Setting Up Your Spatiko Account
Set up Spatiko step by step — sign up, business details, branding, services, booking form, availability, and payments — from new account to first booking.
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This guide walks you from signing up to a booking page you can actually share. Your Dashboard tracks the same ground with a Getting started card, and this guide adds the “why” behind each step, plus two steps the card leaves for later — travel fees and online payments.
Create your account
Start at the signup page, Get started with Spatiko:
- Where is your business based? comes first. Spatiko currently serves the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. If you’re elsewhere, choose Another country — a “Not available there yet” note explains which countries are served and offers a button to email support@spatiko.com, so the team knows where to open next.
- Then either Continue with Google, or enter your first and last name, email, and a password.
- Tick the box agreeing to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which also confirms you’re not located in a region Spatiko doesn’t serve. With Google, you tick it on the welcome screen that follows.
If you signed up with email and password, Spatiko sends a verification link — open it, then sign in. If it doesn’t arrive within a few minutes, you may already have an account with that email; the confirmation screen links to sign in and to password reset.
Joining someone else’s business instead? Use the invite link from your email — see joining a team on Spatiko.
What a fresh account already includes
From the country you picked and your name, Spatiko quietly sets up a working business for you:
- A business, named after you — something like Alex’s Photography. Rename it any time in Settings → General.
- Regional defaults — the currency and the units for property size and travel distance follow your country (a Canadian business gets CAD, square feet, and kilometres), and the timezone comes from your device. Worth double-checking before you price anything, since size-based prices and travel fees use those units.
- A starter order form called Listing Services. It’s live but empty — nothing can be booked from it until you attach services.
- You, on the photographer roster, accepting orders with default weekday hours (Monday–Friday, 9 to 5) and a 24-hour minimum booking lead time.
- The free plan, so you can build out everything below before deciding whether a paid plan makes sense.
Your Getting started card
Your Dashboard shows a Getting started card with six steps in two groups:
- Get bookable — What a client needs before they can book you: First service, Booking form ready, and Set availability.
- Go live — Put your name on the page, then get the link in front of clients: Business basics, Logo & colors (shown as Add your logo on the free plan), and Share your booking page.
Each step has a button that takes you to the right settings page. Set availability, Business basics, and the logo step can be skipped if they don’t apply to you; Share your booking page unlocks once your booking form is ready. The card disappears once every step is done or skipped, and View journey opens the fuller growth map under Grow.
1. Business basics
Settings → General. Add your phone number and business address — they appear on your booking pages and on every invoice Spatiko generates. While you’re here, check the business name, email, and the Regional Settings set at signup: timezone, currency, Property size (sq ft or m²), and Travel distance (miles or km). Get the units right now — changing one later relabels your numbers without converting them. The business profile guide covers every field, and currency, units, and timezone covers the regional settings in depth.
Serving French-speaking clients? The same card is where you offer French — see offering your booking page in French.
2. Brand your business
Settings → Brand Assets. Upload your logo and, on a paid plan, set a primary color. These carry through everything client-facing: the booking page, order confirmation emails, delivery galleries, and the client portal — so the whole flow feels like your business, not Spatiko’s. Details in branding and legal documents.
3. Add your services
Settings → Services & Forms. Your catalog is the menu clients pick from, and everything downstream — orders, invoices, analytics, payouts — is built from it. Each service uses one of four pricing models:
- Flat price — one price and duration, e.g. a twilight add-on.
- Tiered by size — price bands by property size, e.g. a photo package that scales with the home.
- Per sq ft (Per m² for metric studios) — a rate per unit of floor area, with an optional minimum price.
- Variations — named options at different prices, e.g. 20, 35, or 50 photos.
You can also bundle services into packages at a combined price with a shown saving. Start with your three or four core offerings — you can grow the catalog any time.
4. Set up your booking form
Settings → Services & Forms. Attach services and packages to your Listing Services form so agents can actually book, and add booking questions for whatever you need to know before a shoot — lockbox codes, occupancy, parking notes. How order forms work covers quote requests and form settings in depth.
If you serve distinct audiences, you can add more forms later on a higher plan — a standard listings menu, a curated luxury set, a rental-media form. Each form chooses which catalog items appear on it; prices come from the catalog, so there’s no per-form pricing to maintain. When one client or brokerage should pay different rates, that’s a price list attached to the client or company, not a separate form.
