Where to begin, in the order that actually works — from an empty studio to one real family booked, paid, signed and delivered.
There are two halves to My Studio Books, and almost every wrong turn comes from mixing them up.
You set up your studio once. Your brand, your prices, your templates. Half an hour or so, and you never really do it again.
Then every client follows the same path. Book, invoice, contract, prep, shoot, gallery, order, deliver. Same path every time, which is the whole point — nothing to remember, nothing to miss.
This guide does the first half properly, then walks one real family through the second.
Bring your existing clients across first, before anything else. Two reasons.
It's the bit that feels riskiest, so getting it done takes the weight off. And an empty studio is hard to think in — everything makes more sense once your own families are sitting in it.
Importing sends nothing. Nobody is emailed, nothing is published, no client hears a word. It is completely safe to do on day one, before your branding is set.
What isn't safe before branding is sending. So: import first, then brand, and don't send a single invoice or email until the brand step is done.
Every tool worth using can export one. It's usually filed somewhere unglamorous — look for Export, Download, or Data, under settings, contacts, or your account area.
| Coming from | Where to look |
|---|---|
| HoneyBook | Contacts, then export |
| Dubsado | Clients, then export to CSV |
| Flodesk / Mailchimp | Audience or subscribers, then export |
| Studio Ninja | Clients, then export |
| Google Contacts | Export, choosing Google CSV |
| A spreadsheet | File → Download → comma separated values |
Don't tidy it first. Odd column names, columns you don't care about, dates in an American order, eleven years of mess — all fine. Tidying is what the next step is for.
Go to Clients and tap Import a list. Choose your file.
It will tell you how many rows it found. If that number looks wrong, stop here — you've probably exported the wrong thing, and it costs nothing to go back.
My Studio Books guesses where it can, and shows you what it guessed. You can change any of it. Anything left on skip is ignored, which is exactly what you want for the columns you don't care about.
The fields it can fill:
Email is the one worth getting right. It's what portals, invoices and galleries are built on later.
The one setting that matters most. Under Add these as, leave it on Past clients.
This keeps eleven years of history out of your active pipeline. Choose New leads and every single one lands in Leads as someone to chase this week, which is a miserable first morning. You can always move individuals across afterwards.
Two more worth ticking:
If you're bringing a mailing list across rather than clients, tick Add imported clients to my newsletter list, and use Add these contacts to one or more lists / tags to name the audience — you can send to that group later.
Nothing has happened until you tap Import clients. Up to that moment you can close the window and your studio is exactly as it was. If anything looks off in the preview, close it. Nothing is lost.
Importing again later is fine too. Tick Update clients I already have (match by email) and a second import fills in blanks rather than making duplicates.
Now the part that everything else copies from.
Go to Brand & settings and add your studio name, your logo, your colours, your session types, and your email signature.
Do this before you send your first invoice, email, gallery or form — because every one of them pulls its whole look from here. Set it now and it's right everywhere, forever. Set it later and you'll have sent a handful of clients something generic that doesn't look like you.
Running more than one brand? Add the second one here too, and switch between them from the top of your sidebar.
Two different things, and it's genuinely worth knowing which is which, because almost everybody puts something in the wrong one at first.
Brand & settings → Session types & packages.
These are the bundles a client picks when she books — your newborn session, your maternity session, what's included and what it costs.
Products & services, in the sidebar.
These are the extras you add to an invoice afterwards — prints, albums, USBs, digital files, add-ons.
Set your sales-tax rate here too, and mark each item taxable or not. It then fills itself in on every new invoice.
Build your invoice, contract and email templates once, in Templates. Every client after that is a tap, with the details filled in for you.
If you add a payment link to your invoice template, it carries through to every invoice you raise from it.
A workflow is your welcome email, your prep reminder and your follow-up, sending themselves at the right moment for every client without you.
Set up one. Not five. One, for your most common session type, and let it run for a few weeks before you build more.
If you attach a contract or a questionnaire to a workflow email, the link your client needs is added for you — you don't have to write anything in curly brackets.
Not sure what your journey even looks like? There's a free wizard that maps it in about ninety seconds: mystudiobooks.com/workflow-wizard.html
In Forms, grab your inquiry / contact form and paste it onto your website. New inquiries then land straight in Leads and start your follow-up on their own.
If you pasted any form before 23 September, copy it again. A stray character meant the older snippet drew nothing at all — an empty space on your site rather than a broken-looking one. Re-copying fixes it; the old snippet won't heal itself.
Pick a real client — ideally one with a session coming up — and walk her all the way through. An hour doing this teaches you more than a day of reading.
Every client has a private portal — her sessions, her balance, her galleries, anything waiting to be signed, in one place.
You never build it. It fills itself in from the steps above. Open any client and tap Send portal.
If you'd rather do this over a week than an afternoon:
These are all good and none of them are day one. Come back when you want them:
Three things, in this order:
One habit worth having. If the app says a newer build is ready, take it. Fixes land most days, and a tab left open for a week is a tab missing a week of them.
My Studio Books — the studio CRM made by a photographer, for photographers.
Welcome. We're glad you're here. 🤍