Calendar sync, checklists and shoot tasks

This page is for the photographer who wants to stop carrying the admin around a shoot in their head. By the end you’ll have your bookings syncing into the calendar app you already check. You’ll also have a checklist for each type of job, and a to-do list that moves when a shoot date changes.

Every booking on one calendar

The calendar shows every booking you have, so you can see your whole week at a glance. A multi-day wedding or an all-day session spans its full length instead of squeezing into one slot, so a three-day job looks like three days. A booking the client hasn’t confirmed yet shows as tentative, so you can tell a maybe from a sure thing. You can hold a date as soon as a client mentions it and confirm it later. The booking pipeline handles a shoot the same way before the deposit is paid.

Your bookings show up in Google or Apple Calendar

Most photographers don’t want a second calendar to remember to open. So Tellisto gives you a private webcal subscription feed. You subscribe once, and your bookings appear in Google Calendar or Apple Calendar and stay in sync as they change. Confirm a tentative booking or move a date, and your phone’s calendar updates by itself.

If you only need one booking in your calendar rather than all of them, every booking also has its own add-to-calendar download. It’s a single .ics file you open once in whatever app you use. Use the webcal feed for everything, and the .ics file for a one-off.

Your own calendar blocks your booking times

It works in the other direction too. Connect the calendar you use day to day (your personal one, the day job, or the shared family calendar), and Tellisto stops offering its busy times. A client opening your booking page won’t see those hours. You don’t have to remember to block out the Saturday of your sister’s wedding. And you won’t find out you’ve double-booked yourself from a confirmation email.

The busy times also show in muted colours on your Tellisto calendar, so you can see the connection is working. Tellisto reads only whether you’re free or busy, never what the event is called, so the details of your Tuesday night stay in your own calendar. The blocks update when the calendar syncs, not the instant you add something. If you’ve just added an appointment that starts in an hour, check it shows up before you rely on it.

Checklists that match the job

A wedding and a newborn session need different to-do lists, and Tellisto treats them that way. The task checklist is editable per package or per shoot type, so a new booking starts with the tasks that job needs. Set up your wedding checklist once with its longer list of prep, production and delivery steps, and every future wedding starts with it. A family session gets its own shorter list. This is on every plan, not just Pro.

You can edit each task’s due date in place. When a shoot moves, you can move all the later tasks with it instead of adjusting each one by hand.

Tasks that tick themselves

Some of your checklist is work only you can do, and some of it Tellisto can see happen. When you publish a gallery, the matching delivery task completes by itself. When a client signs a contract, a contract task on the checklist ticks itself the same way (the wedding checklist comes with one). Both are marked “done for you” so you know you didn’t tick them. Send a contract and get it signed explains how signing works under your own brand. The list stays up to date without you maintaining it: you handle the tasks only you can do, and Tellisto closes the ones it can see.

Moving a shoot without redoing every date

Rain moves a shoot. In most systems you then open every related reminder and push each date by hand, which is the fiddly admin people skip until it causes trouble. In Tellisto you change one task’s due date in place, and it asks whether the tasks after it should move too. Say yes, and every later task moves to fit the new date: the prep, the edits and the delivery deadline. Say no, and only that one task moves. A rained-out Saturday no longer costs you an evening of re-planning.

The daily view

You don’t have to go looking for what’s due. The home briefing puts your overdue and due-today tasks in the Today lane, next to today’s shoots. The first thing you see each morning is what needs you. You can snooze or dismiss tasks that don’t apply. When a new job comes in while you’re busy with something else, the global plus button logs a lead from any page in the app. You don’t have to go to the right screen first to save a name and a date. One thread from enquiry to delivery follows a whole job from the first enquiry to a delivered gallery.