Automations

Automations let StudioFlow handle routine follow-ups for you: "When a new inquiry is confirmed → create a task → send an acknowledgment email." You describe what should happen once, and the system does it every time — with a person approving anything that goes out to a client.

Automations live on the Automations page in the sidebar, which Owners, Admins and Crew all have — Crew approve and dismiss queued actions and write recipes like anyone else; the two studio-wide master switches below are the Owner's and Admin's. (A Bookkeeper has no Automations page.) It has three tabs — Approvals, Activity, and Recipes — and the sidebar entry shows a badge whenever actions are waiting for your approval.

Switched Off Until You Turn It On

Automations start off for every studio. Nothing runs until an Owner or an Admin flips the master Automations enabled toggle in the page header. Your studio comes with a set of starter recipes already configured (acknowledge new inquiries, follow up on accepted offers, nudge overdue invoices, ask for a review after delivery) — all editable, all individually disableable — so once you enable the engine there's something useful in place from day one.

Recipes

A recipe is one automation: a trigger, optional conditions, and an ordered list of actions. Recipes are deliberately simple and linear — no branching, no flowcharts. Manage them on the Recipes tab.

Triggers — when a recipe runs

Trigger	Fires when
New inquiry	A lead arrives (see note below for exactly when)
Booking confirmed	You approve a client's booking-page request for a specific time slot
Email received	A client email arrives in your Inbox
Offer accepted	A client accepts an offer
Contract accepted	A client accepts a contract
Questionnaire submitted	A client submits a questionnaire
Invoice paid by card	An online card payment completes
Invoice overdue	A sent invoice passes its due date
Project status changed	A project moves to a different status
Shoot completed	A shoot is marked completed
Gallery published	A gallery goes live

When New inquiry actually fires

It depends on where the lead came from. Every booking-page request, and any lead that reaches you through the Inbox, fires it the moment it arrives — an unvetted lead still gets acknowledged. A request for a specific time slot fires it once the slot is held, so the acknowledgement can name the time. A lead from your inquiry form or a connected tool waits for a person to click Confirm inquiry on the project — unless Auto-confirm new inquiries is on in Settings, in which case it fires immediately too. Either way, if it fires unconfirmed and you confirm it by hand afterwards, the client is still only acknowledged once. Approving a slot request later fires the separate A booking is confirmed trigger as well; that approval is always done by hand, because it books your calendar.

Conditions — only when it applies

Each recipe can add optional filters, e.g. only for a certain service type, only for certain lead sources, only when the amount is above a threshold, or only when the subject/body contains certain keywords. A recipe with no conditions runs on every occurrence of its trigger.

Actions — what the recipe does

Actions run in the order you arrange them:

Action	Notes
Create a task	Title, assignee, and a due date offset (e.g. "due in 2 days")
Create a project	For triggers that don't already create one
Send an email to the client	Uses an email template with placeholders — waits for approval
Draft a document	Creates a draft offer, invoice, contract, or questionnaire from a template — waits for approval
Change the project status	waits for approval
Schedule a reminder	Sets up a document reminder (respecting the usual three-reminder cap)
Send to another app	Advanced — notifies an external webhook

In email subjects, bodies, task titles, and document titles you can insert placeholders like {{client_name}} from the Insert menu; they're filled in with the real values when the recipe runs. An email that would go out with an unfilled placeholder is stopped instead of sent half-finished.

The editor shows a plain-English Preview of the whole recipe ("When a new inquiry is confirmed → create a task, send an email, then draft an offer") before you save. A studio can have up to 10 recipes with up to 10 actions each.

The Approval Queue

By default, any action that touches a client or your money — sending an email, drafting a document, changing a project status — does not run on its own. It lands on the Approvals tab for a person to review:

Approve — the action runs (for emails, you can edit the subject and body first), and the rest of the recipe continues from where it paused.
Dismiss — the action is skipped and the run ends without executing it.

A run pauses at its first action that needs approval, so later steps wait their turn; the run detail shows the upcoming steps queued behind the current one. Internal actions (creating tasks, scheduling reminders) run immediately without approval.

If you fully trust a recipe, an Owner or an Admin can enable Send automatically without review in the page header — this studio-wide toggle is off by default, so nothing ever goes to a client behind your back unless you explicitly opt in.

Don't let approvals sit

An action waiting for approval longer than a day is flagged on the Needs Attention widget, so pending approvals never quietly pile up.

Seeing What Ran

The Activity tab lists every automation run with its steps and outcomes — what ran, what was created, what's waiting for approval, and what failed. Each project also shows its own Automations panel on the project detail page, so you can see at a glance what the engine did (or is waiting to do) for that client. See Projects → Automations.

Inbox — the emails behind the "Email received" trigger, and where auto-replies live
Needs Attention — where an approval waiting more than a day gets flagged
Projects — the status flow a recipe can react to or change
Offers — one of the document types a recipe can draft
Invoicing — reminders a recipe can schedule follow the same three-reminder cap