Order Forms

An order form is a public booking page for your business. You share its link with agents; they pick services, answer your booking questions, choose a time, and book — no phone tag, no emailed price lists, no back-and-forth texting. For an agent juggling a dozen listings, self-service booking is the difference between using you and using someone easier. If you’re deciding whether to take bookings online rather than setting a form up, the order forms overview is the shorter version of this page.

What goes on an order form

You decide exactly what each form shows:

• Services and packages — choose which parts of your catalog appear on this form, in what order, and which are hidden. A form can show your full menu or a tight curated subset.
• Welcome message — a short greeting at the top of the page to set expectations or highlight an offer.
• Description — a one-line blurb used on your booking storefront.
• Hero image — an optional banner so the page looks like your brand, not a generic form.
• Property size — whether the form asks for the property’s size (see below).
• Who can book — whether the form is open to everyone or private to the clients on certain price lists (see private forms).
• Custom questions — the booking questions clients answer on the Details step.

If you offer your booking page in more than one language, the form’s name, description, and welcome message can be translated too. See languages and translations.

Because attaching a service to a form is a deliberate choice, you control precisely which part of your catalog each audience sees — the foundation for running more than one form (see multiple order forms). One exception: a private service or package only reaches clients on a price list that includes it, even when it’s ticked on the form.

Asking for property size

Not every market prices by size, and a branding or headshot form has no use for it. The Property size setting controls the size field on the form’s Property step:

• Required — clients must enter the property size before continuing.
• Optional — the field is shown, but clients can leave it blank.
• Hidden — the form doesn’t ask at all. You can still fill the size in on the order later.

If anything on the form is priced by size, such as a service with size tiers or per-square-foot pricing, or a package that includes one, the field is always required and the setting is locked. The editor names the items responsible, and removing them from the form unlocks it.

Booking questions

Booking questions are the custom questions a client answers while booking — the details you’d otherwise chase down by text the night before a shoot. Each form has its own set. A question can be asked on every booking, or only when the client books certain services: a drone question that only drone bookings see, say. Each one is a checkbox, a short text line, or a dropdown, and can be required or optional.

Common questions photographers set up mirror what every access conversation covers: lockbox or gate codes, whether the home is occupied, pets on site, alarm details, parking, and how the shooter gets in. Booking questions covers setting them up, how clients see them, and where the answers show up.

Every form also includes built-in fields for access info (lockbox/gate/on-site contact) and special notes, separate from your custom questions. Access details are shared only with the assigned photographer, which is worth reassuring agents about.

How clients book

Booking is a short, guided flow:

1. Property — the client enters the listing address and, unless you’ve hidden the field, the property size. The address checks whether the property is in your service area; the size drives both size-based pricing and how long the session will take.
2. Services — they pick the services and any package you’ve put on the form, including variations and quantities where you allow them. When a package includes a service priced with options, the package covers the cheapest option, and the client can upgrade to a pricier one for the difference.
3. Time — they see an estimated session length and live time slots to choose from. On a team, they pick a photographer first, unless you’ve set your forms to Studio assigns: then they just pick a time and the Review step reads “Photographer assigned by our team”. See assigning shoots to your team.
4. Details — contact info (name, email, and phone are required, plus an optional Company field), access info, special notes, and your booking questions. If you’ve set booking terms in Settings → Documents, they agree to your terms and cancellation policy here. An account manager signed in for an agent picks who the booking is for, and the agent’s rates apply.
5. Review — line items, travel fee, an optional promo code field, and the total, with a note on how payment works for this form.

If you offer more than one client language, the form’s header shows an FR | EN switch so clients can book in the language they prefer.

The form remembers an unfinished booking on the client’s device. If they come back to it later, a note at the top names the address and the day it was saved: “Welcome back. Your unfinished booking for 218 Glenwood Avenue was saved on Oct 21.” The note has a Start over link, and the same button sits above the booking summary (next to the step indicator on a phone) while they book. It asks “Start a new booking?” first, warns that any time slot held for them won’t be kept, and offers Undo right after.

What happens after they book

Spatiko creates the order in your workspace and schedules the session with the chosen photographer and time. The client immediately gets a confirmation email with the session details, the assigned photographer, a payment-status line, and an attached billing summary: a receipt if they’ve paid, or a quote-style breakdown if a balance is due (see when clients pay). When your client portal lets them reschedule or cancel online, the email ends with a line such as “Plans changed? You can reschedule or cancel online until…” and a Manage booking button. Otherwise the button is View order details.

They also land on a success page with an “add to calendar” link. If you’ve turned on a property prep guide, the confirmation email and the day-before reminder carry it in a “Before the shoot” block, and the success page shows a Get the property ready card so the agent can pass the checklist to the homeowner. From there the order flows into your normal order pipeline.

Getting paid at booking

Each form controls when the client pays. You can set this per form or let it inherit your business default:

• Pay upfront — full payment is collected to confirm the booking. This is your no-show protection: pair it with a cancellation policy and the slot only holds once they’ve committed.
• Pay on delivery — the booking is confirmed now, but downloads stay locked until they pay. See invoicing and payments.
• Invoice — you send an invoice after the shoot, due within your net terms.

