when you log in and it's like, hey, you know, I need to that's how I work. Like, I can't, you know, I can't use a system that doesn't do that. Um, that's the other reason you

28:49 might or you have a realization that like, man, I keep on dropping the ball on X. You know what I mean? It'd be nice if it was in front of my face a little bit more. Exactly. If you don't set follow up dates, having next follow-up date components on your dashboard doesn't make any sense. Um, but I could see like past due I think upcoming bookings is helpful. Like, hey, I got to see

29:08 what's coming up. What do I have? What do I have to work on? Am I all set? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um, another one, recent leads. Pretty self-explanatory. These are people that recently filled out a lead form and and came in. Um, you know, um, proposals. Um, this one, you know, uh, see your upcoming proposals. You know, this one's for May 6. You know, you can follow up, do,

29:30 you know, do what you need to do on those. Um, proposals awaiting review. So, Check Cherry has a feature. You know, by default, a lot of our customers uh, allow for the online booking where um, you know, the customer comes through, they build out their event, they pay online, they pay the deposit, they sign and pay. Um, we do have a mode called request for proposal

29:54 where instead of actually building the event or actually signing and paying at the end, it instead goes to you. So, you can approve that, you know, make sure that it's uh something you want to do, make sure they they built something that works for you. And then once you're ready, you approve it and then send it back to them to uh to sign and pay. Um, this proposal is awaiting

30:14 review will show you those that are in that status. And I think they also they also get an email or something, right? I mean, I'm sure. Yeah. you get an email, but yeah, but it's easy to miss an email or you know, and so if you make heavy use of the the RFP process, the um that type of of proposal. Yeah, put that higher. Yeah, I would definitely put that up there.

30:35 Recently expired. Um with Check Cherry, you can either automatically have proposals expire or you can manually spe uh specify an expiration date. And there's a couple reasons you might want to expire proposals. Um, number one is you don't want to hold a date forever for somebody. You know, if they if they're not getting back to you or, you know, you want to make sure that that

30:57 you're saving that date for somebody that um that might need it. Um, the other reason is uh it puts a little bit of an urgency on the on the buyer to make a decision. So, and it gives you an excuse to reach out to them. So, you might have a couple of emails that go out saying, "Hey, just a reminder your your proposal is about to expire." Or um things like that. recently expired

31:16 is helpful if you just want to kind of see like oh which ones didn't sign which ones you know got all the way to the end like maybe this is like this is one I was really like counting on like let me pick up the phone and see what happened there y or um something like that um similarly expiring soon idea except these ones haven't expired but again it's like hey this is going to expire in two days

31:38 I was really sure we were going to get that one like what's going on how why haven't they signed and then lastly upcoming appointments. So, uh, Chick Sherry supports appointments. It's kind of similar to like a Calendumly or, uh, something like that where, you know, you just have one-on-one calls maybe via Zoom or phone or things like that.

31:58 And if you make use of that feature, the upcoming appointment widget can be helpful as well. Um, and then next one, next kind of category or group of widgets we have are what we call like they're in the what we call the organization category. And these are more about just kind of like getting stuff done. Um, you know, less about bookings and revenue and and more about

32:23 like things you need to do. So, if you make use of the to-do list features or the checklist features in check cherry, um there's a widget that you can enable that'll show that um show that you can come see what's what's coming up, what you need to do, check stuff off, uh expand to see more details, uh view the event, all that type of stuff. So, um so that one's helpful for that.

32:47 Um, again, that one's you can also uh search and filter and um this is another one where like, you know, maybe have a couple couple different views of it with different filters. Um, but but all of these options are kind of sticky. You can also quickly add a to-do um to your list as well. So, if you need to remember to do something in a couple days, you know, that that's a quick way to

33:09 to add those. Um, next one we're going to look at is this um, what we call lead count. And by default, it's kind of boring. You know, it sounds not super useful. It's like, okay, I can see how many leads I have. You know, why do I care about that? Um, most most of the time, you'd probably want to specify how far back you want to go. So, maybe you want to track, oh,

33:32 well, how many do I have in the last uh year or something? Um, you know, and say, okay, we're behind. 32. You know, that's not Yeah. Not not super super exciting. But where that one gets more useful is you can group by. So, by default, it says all leads, but in the settings, you can change by say lead source. And that'll give you a nice count of, okay, we got 25 unknown,

33:56 one Facebook, two friends and family, one Google. Or you could change it to lead type. And um in this account, we've got statuses of hot, warm, and cold. And now I can all of a sudden see which of my leads are in each of those statuses. And um you know, maybe I don't maybe I want to see all of them. And I've got, you know, 27 one hot. Let me jump to that one real quick. Or let

34:20 me jump to that warm one real quick. Um origin. That's going to be things source versus origin. I didn't know what what is the difference. [laughter] I never do until I try it. Yep. So the origin is like the origin within with uh checkerry. Yeah. So a lead form, you know, you've got a lead form embedded in your website. How many leads came through that? How many did you manually

34:48 entry? How many did you uh do for online booking? Um there might be others too. You know, if you do like Zapier or uh things like that, those will show up as well. And then I think the last one is refer. Let's see if we have any data. We don't. um that's going to be good for tracking. If you use the referral tracking features in Check Cherry, you can see where um where leads came from. So,

35:11 basically, we'll give you a link or you can manually assign them, but you can assign uh um a uh a refer to to a lead or a booking or anything. Um let's say Jud referred this one to us. I need commission. Yep. So, maybe Jud gets a commission on this. And you can see here where you know who's sending stuff over. You know I've got 31 unknown and then one assigned to

