Stages, sources and the age of an enquiry

When to use this

Use this page when the five statuses are not enough to describe how a job moves through your studio, when you want to know which of your links and referrers bring the enquiries that book, or when you want to see at a glance which enquiries are still waiting for a reply.

Everything here lives on the one Events board. Nothing is added beside it.

Stages inside statuses

Every event still has one of the five statuses: Lead, Proposal, Booked, Completed and Canceled. A stage is a step inside one of them. The six built-in stages are the columns you already know: Lead, Proposal, Accepted, Week-of, Completed and Canceled. A studio that never opens Settings sees today’s board.

Add a stage

1. Open Business → Stages. The top of the page shows your board from left to right, and it changes as you edit.
2. Find the card for the status the new step belongs to, for example Lead.
3. Choose Add a stage under Lead, give it a name and a color, and add it.
4. Drag the rows, or use the arrows, to put it in order.

Select a stage’s name to rename it, and its color dot to change the color. Built-in stages carry a Built in label, and the first stage in each status says what lands there, for example “New enquiries land here”.

Because you choose where the stage sits, BloomBoard already knows what it means. Dragging a card into “Deposit paid” under Booked books the event, exactly as dragging into Accepted does. Moving a card between two stages in the same status changes nothing underneath.

With task lists on, moving a card forward while some of its tasks are due, late or undated first asks you to Move anyway or Not yet. See Task lists.

Built-in stages can be renamed but not deleted, so a card always has somewhere to land. Many studios rename the built-in Lead stage to “New” once they add stages after it. Week-of is automatic by date: it always sits last under Booked, and you cannot drag a card into it.

You can also rename a stage, change its color, add a stage after it, or move it left and right from the menu on any column header on the board. A stage with cards inside cannot be deleted until you move them.

Groups on the board

Once a status holds more than one stage, a band appears above its columns with the status name and the number of cards. The chevron on the band collapses the whole group to a narrow strip; a status with a single stage keeps the chevron on its own column header. The board remembers what you collapsed.

Mark lost, and reopen

Marking an enquiry or a proposal lost moves it to Lost under Canceled and asks for a reason, with an optional note. Do it from the card’s menu on the board, or from the status chip at the top of the event. Reopen from the same chip brings the event back as a lead.

Canceled stays hidden by default, as before. Show it from the column picker when you need to find a lost event.

Ask the assistant

Owners and admins can ask the assistant to move an event to a stage, mark it lost with a reason, reopen it, mark a lead replied, set its lead source, and add or remove tags, for example “move the Hart wedding to Proposal sent”. Each change has Undo. New stages, lost reasons and tags are made here in Business.

Where an enquiry came from

Two fields answer two different questions, and both show on the event and on its card:

• Found us via is measured: the share link the visitor used, or the site that sent them. Only you can change it, and it is set once, at first contact.
• Heard about us from is what the client told you on the form, with a name when they said a friend, a planner or a venue.

Open the event and choose the source line at the top, next to the date and venue, to correct either one or to add tags. Every correction is kept in the event’s history, so last quarter’s numbers do not change: a correction made after the month of arrival has closed leaves that month’s Analytics as it was, unless the enquiry arrived with no source at all, in which case the correction fills the gap.

The lists behind both fields, the lost reasons and your tags live at Business → Lead sources, each as a row of chips. They come seeded. Select a chip’s name to rename it, select × to remove it, or use the dashed chip at the end to add one. A number on a chip shows how many events use it. Removing a value that is in use asks where its events should go. Spam is built in and cannot be renamed or removed.

A client’s estimate on the card

When a client enquired with your price guide, the money line on their card reads Client estimate and the range the client saw, in place of their budget. Their budget stays on the brief. Once a proposal is accepted, the line reads Accepted as before. See Show a price guide on your website.

The age chip and the badge

An unanswered card in the Lead group shows how long it has waited since it arrived. Past your reply time, the card turns amber. The reply time is 24 hours unless you change it: open Business → Stages and set Reply time, at the foot of the Lead card. Type a whole number of hours, from 1 to 336. It saves when you leave the field or press Enter, and Saved shows beside it. Owners and admins can change it; staff can see it.

The Events item in the side rail carries the number of enquiries past your reply time. Choose the number and the board opens with Lead expanded and every other group collapsed for that visit.

The timer stops when a person on your team sends the first email to the client from BloomBoard. An automatic acknowledgement never counts. If you phoned or replied on WhatsApp instead, choose Mark as replied on the card or from the status chip and add a short note.

Common mistakes

• Adding a stage in the wrong status. The status decides what a stage means for proposals, deposits, Week-of and Analytics. If a stage ended up under the wrong status, add it again under the right one and move its cards.
• Expecting Week-of to accept a drop. It fills itself in the week of delivery. Move the event’s date instead.
• Correcting “Found us via” to match the client’s answer. Keep both. The difference between what brought them and what they told you is the point of the Enquiries view in Analytics.

Related pages

• Work the Events board
• Understand event statuses
• Capture enquiries with your public link
• Track your finances and enquiries