Plan your 2024 client project availability with me in Notion
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It's that time of year …again! If you haven't already planned your project calendar for this year, let's plan it out together with my free Notion template.
That way, the next time you meet with a potential new client and they say, “Awesome! When can we start this thing?!” ––you’re not left replying with “oh, whenever; I haven’t planned anything yet…” 😬 …That might leave the client wondering if you even WANT the work, because you obviously don’t seem prepared. 😳🫣 Oops.
In this blog post & the accompanying video, I'll walk you through the process of organizing your project scheduling so that you're always prepared for new leads and potential clients.
By the end of this post, you'll have a clearer understanding of how to use my free Notion template to streamline your client scheduling process. Let's dive in and get to work!
Step 1: Introduction to Notion & Planning Process
In addition to ClickUp, Notion has become my go-to tool for project planning. I love Notion because it feels a bit like digital bullet journaling because it’s SO flexible. It’s best for light task management, wikis and databases with a user-friendly & relatively simple interface.
Other softwares, like ClickUp & Airtable, also have database features but what they lack is the note-taking side or document management side, and that’s why I prefer to use Notion because it marries the two features I love, without all the frills & over-my-head stuff that the others can overwhelm us with.
Don’t get me wrong! There’s a place for them all, but Notion is one of the easiest & most affordable to start with.
Step 2: Setting Up Your Project Calendar in Notion
To begin, let's take a look at the project calendar databases in my free Notion template.
Screenshot of the Client Address Book database in Notion
The Address Book database
This database can store all of your client’s basic contact information &/or basic project information. You can manually enter their information or automate the process by connecting it to tools like Dubsado, via Zapier. This database can display & keep essential details like names, email addresses, phone numbers, and even invoice amounts, in addition to booked project dates related to the overall project calendar for your services so you know who is in which spot.
It has 2 main views to help organize this info & make it easy to access the way you like! A “view” of a database in Notion is just a customizable layout of the data within the spreadsheet. It can take the shape of a kanban board (like Trello), a spreadsheet (like Google Sheets), a timeline, a calendar, a gallery and a simple list, and it can be a filtered, unfiltered, grouped &/or sorted bit version of the same information.
The two views I’ve included are:
Active Clients - filtering out clients with a status of inactive or completed, so you can see a shorter list
Clients (A-Z) - all clients in all status (not filtered) and sorted by First Name
an embedded timezone converter in case you ever need to remember what time it is for your client/lead
Screenshot of the Project Calendar template in Notion
The Project Calendar
This database is where you can plan and schedule your project’s start & end dates for any of the packages or services you offer, office closure dates, and the status of each spot (booked, available, hold, etc).
Group your projects and easily add them to your calendar. You can duplicate projects and customize them to fit your needs. Additionally, there's a list for closings, which filters out projects that have been closed.
It includes three different views:
Calendar - shows the start & end dates for project durations in a traditional monthly calendar view
Projects - as a spreadsheet with grouped services in toggles you can open
Closings - dates you’re blocking off and don’t plan to fill with client projects, such as Christmas or your birthday.
Screenshot of the Public Calendar database in Notion
The Public Calendar
This database is a customized page page that will show a simplified version (view) of your project availability via a public link, so you can send it to potential clients who are interested in working with you.
When you share this public link, you can empower your potential client to pick the project dates that work best for them, within your predetermined spots, without the back-and-forth emails or questions to find dates that work for both of you.
It includes a simple view of the Project Calendar’s data, which stays in sync with any changes you make over there, while keeping sensitive client data private, and offering only the information they need to see:
instructions - notes for how to use the calendar page in a collapsible toggle
a calendar view by month - showing project spots, their status & price range, filtered to show only the spots with dates in the next 6 months (relative to now)
and the ability to put an embedded scheduler inside each ‘event’ page for booking purposes
Step 3: Customizing Your Databases
Notion allows you to customize so much of these pages & views in the template, so let's explore a few options!
Customize the Address Book:
rename the address book database if needed to something that makes sense to YOUR brain
add or remove properties (columns), &/or hide columns you want to keep but not display
add details or notes inside the page for each client, including links to portals, projects, invoices, or embed files, logos, pictures, and/or copy their testimonials or embed their video feedback
customize the different properties (columns’ field types, names & icons) based on the information you want to collect or display
add new views of this information to sort, filter, group or otherwise display it in different ways without duplicating the entries themselves or losing any data
Create templates for new entries:
You can save some time by initially setting aside a few minutes to create new entry templates for different project or client types, such as custom websites or VIP days.
