Delivery times
Your contract says "galleries within six weeks" and usually nothing anywhere counts. Bookings have dates and galleries have a delivery date, and if nothing joins them up you find out you are running late when the client asks — which is the worst possible moment and the one that costs the referral.
Setting the promise
- Go to Booking → Sessions and open a session type.
- Under Photographs promised within (days), type the number of days your
contract promises.
- Save the session.
It is set per session type, because a portrait sitting and a wedding are not the same promise. Leave it at 0 and no due date is counted for that session.
The number comes from you. Nothing is shown to the client and nothing is enforced — this is your own diary telling you the truth early.
Shot and not delivered
Home → Bookings has a panel, Photographs still owed, listing confirmed shoots that have happened and have no delivered gallery yet. Each shows who it was for, when it was shot and the date it is Promised by. Those furthest over come first.
| What it says | Meaning |
|---|---|
| (nothing) | More than a week to go |
| Due soon | Within a week of the promise |
| N days over | Past it, by that many days |
| No promise set | The session type has no number of days |
Due soon is the one that earns its keep. You want to know what is coming before it is late, because that is the week the extra evening still fixes it.
A shoot counts as delivered once you deliver a gallery for the same client after the shoot date — so link each gallery to its client (or booking) when you make it.
What you actually take
Under that list: over your last twenty deliveries, the median days from shoot to gallery, what you promised on average, and how many of those promises you kept.
Median rather than average, deliberately: one wedding that took nine months because somebody was ill should not move the number you plan against.
This is measured, not promised. A photographer who says six weeks and takes nine is better off knowing that from their own records than from a review — and it is often the number that leads somebody to rewrite their contract to something true.
Telling the client
Nothing is sent automatically about delivery times. If you are going to be late, you tell them, and you would rather do it in week five than week ten.
An automation on A shoot has happened is a good place to set an expectation while it is fresh.