Navigating Check Cherry
After you've created a new account and confirmed your email address, we'll take you to your business dashboard. The dashboard will eventually show you an overview of what's going in your business, but for now it's filled with resources to get you started.
What do I need to do to start booking clients?
We've already pre-populated your account with some common default packages and sample add-ons as well as the check payment option so you can create a test booking without being charged for it.
Your Launch Center will walk you through your account set up. Just click the green button 'View Launch Center' to get started.
Top Nav
From left to right, here's what you'll find in the top nav:
Logo: The logo for your business or a link to upload it
Global Search: You can search for bookings, proposals, leads and support articles here.
Dashboard: The dashboard shows you your business operations at a glance. Once you have a test booking, you'll be able to customize it with many helpful widgets to give you all the information you want at a glance.
Sales: This menu is probably the most frequently used. It is full of things you need to work with on a "day-to-day" basis and includes leads, proposals, bookings, appointments, your calendar, reports, expenses and a lot more.
Manage: This menu is full of settings to manage your business. This is where you can come to manage packages, add-ons, backdrops, create a discount code, create and manage templates, set travel fees, and much more.
Your Name: Here you'll find your billing info, personal availability, support videos and much more. If you just want to see information specific to you (rather than business-wide) you'll find it here.
Create New: The "Create New" button is the quickest way to create a booking, proposal, lead or appointment. You can also access your online booking engine here to see the client experience.
Videos & Getting Started Checklist
Click the chat bubble in the lower right corner to chat with us
Chat: Remember when you could ask a question and get an answer from a real person? Well at Check Cherry you still can. No AI bots here - just real people who genuinely want to help you grow your business. Just click the chat icon in the very bottom right and let us know how we can help.
Welcome Call: And if you're looking to discuss Check Cherry in more detail, feel free to schedule a welcome call. Whether you're feeling stuck and not sure where to start or want to dig into detailed questions specific to your business, just grab a time and we'll send a Zoom link.
Core Concepts
Now that you know where to find things, let's look at a few core concepts in Check Cherry.
Leads, Proposals, and Bookings
A lead is somebody that has expressed interest in your services. Leads can be entered manually (maybe somebody called you on the phone), collected via our embeddable "Lead Forms", automatically created by Check Cherry (somebody started to book you online but didn't finish) and more. If you have a lead, your goal should be to gather enough information to provide them a proposal. Check Cherry provides you tools to send automated follow ups to leads and to keep track of your next steps. When you're ready to close the deal, you can convert your lead to a proposal in one click.
Once you have enough information to provide them a price, you can send them a proposal. Proposals can be created from scratch, or generated from a lead. The proposal will present the customer with details and pricing for their event, and walk them through e-signing their contract, paying their deposit, and setting up an account for future use. Once accepted a proposal will become a "Confirmed Booking".
Confirmed bookings are customers that have agreed to your terms and typically paid a deposit. A confirmed booking is most commonly created when a customer books you online or when they accept a proposal. While in confirmed booking status, your customer can choose from your designs, fill out questionnaires, download their invoice, make further payments toward their balance, and much more. It's common to have automated messages go out to the customer after they book you, in the lead up to their event date, and after the event is over.
Online Booking vs. Proposals
We understand that different businesses like to sell in different ways and need to handle different types of customers. We find that most event services fall into one of these selling styles:
Online Booking: Check Cherry allows businesses to offer online booking. With an online booking workflow, you would typically set up your packages and services within Check Cherry and then add a link to your website or social media allowing them to book you online. The customer will be able to build out their event and we'll calculate pricing, ensure availability, collect customer details, offer add-ons, calculate tax and travel, and prompt them to e-sign your contract and pay the deposit. In this workflow a customer will skip the "lead" and "proposal" statuses and go directly to a confirmed booking without any work on your end.
Collect Details and Send Proposal: With this workflow you'll typically be collecting details, following up with customers to build them a personalized offer, and sending them a proposal when you're ready to close the deal. Setting up your packages and add-ons within Check Cherry makes creating proposals super easy, but you can also create "custom or one-off" packages, override pricing, override your contract terms, and make other changes as needed. With this workflow you might embed one of our lead forms on your website to collect customer information, set up a series of email follow-ups to prompt them to get in touch with you, send them a proposal after talking to them, and then set up a series of follow-up emails to prompt them to finalize their proposal.
Hybrid Approach: Most Check Cherry customers use a mix of both of these approaches. Allowing for online booking allows for many customers to service themselves and to find answers to most of their most common questions. This frees up time to spend with clients that require more guidance or that have more custom requirements.
Packages and Add-Ons
By setting up packages and add-ons within Check Cherry, you make it easy for your customers to see exactly what they are getting and how much it costs. If you offer online booking to your customers your customers will be able to easily compare packages and choose what works best for them. Or if you prefer to send a customer a proposal, by choosing one of the packages within your account you'll be able to create a beautiful proposal in just a few clicks with all ready to go.
Harnessing the full power of Check Cherry
Check Cherry is great for helping you close deals, but this is just the beginning. As you get more familiar with Check Cherry you can start to explore the features that will help you take your business to the next level, all the way from getting started to doing thousands of events per year:
Payment processing features allow your customer to pay using credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, PayPal, and many more.
Scheduling and availability tools so you know where you need to be and when, and so you can ensure you're never overbooked.
Questionnaires to help you and your customers plan their event
Service-specific features such as Backdrop Selection, Design Template integrations, Music Planning and much more.
Powerful automation to send messages to leads, proposals and bookings. Make sure they have whatever they need to take the next step.
Staff management tools ensure your staff is in the loop and know what they need to do.
Checklists allow you to keep track of what and your staff need to do next.
Travel fee and sales tax calculations for wherever you are providing services.
Website Integration tools to ensure a seamless customer experience.
Native iOS and Android apps to help you and your staff when on the go.
Customizable dashboard and advanced reporting to make sure you can understand the health of your business and get the information needed for tax and planning purposes.
There's no need to try to learn everything at once though. Check Cherry can be as simple or as powerful as you need it to be. We recommend starting out simple: send out a proposal to your next customer or set up some packages and add the booking link to your site. If you get stuck, chat with us and we'll point you in the right direction. And as you're ready to take your business to the next level and take advantage of more advanced features, we'll be here to help you take the next step.