Inquiries

An inquiry is someone asking about working with you. They arrive from services you've set up in inquiry mode. They land here rather than putting anything in your calendar.

This is where most work starts. Someone asks, you talk it through, and when they're ready you turn the conversation into a booking, a proposal, or an invoice.

Where they come from

Inquiries are created by clients, through your booking page. There's no button in the dashboard for adding one by hand.

Some people reach you another way: by phone, at a wedding fair, through a friend. Add them under Contacts as a Lead and work from their contact profile. You can create a proposal, a booking or an invoice for them from there, without an inquiry existing at all.

What a client sends you

An inquiry arrives with more than an email address, which is the point of it. Depending on how you've set the service up, you'll see:

• Their name and email, always
• Phone number, if you ask for it
• Location, where the service asks for one
• Their message
• How they heard about you, if you ask
• Answers to any questionnaire you attached to the service, in their own card on the page

You're replying to a real brief rather than "hi, are you free in June?".

Dates aren't part of the form. Nothing on it asks for one, so if you need a date up front, add a questionnaire to the service and ask there. See Inquiry services.

Replying

Open the inquiry and click Reply. Your message goes out as a proper email from you.

You can attach files, up to 25 MB in total across a maximum of 20 files. This is how you send your rate card, a sample gallery, a PDF of packages, or anything else you'd normally attach.

Their reply comes back into the same thread, so the whole exchange stays in one place. You can go back and forth as long as you need to. The same conversation also appears in Messages, alongside every other client thread.

If you reply from your own mail app instead of from CoreHue, that reply lands in the thread too, so the history stays complete either way.

When the ball is with them, the button reads Send message rather than Reply.

Where an inquiry sits

Every inquiry has a status:

Status	Meaning
Open	Live, still a real possibility
Booked	It turned into a booking
Closed	Finished, for whatever reason

Replying does not change the status. An inquiry stays Open whether you've answered or not.

Alongside the status, CoreHue tracks where the conversation actually stands:

• Not contacted, nobody has replied yet
• Needs reply, the ball is in your court
• Awaiting reply, you've answered and it's with them

That split matters. It means you can filter for everything genuinely waiting on you without having to remember who you owe an answer.

Finding them

The list has two filters. The first picks the view: New inquiries, Open inquiries, Booked inquiries or Closed inquiries. The second narrows by conversation: All communication, Not contacted, Needs reply or Awaiting reply. Arriving from your Home screen adds Needs attention to that second list.

Inquiries you haven't opened yet show a dot beside the name and their reference in bold. The sidebar badge counts them.

Turning an inquiry into work

Once you've agreed on something, the inquiry itself offers every next step. You don't retype anything, because the client's details carry across.

Create booking sits beside Reply at the top. For when the details are settled and you just need it in the calendar. Best when you're taking payment separately or have already been paid.

The rest are in the three-dot menu, in this order:

Create proposal. For when you want them to choose what they're buying, sign a contract, and pay a deposit in one go. The proposal creates the booking itself once they've finished their part. This is the stronger option for higher-value work. See Proposals.

Send questionnaire and Send contract. Useful on their own when you need details gathered or paperwork signed before committing to anything.

Create invoice. For when the work is already agreed and all that's left is the money.

Close inquiry.

Email history sits below them, on every inquiry whatever its status.

Everything you create from an inquiry is listed on it, so the inquiry becomes a record of the whole conversation and everything that came out of it.

Once a booking exists, the inquiry moves to Booked and its only action becomes View booking.

Closing an inquiry

Not everything turns into work. Close inquiry asks you for a reason, and it's required:

• Not a fit
• Date unavailable
• Client declined
• No response
• Duplicate inquiry
• Other

There's a Note box for anything you want to remember later.

Worth answering honestly. Over a year these add up into a genuinely useful picture of where your inquiries go and why. "Date unavailable" appearing constantly is telling you something different from "client declined".

A closed inquiry shows a banner reading Closed: Date unavailable, naming whichever reason you chose, with your note underneath. Its only action is Reopen.

Closing an inquiry does not revoke a proposal you've already sent. If they accept it afterwards, the inquiry becomes Booked.

Keeping on top of them

Your Home screen marks inquiries waiting on you, and the sidebar carries a count of the ones you haven't opened. These are usually the most valuable thing CoreHue puts in front of you. Someone asked about working with you and is waiting, quite possibly asking someone else at the same time.