Projects vs. clients

Learn the difference between projects and clients and how they work together.

Sam Gioia avatar
Written by Sam Gioia
Updated over a week ago

Updated Aug 1, 2023

Your work in Dubsado is organized around projects while clients are the people who will be on the receiving end of your contracts, forms, invoices, and more.


Communicate with clients through projects

Clients are the people who you communicate with through Dubsado. A client in Dubsado could be someone who is inquiring about your services or someone who is already paying for them.

Dubsado is organized around projects. Everything you do with a client, such as sending a contract, creating an invoice, or even sending a simple email, happens inside a project. You'll do most of your day-to-day work on the Projects page.

Each project is associated with one client. The client is the main person you're communicating with for the project. They will receive all of the emails you send through their project.

Heads up! If you have multiple projects connected to the same client, updating the client entry in the address book will update the client information on all connected projects.

You can’t add multiple clients to a project, but you can add an alternate contact to a project who can be CC'd on emails sent from that project.


Organize work around projects

You can create multiple projects under one client. Here are a few factors that can help you decide when to create a new project for an existing client:

  • the client needs to sign a new contract for a new service.

  • you want to invoice the client for a new set of services.

  • a considerable amount of time has passed since you last worked with the client.

For example:

  • As a consultant, you offer different packages with varying levels of support and number of sessions. Each time your client books a new package with you, you could start a new project.

  • As a photographer, you offer engagement and wedding shoots for your couples. The engagement shoot could be one project and the wedding shoot could be a separate project.

  • As an accountant, you offer tax preparation services. You could start a new project with each client for each tax year.


Adapt clients and projects to your business needs

We recognize that the "client" and "project" terminology might not apply to your business exactly, but Dubsado can be adapted to suit many different needs.

Technically, a client is anyone whose contact information is inside the Dubsado address book. You can use project statuses to indicate which clients' projects you consider to be "leads" and which projects you consider to be booked "jobs."

Your "clients" might not be clients at all, and could be volunteers you are onboarding for a specific project with your organization. We've even seen businesses set up nannies as clients so that they can match them with families.

As for projects, not every business is project-based, and that's okay! We have some examples of how you can adapt projects to your business.

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