35:37 Jud. Um so again can be helpful. Um proposal count real similar same basic you know features. You can see how far back you want to go. And then the only grouping on this one is by status. And what status refers to is uh these are kind of hard hardcoded statuses in check cherry but basically how many are unviewed. So, you've created the proposal, but we don't have any

36:02 record of anybody ever viewing it. You know, they never clicked that link in the email and and loaded the proposal. So, we've got 11 in that status. Uh five uh that are viewed. So, that's great. You know, somebody viewed it, but hey, why didn't they accept it? Um 106 that are expired, you know, that we've created and then 17 that were accepted. So, there was a question

36:22 earlier about conversion rate. That's probably the closest you can get. you know, you can see like, okay, we've got, you know, X outstanding and then 17 that were um that were accepted. And then the last one is uh the booking count widget. And so again, that'll kind of have um bookings by like their status. And so that's a quick way to see like which ones don't have

36:46 staff assigned or don't have questionnaires assigned or waiting backdrop or things like that. Um, sometimes people will ask about like, "Oh, does Check Cherry have like a funnel?" And this is this gets you reasonably close um in that we'll show you, you know, all of the um you know, you can kind of see what what you need to do, what you need to do. Um what's

37:08 different than a traditional funnel is somebody might be in multiple statuses, right? Like I might both have staff unassigned and have uh you know awaiting questionnaires. So, in that case, it's going to show in both of those rather than just, you know. Yeah. But again, this is a great way to kind of see what what it is you need to do. Click

37:28 for the details and it'll load them up. I got a couple of comments or questions here. So, Scott says he'd love to see a webinar on checklists in the future. And I don't know that we've done one. That's Yeah, I don't know to see. Um, and then Richard says, "How does the conversion rate when you jump straight to proposal?" And so I think over with the when he was

37:46 referring to that Richard those those were just proposals and that's kind of one of the tricks is not every lead is optional. Yep. Quite frankly proposal is optional too. U and that's one of it's um it's interesting because the more flexible the system is some of that stuff breaks down you know that oh the conveniences of oh it goes from step one 2 3 4 you know all that stuff. Um

38:10 so worth mentioning. Um, and then Rosie says, "If there is time, can you please uh cover how online proposal requests work? I believe these options when adding a new package." Um, yeah, I mean, we could we I Rosie, I think there's a video I can show you the proposal request or I can just chat with you and send you the link. U, but let's see where let's see where we at if we got time. Yeah,

38:28 we might have some time. I think this would be quick. So, um, and then the last uh status here or the last group we had just kind of almost like miscellaneous, I think. So, um, things that didn't fit in anything else. So, messaging tools and resources. So, um, so recent messages, you know, anything you recently received is going to show up there. Um, you know, pretty,

38:53 uh, pretty self-explanatory. Um, and then messages awaiting review. That's just going to be these. So if you take if you use the message uh waiting review feature in check cherry you know by default when an automated message goes out we'll go ahead and just send it directly to the customer. Um but sometimes it's nice to have a chance to review those first and make changes. Um and so

39:16 when when that feature is enabled on an automation instead of going to the customer it's just going to go into this queue here. Uh this widget will show those items and if it looks good you know hit send. If not, you can um come in, you can edit, you can delete, you can do things like that. And then last couple, this uh this is our old getting started. We got to do something with that.

39:41 Always forgetting about it. Yep. This it's always been there. We've we've had it for, you know, X years now. Um we still exist, so still uh still listed. Um and then the last one is uh I forget what we call it in the in the ad item. It's called uh quick actions toolbar. Um but it's just a couple of of common common tools or common uh um so I really like that

40:05 one. But yeah. Yeah. And frankly these ones were like when we made the the widgets uh customizable we had these things that were on the dashboard. It's like well where do we how do we make this? We just made them widgets. Yeah. So um but the um it's helpful. It's got a create new basically does the same thing as the top there. Um, it's got some common tools that are helpful,

40:28 uh, including check availability. Uh, that'll take you straight to where you can put a date, a time, and see if you're available. Um, and then a quick brand switcher. So, it's common, you know, hey, I want to quickly toggle between brands. Um, basically that's, you know, not going to do a lot other than, you know, when you go to create bookings, you create proposals,

40:48 the default brand is going to be whatever, whichever one you're currently on. So, now, uh, Matt, question. Why not just have everything on the dashboard? Um, so I think the the main reason um you know obviously uh could be performance issues there although you know that's probably more our problem than yours but um but I think it's more about it's just kind of if if you just

41:12 have infinite information then everything just kind of becomes it loses importance right? Yeah. It all loses importance. You basically make your dashboard not helpful. Yeah. Exactly. So, you're going to, you know, what are the odds you check the 27th widget down, you know, for for or, you know, that it catches your eye. So, um, definitely, you know, focus on the things,

41:32 especially the one that that shows up when you log in. Focus on the things that are most important to, you know, that that you don't want to miss, you know, that you uh um, you know, Yeah. that you don't want to miss or uh, you know, the the revenue one's good for a little, you know, if things are going well, it's a little dopamine hit. you know, it's like,

41:51 hey, look, you know, our numbers are up. So, um, so that's a fun one, too. But, um, in general, I would say the things that that you don't want to miss. And then have some extra dashboards for just kind of different modes that you're thinking. You know, when you're at the end of the year, like really delving into numbers, maybe you really have some some chart ones there or things like

42:09 that. But, um, but yeah, and definitely play around with it. You know, there's no no right or wrong way. You know, if uh something seems like it would be helpful, you know, try it out. If it's not, take it out. Um, you know, you can definitely kind of evolve things over time.