Keeping track of contracts and payments can be somewhat cumbersome. If you're like me, sometimes you want to write everything down and have an excel spreadsheet just to double check everything. Along with that there is a neatly organized folder on your hard drive, external, and hard copied in a cabinet somewhere. Agree wants to eliminate a majority of the hassle we experience in our day to day when talking to clients.
The premise of Agree is simple. They want to allow you the ability to create custom branded contracts in minutes. Within these contracts you can outline exactly what your client is getting all while maintaining your brand standards. On top of that it sets clear expectations with clients as to what they will be getting with whatever service they are using you for. As an added benefit Agree allows you to track the progress of your contract, that way you can see exactly where the client is in the process. This makes following up with people a lot easier and less of a hassle. It also allows you to keep better track of where you are with everything. Agree also allows your clients to break up their payments into a variety of ways, making life a bit easier for them when it comes to working with you. On top of that it allows you to track how the client has paid, cash, credit, etc. Track it all in agree to make sure everything is in order. The best part, you can do it all from your smart phone! What's better than being able to work on the go, getting paid on the go.
To build on top of a great product, the team over at Agree also wants to build a creative community. A place where people can give and receive feedback from one another while simultaneously growing their networks. The product itself looks great, and you can get in at their founder price right now which currently sits at $99 for their annual service, which is typically $240.
This is something I've needed my whole career. I'm not shooting too many weddings now but if I get back into it I'm going to move to this system. I hate mailing out contracts.
Thanks for the nice article guys and let me know if we can help with anything.
You don't know this David but you were my biggest inspiration when I got into wedding photography about 10 years ago. I drove up to NC to see you speak and I spoke to you for about 5 seconds.
Today I'm not shooting weddings that much because Fstoppers takes up most of my time but I'm still a big fan of yours and the projects you work on. I hope I'll get to see you again soon and we can talk for more than 5 seconds ;) Maybe WPPI. Congrats on the new venture.
Wow that's awesome! Thanks Lee! I'd love to connect again! Are you on the east coast? If so I'm there a few times a year for a phenominal program called GiANT (http://giantworldwide.com) and it'd be fun to connect on one of those trips!
i guess this isn't targeted towards commercial photographers?
I know, it says designers, videographers etc, but there is basically no examples of it in use. I dont know if I can use this in my workflow or if it can be customized in the way that will suit my business.
Hey Cameron! Agree can be totally customized to you and I'm sure you'll love it. Go through the account setup flow and then hit me up and I'll get ya in early. :)
Hey Howard! You bet commercial photographers can use this and we actually have commercial photography contracts already in the app so I'm stoked for you to check them out... Also, with Agree you get full control of what package items, legal clauses you put in your contract so it can be fully customized to your business.
That total price tho....a year of my salary...do you guys need an assistant overseas? LOOL
Hey Paulo :) Right now you can get Agree for $99/year. I hope that's not a year of your salary but if it is then hit me up and I'll hook you up with a free account!
Sounds really interesting - is this suitable for use in the UK or just USA?
You bet Stuart! We love our friends across the pond! :)
Yeah...the marketing team for this is doing an awful job. I have no idea what I am buying into. Does this work on android? Is it an app or a web based application. Where is this "community" of other professionals? I went to the site to look around and possibly purchase a $99/year rate but all the site keeps asking for is money and wont show me a demo of the app or show me if or how to customize the contracts or anything really. Can I upload contracts from a computer or PDF? Are there prewritten contracts already in the app? It looks and feels like a scam to me. Far too little info or examples to back up the flashy animations in the demo video.
Yeah, this article lacks some seriously important details, and the site is even worse. So it accepts payments? How does that work? Does it integrate with QuickBooks? Square? PayPal? Does Agree also take a fee for processing credit card payments? If so, what's the rate? Is the electronic contract process in compliance with the Electronic Signature Act?
This could be interesting, but with zero details, it's more myth than reality.
Hey Hunter :) We're working to get more info out there and build the site out and we're here to answer any questions you have. We didn't expect Fstoppers to feature us within hours of the site going live but I guess that's a good problem to have. I'm sure once you're in and can try out the app you'll love it.
David, stop giving reasons or apologies and answer some of our questions! I have read dozens of questions and you haven't answered any of them! "you're here to answer our questions?" So do it!
This is a scam IMHO, there is far too little info on this, David is being so shifty with questions and just asking us to pay the money and "he's sure we will love it" , and there is absolutely NOTHING online in relation to this service except this article.
How about you get all these photographers your quoting on your website and get them to take a video of themselves using the service. That would really help your case.
Scam is written all over this!
Hey Cameron - You're a bit aggressive my friend. Feel free to checkout the videos online and chat with the people using it. We'll have a FAQ on the site tomorrow and until then "keep calm and carry on" ;)
And your shifty, we all have our faults.
Its such a shame that if you would just answered the very simple questions many of us have been asking here....you might of gained a few customers. Instead of giving us the run-around answers.
So, for 8 years I did business consulting in the areas of accounting and office management for mostly contractors. Basically, this is my area of expertise for people who want and need to take shortcuts. The #1 issue I would take with this is that it doesn't appear to work with any other software. This is creating more steps, more work to do in order to keep good records. The easiest way for someone to save money on their year end accounting bill or frustration if you are doing it yourself is to have less overall and put everything you can into a single format that is accesible to the mass majority (your accountant can't learn different software for every client, and they will charge you to extract the information). IE, keep as much as you can in a single piece of software *coughquickbookscough*.
If you want to email contracts, Adobe has a service for this. Once the contract is signed, you create an invoice and you can even save a copy of the contract in your accounting software. After you receive a payment, you apply it to the invoice. Even if you are using a third party processor, like Square, the person's name will appear on the transaction so it's pretty difficult to screw it up. If you sync your accounting software properly, all you have to do is credit the correct client/invoice. The problem with using something like Agree is that although it does this for you, sort of, you still have to enter all the info into your accounting software so you're doubling up on the work. By choosing a CRM that integrates well with common accounting software, you have much more versatility and will keep your year end accounting bill down about $1200.
David, How would this compare with a service like 17hats? I have had a few people talk to me about it but I never pulled the trigger on it. Now I am reading this here and its very interesting.
Great question Lafayette! Agree is a very simple way to create contracts and accept payments. Just the other day a photographer created a contract and sent it to their client and had it signed and the whole deal wrapped up in under 3 minutes!
I think 17 hats is a good CMS solution but that's kind of a different animal that's meant to do a whole bunch of things. So if what you need is a simple, fast and beautiful way to create and send contracts and collect payments then (IMHO ;) Agree is a good place to start.
17 hats looks great! I may have found what I need! Thanks Lafayette! Oh and guess what, I had a few questions and they were answered in minutes. what a concept!