Creating an Order Manually

Most orders arrive on their own through your order forms when an agent books online. But some jobs don’t fit a form — a phone booking, a repeat client you know by heart, or a one-off that needs a custom price. For those, you create the order by hand. It’s a single flow that captures everything the shoot needs at once.

What you’ll capture

Everything lives in one order, built in one pass:

• Client — attach an existing client, or capture a new contact inline with a name (and optionally email, phone, and company). New contacts become client records automatically, so you never enter someone twice.
• Property — the address, an optional property size (used if you price by size or tier), and access instructions for getting in.
• Line items — pull services and packages from your catalog at their catalog price. Set a quantity, or pick a variation or tier where the service offers them. You can override a catalog item’s price for this one order, or add a one-off custom line with your own name and price.
• Sessions — one or more scheduled shoots, each with a start and end time and an optional assigned photographer.

You can also leave the order completely unscheduled. The items stay unscheduled until you add a session on the calendar later — handy when the client hasn’t picked a date yet.

Discount and travel fee

Add an order-level discount as either a percentage or a flat amount. It applies to the item subtotal before any travel fee.

For the travel fee, enter a specific amount, or let Spatiko use the photographer’s distance-based estimate so you’re not doing the math on every job.

More than one session

An order can hold more than one shoot — a daytime shoot plus a twilight return trip, for example. Line items attach to the first session automatically, and you can assign specific items to specific sessions. Once the order exists, manage its sessions on the calendar like any other.

Notes

Attach three kinds of notes: internal notes private to you and your team, client-facing notes the client will see, and access instructions for the shoot. Use them to carry the context that doesn’t fit a field.

Sending the confirmation

When you create the order, you can send the primary client an order confirmation. It fires once, after the whole order exists, and only sends if the primary client has an email on file. The email includes the schedule, address, and services, plus an optional personal note. When the primary client is the order’s sole payer, their copy also carries pricing and a billing document — the order’s live invoice if one has been issued, a receipt once the order is paid, otherwise a quote. You can also send it later — the one thing you can’t do is send a confirmation for a cancelled order.

What happens next

A new order enters the Planning stage and behaves like every other order from there. You can edit items, reschedule, or adjust the details at any time. For a map of the stages ahead, see the order lifecycle.

The client you attach here is the order’s primary — its listing agent. If the job involves more people — a co-listing agent, the seller who wants the photos, a billing contact at the brokerage — add them once the order exists, from the order sidebar’s People section. Agents, sellers, and billing contacts covers the roles and what each person receives.

Go deeper

• Services and pricing models — set up the catalog the order’s line items are pulled from.
• Packages — bundle services so a common shoot is one line instead of five.
• When clients pay — payment timing — decide whether a manual booking is paid upfront, on delivery, or invoiced.
• Assigning shoots to your team — hand a session to the photographer who’s actually covering it.
• Calendar and availability — where the sessions you create land, and what keeps them bookable.