Book the shoot. Take the retainer. Know what the gear earned.
Velosiq runs the business half of a photography practice — tiered proposals, retainers and balances, and an honest answer to whether that lens was worth it.
The shooting is the easy part.
An enquiry lands in your inbox. The quote is a PDF you rebuilt from last time. The retainer is a bank transfer you have to remember to check for. The contract is in a different app, the shoot is in your phone calendar, and the balance is a note in your head. By the time you deliver, the only record that the whole job existed is a thread you would rather not scroll.
Enquiry to final payment, in one thread
The same sequence every shoot follows — with each step leaving a record on the client instead of in your memory.
The enquiry lands
Create the client once. Everything that follows — proposal, contract, invoices, session dates, payments — hangs off that one record.
Send tiered packages
Build the proposal with your half-day, full-day and album options as line items, set an expiry date, and send it. You can see when they opened it.
They accept and sign
The client picks a package and types their name to accept. Velosiq stores the name, IP and timestamp, and the accepted proposal converts straight into an invoice.
Retainer clears the date
Invoice the retainer and take it by card or bank transfer through your own Stripe account. The date is not held until that lands, and now you can see that it has.
The shoot is on the calendar
Put the session on the calendar against the client, with an automatic reminder to them the day before. Sync it to your phone so you are not keeping two calendars.
Balance, then the numbers
Send the balance invoice after the session. Once it clears, the shoot shows up in revenue — and against the gear that went out on it.
Stop rebuilding the same quote
Most photography work is sold three ways with the same three add-ons. Build them once as line items, send them as a proposal, and let the client choose. Every proposal keeps its own status, so you can see what is out, what has been read, and what has gone quiet.
Tiered packages as line items
Coverage, second shooter, album, extra hours — priced individually, assembled per client.
You can see it was opened
Sent, viewed, accepted and declined are each timestamped on first transition. "Have they even looked at it" stops being a guess.
Accepted means signed
The client types their name to accept. Name, IP and time are recorded against the proposal.
Converts to an invoice
An accepted proposal becomes an invoice without re-keying the line items.
Retainer now, balance later — both count
Photography almost never gets paid in one go, and most invoicing tools treat a part-paid invoice as unpaid until the last penny lands. Velosiq records each payment as it arrives and counts it toward your revenue on the day it cleared, so a month with six retainers in it looks like a month with six retainers in it.
Partial payments
Pay 30% now and the rest later against the same invoice. The balance owing is always current.
Your Stripe, your money
You connect your own Stripe account. Payouts go from your client to your bank — Velosiq never holds the funds.
Cards and bank transfer
The client pays from a link on the invoice. It marks itself paid when the payment clears.
Chased without you chasing
Overdue invoices get an automatic nudge a set number of days after the due date.
Has that lens paid for itself?
Photographers buy equipment on instinct and then never find out whether it was a good idea. Log what you paid, tag the gear to the shoots it went out on, and Velosiq puts attributed revenue against the full cost of owning it — purchase price plus every repair and service you have logged.
Cost basis, not just price
Purchase price plus maintenance logs plus any equipment expenses you have tagged to it.
Tagged to real jobs
Attach gear to the shoots it worked, so revenue attribution follows actual use.
Service and warranty dates
Track next service and warranty expiry so a sensor clean is not remembered the week before a wedding.
What Velosiq is not
It is the business layer, not the delivery layer. Being straight about the boundary is more useful to you than a feature list that quietly implies otherwise.
- — It does not host galleries or deliver image files. Keep the gallery tool you already use.
- — It does not edit, cull or back up photographs.
- — It is not a marketplace and will never put your work in front of clients.
Questions, answered
The things photographers ask before they move their bookings across.
Can I take a retainer now and the balance after the shoot?
Yes. Send the retainer as its own invoice, or send the full amount and let the client pay part of it — Velosiq records partial payments against an invoice and counts that cash toward your revenue the day it clears, not when the invoice is finally settled. The balance invoice goes out after the session and the client pays from the same link.
Does the client actually sign anything?
When a client accepts a proposal they type their name to confirm, and Velosiq records that name, their IP address and the timestamp against the proposal. You can also see when they first opened it, which is usually the more useful number when you are deciding whether to follow up.
Can one client have several shoots without them getting tangled?
Yes — a client record holds every proposal, invoice, appointment and payment for that person, so an engagement session and the wedding eight months later sit on the same timeline. You can see what they have paid across all of it rather than reconstructing it from your inbox.
Can I tell whether a lens has paid for itself?
That is what the asset tracking is for. Log a body or a lens with what you paid, tag it to the shoots it went out on, and the assets report puts revenue attributed to that gear against its cost basis — purchase price plus any maintenance and repairs you have logged against it.
Does Velosiq host my galleries or deliver files to clients?
No, and it is worth being clear about that. Velosiq is the business side — enquiries, proposals, contracts, invoices, payments and what your gear is earning. Keep using Pic-Time, Pixieset or whatever you already deliver galleries through; Velosiq handles everything that happens before and after the images land.
Run the business side properly
Start on the free plan, bring one booking through it end to end, and see whether it holds up.
Free plan available · No credit card required · Cancel anytime