5. Availability, coverage & travel
These shape which time slots agents are offered:
- Availability (Set availability on the card) — replace the default Monday–Friday, 9–5 hours with your real schedule, and set your booking lead time and buffers between shoots. See setting your availability.
- Coverage and travel fees (Settings → Team & Availability) — set your home base and how far you’ll go, then how you charge for distance: radius rings that add a per-mile or per-km rate past an included distance, or custom travel zones you draw on a map and price one by one. Properties outside your coverage can’t be booked directly — the client is offered a custom quote request instead. See travel time and fees. Travel fees are off by default, so this isn’t on the Getting started card — skip it if you don’t charge for travel.
- Google Calendar — connect it too, on a paid plan. Your working hours don’t know about your dentist appointment: until the calendars you pick are checked for busy time, Spatiko will happily offer any hour inside your working day. See syncing Google Calendar.
Spatiko combines these with your existing shoots and driving time between properties, so the booking page only ever offers slots you can actually make — the full picture is in calendar and availability.
6. Accept online payments
Settings → Payments. Connect Stripe or Square and clients can pay by card at booking instead of you chasing invoices later — with Stripe, Apple Pay and Google Pay too. Once connected, you choose when clients pay on each form: upfront at booking, on delivery behind a pay-to-download gate, or on net terms. Setup details: online payments with Stripe and online payments with Square.
Online payments are part of Spatiko’s paid plans — see pricing. You can take bookings without them and mark orders paid yourself when money arrives outside the platform; on Starter and up, Spatiko also generates invoices and receipts in-house either way.
Take a test booking
In Settings → Services & Forms, click Open storefront to open your booking page, and book a shoot as if you were an agent: pick a service, answer your booking questions, choose a slot. Then follow it through on your side — the order appears on your Dashboard and orders board in Planning, the session lands on your calendar, and the confirmation email goes out. When you’re satisfied, cancel the test order — that deletes its sessions from your calendar and leaves the record in your history. On a real job, cancelling does more than that; see managing an order before you use it on live work.
Share your booking page
Once that round trip works, use Copy booking link on the Getting started card’s last step — it copies your booking page link and ticks the step off. Put it in your bio, email signature, and listings. Your storefront link — which lists every live form, or opens your only one — is in Settings → General under Order Page URL.
Worth doing soon
None of these block your first booking, but each one pays off quickly:
- Import your existing clients (Settings → Data Import) from a CSV of your old system — importing your clients.
- Add your legal documents (Settings → Legal) — terms of service and a cancellation policy. Spatiko doesn’t ship default legal text; until you add your own, the booking page simply doesn’t show any. See legal documents.
- Invite your team if you’re not shooting solo — inviting team members, then send them joining a team on Spatiko.
- Connect a custom domain so booking pages, galleries, and property websites live on your own URL — custom domains.
Go deeper
- What is Spatiko? — how the catalog, forms, orders, payments, and delivery fit together.
- Creating an order manually — book the shoots that come in by phone or text, not through your form.
- Delivering your media — what happens after the shoot, from upload to branded client gallery.
- The client portal — the self-serve side your agents get once their first order exists.
- Moving your business to Spatiko — bring your clients, past orders, and history across from your old system.
Frequently asked questions
What does a brand-new Spatiko account already come with?
Signing up creates a business named after you, with currency and units for property size and travel distance set from the country you picked and the timezone from your device, a live but empty starter order form called Listing Services, and you on the photographer roster with default weekday hours and a 24-hour minimum booking lead time. You start on the free plan, so you can build everything out before deciding on a paid plan. Nothing can be booked from the starter form until you attach services to it.
What do I need to do before my booking link is ready to share?
Add at least one service and attach it to the starter Listing Services form — nothing can be booked until you do — then replace the default weekday hours with your real schedule. Run a test booking through Open storefront in Settings → Services & Forms to check the round trip; the link you share with clients is the same page.
Can I test my booking page before sending it to real clients?
Yes — open your booking page with Open storefront in Settings → Services & Forms and book a shoot as if you were an agent, then follow it through on your side. The order appears on your Dashboard and orders board in Planning, the session lands on your calendar, and the confirmation email goes out. Cancel the test order when you're done — that deletes its sessions from your calendar and leaves the record in your history.
Can I sign up for Spatiko if my business isn't in the US, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand?
Not yet. Spatiko currently serves those four countries. Choosing Another country on the signup form explains this and lets you email support@spatiko.com so the team knows where demand is.