For how each of these plays out after booking — due dates, reminders, and what the client sees — see when clients pay.

If you haven’t connected online payments yet, bookings still go through — the client is simply asked to arrange payment with you, and for paid modes the media stays locked until it’s settled. You never have to leave the download gate open just because you couldn’t charge a card.

Availability and travel

The time slots a client sees are real: Spatiko checks the photographer’s working hours and calendar, adds up the on-site time of everything selected for a session length, and accounts for travel time and buffers between shoots — so an offered slot is genuinely reachable, not a double-booking waiting to happen. Travel fees are shown before the client commits: on the Team & Time step next to each photographer (when clients pick one), in the running summary, and, when every photographer who could take the job charges travel, as a “Travel fee from” estimate on the Property step. The full mechanics live in calendar and availability and travel time & travel fees.

The session length counts every unit. A package item with a Qty of 2 counts twice, a service priced with options uses the option the client picked (or the one the package includes), and virtual services add no on-site time. The same figure sets the estimate the client sees, the slots offered, and the session that gets booked.

While a client finishes booking, their chosen time is held briefly with a visible countdown. If the hold lapses or the slot fills, they’re asked to pick a fresh time and shown the current total — so it’s worth telling agents to finish in one sitting. Changing the property size or a service option after picking a time releases the hold, and the Review step holds the slot again at the new length if it still fits.

Quote requests

Not every job fits an instant booking. When the property is outside your standard service area, or the mix of services has no one to cover it, the form offers a Request a Quote option instead of forcing a booking. Every page also has a general “get in touch” link for custom packages and questions.

A quote request collects the client’s name, email, phone, what they need, and any notes — no time slot, no payment. It lands in your workspace as a lead to follow up on, so an out-of-area or unusual job becomes a conversation instead of a lost visitor. See abandoned carts & quote requests for working through the requests that come in.

Using multiple order forms

Running more than one form comes with higher plans, and how many you can have depends on which one you’re on — see pricing for the count included with yours. Many photographers run one form per audience or type of work:

• A listings form with your core photo, video, and floor-plan menu.
• A luxury form that shows only your premium packages and add-ons.
• A rental form with quick, lower-priced packages for rentals and short-term hosts.
• A branding form for agent headshots and personal marketing media.

Each form has its own link, so the menu a client sees depends mostly on which link you shared. When a visitor can use only one active form, your booking address takes them straight into it; when they can use more, they first see a storefront where they choose the right one. Private forms never appear there for the general public.

The exception is a client on a price list who is signed in to their client portal. Their list can change the prices they see and hide items from them, and it unlocks any private items it includes that are on the form. It can also open private forms to them or hide a public form they don’t need. If the list has a default order form, your booking address takes them straight to it instead of the storefront. Anyone who isn’t signed in sees your standard menu, forms, and prices.

Private forms

A private form is a booking page for chosen clients only, such as a brokerage’s own menu or a builder program. Turn on Private form under Who can book in the form editor. Only clients on a price list that includes the form can open or book it. It stays off your storefront, and its link won’t open for anyone else, including you, unless you log in as one of those clients.

You choose who gets it on the price list: switch the form on under the list’s Order forms, or make it the list’s default order form. The form editor tells you which lists can use it. Until one does, it warns that nobody can open the form, and the forms list marks an active one No access. Private forms carry a Private badge in the list, and copying the link of one reminds you that only signed-in clients on a list that includes it can open it.

A visitor who opens a private form’s link without signing in sees “This booking page is for invited clients” with a Log in button. Someone signed in whose account doesn’t have the form sees that the page isn’t available for their account and can go back to the booking pages they can use.

Managing your forms

• New forms start switched off. Build the form, then activate it — its public link won’t work until you do. (This is the usual “why is my booking link 404-ing” surprise.) A private form also needs a price list that includes it before anyone can open it.
• Duplicate instead of rebuilding. Duplicating copies a form’s settings, attached services, and questions into a new, inactive form with its own link — the fast way to spin up a rental or seasonal variant. A copy of a private form stays private, and the price lists that include the original include the copy too, though none of them makes it their default order form.
• Links are tied to the form. Each form’s link is set when you create or duplicate it, so hand out the link you intend to keep.
• You’ll always have at least one form — Spatiko won’t let you delete your last one.
• Deleting a service removes it from every form it was on, so your forms never point at something that no longer exists.

Tips

• Keep the first form short. Every extra question and optional service adds friction — you can always follow up after the booking. A page an agent can finish in under a minute is a page they’ll come back to.
• Put your best upsells where they’re seen. Drone, twilight, and video as add-ons on the form lift the average order without a sales conversation.
• Write for the agent in a hurry. Clear service names, honest durations, and a couple of well-chosen booking questions beat an exhaustive form every time. Target service-specific questions so each client only sees the ones that apply to them.

Go deeper

• Services & pricing models — build the catalog your forms draw from, with flat, size-based, and variation pricing.
• Packages — bundle services into the offers clients pick in one tap.
• Booking questions — ask some questions of every client and others only for specific services.
• Setting your availability — the working hours, minimum notice, and buffers behind every slot your form offers.
• Creating an order manually — book the shoot yourself when an agent phones in instead of using the form.