To access new entry templates or create a new template, press the ⌄ down arrow next to the blue NEW button to add templates that can be applied to new entries in this database
You can click the ellipsis ••• next to any template in that menu to make it the default template that’s applied to new entries.
Closed Dates:
add/edit your specific days &r holidays where you want to be unavailable for client work; you can mark them Not Available in their status, and name them something like “Closed for [insert here]” to make it clearly marked for everyone.
where to click on the New button to access templates for new entries in this database
Step 4: Project Planning & Managing Clients
If you’ve been following along and your project calendar is basically set up, it's time to start planning your projects and managing your clients’ project dates.
Here are a couple examples for how you can do that:
Booking Projects:
Let's say you have a new project to book, a custom Squarespace website, for example. Use the Relation property in Notion to create a column that can link the project calendar event with the client listing from your address book. You can link the two entries together so they are visible to each other –for you in your account– including the start and end dates, availability, price range, client info, and any additional notes. This system allows you to track which projects are booked for which client, and display accurate availability on the public calendar.Client Management:
Notion's Roll-up property can automatically fill in data from whatever was selected in that entry’s Relation field, such as the client’s name or invoice amount if tracked in their Address Book entry. Basically, by connecting your project calendar to your address book with Relations & Roll-ups, entries in either database can auto-populate certain details from the client's Address Book entry & certain client information in your view of the Project Calendar. This ensures that you have all the necessary information at your fingertips in either spot & helps to minimize manual data entry.
Step 5: Privacy Settings & Your Public Calendar
One of the great features of Notion is the ability to share (or “Publish”) any page in your account and share it with a special link that you can send to potential clients. The link does not vary, so you can include this link in parts of your processes that are automated, such as the auto-reply when they fill out a form to contact you, or display it via a button on a ‘thank you’ page.
You can set it up in just a couple clicks! Here's how:
Sharing Your Availability Calendar
Go to the page labeled ‘Public Project Availability’ located at the top of the main template page. From here, go to the top of the page on the right-hand side and click the Share button. In that drop-down menu there are 2 tabs: Share or Publish.
Share allows you to send direct invitations (emailed to specific people from Notion); this gives them view, comment, edit or full access permissions to this page & is NOT what you want to do in this particular case
Publish allows you to literally make the page public for anyone with the special link, and also provides 3-4 settings that are customizable per published page in your Notion account; this is the option you want!
example screenshot of the Share menu for a published page
Keep Client Information Private
When sharing the Public Calendar, be sure that your client’s information will remain privately in the Address Book & NOT viewable in the Project Calendar for other clients ****––as long as you do not have that database’s page published.
To double check this, copy the published link for the Public Calendar and paste it into a private or Incognito browser window. Click on an event shown in the calendar that you KNOW is booked and linked to a client, check the properties at the top of the event details to see if you can see the client linked to it. If not, you’re good to go! (You may want to expand the hidden properties temporarily just to make sure it’s not grouped in there.)
If you checked & you DO see your client’s name in this published page view, go back to the main page that shows the timezone converter and check for the following:
if that page is published, it will have
a transparent informational blue banner across the top of the page that says “this page is live on [inserts your workspace link name within Notion] View site Site settings”
the Publish tab in the Share menu will also have a blue checkmark next to it
click ‘Site settings’ in the banner, or open the Share menu to make adjustments in the Publish tab
next go to the Address book database, and look for the expand icon to open it in full screen, and check the Publish settings for page that too, just to be doubly sure!
‘expand icon’ in database tools menu
Recap
Congratulations!
You've just learned how to plan your client availability for all your 2024 projects using Notion as your project management tool –like a friggin’ pro!
By following this process, you'll be super prepared for all your new leads or potential clients, and they’ll be impressed with your organizational skills. 😉
As you continue to use Notion to explore & build out additional features, check my Shop for more in-depth templates you can put to good use & save an assload of time by not creating the systems from scratch.
Now you’ve planned your projects with confidence! And hopefully also made 2024 yo bitch erm, I mean your most organized & kickass year yet! 😂
