Set up CoreHue for commercial photography

Commercial and brand work runs differently from consumer shoots. You are dealing with businesses, usage rights, scopes, and sometimes clients in other countries. CoreHue keeps the negotiation, the agreement and the delivery in one tidy, professional run.

Here is how to set it up.

How commercial work usually flows

It starts with a conversation about scope, not an instant booking. You scope the job, send a proposal with clear usage terms, agree and invoice, shoot, then deliver the final files. Licensing and clean paperwork matter more here than anywhere else.

Set it up

1. Take inquiries, not instant bookings. In Bookings → Services, click New service and choose Inquiry, so each commercial job starts as a conversation in your inquiries. On the service's Details tab, set Pricing to Starting at or Don't show a price, since the number depends on the scope.
2. Put your rates in Items. Day rate, half day, licensing tiers, retouching, travel. Every invoice line is picked from the Items catalogue, so your billing wording stays the same across clients and years. An item is a Name, an optional Description and an optional Price, so leave the price blank on anything you quote case by case. You can add one without leaving the invoice too. Open the item picker on a line and click Add item.
3. Spell out usage in your contract. Commercial clients are paying for how the images are used. Build a contract template covering usage, licensing, exclusivity and term, and use variables for the specifics of each job. Keep separate templates for different licensing tiers so you can send the right one fast.
4. Send a clear proposal. Put the scope, deliverables and price into a proposal so nobody is left guessing what is included. Under Items, use Client choices for licence options and Add-on rows for extras like more territories or a longer term. Attach the agreement to the same proposal so approval and signature happen together.
5. Bill the way businesses pay. Switch Payment on in the proposal and set it to Payment schedule: a deposit now, the balance on delivery. Accepting then creates the invoice for you. Clients pay by card once you have connected Stripe. If you would rather take bank transfers, set one up as a manual payment method with your account details as the instructions. See Manual payment methods and Payment schedules.
6. Bill international clients in their currency. On Pro you can raise invoices in more than one currency. Your default currency is chosen once under Settings → Profile and locks there. Pro adds the others alongside it. See Currencies and countries.
7. Deliver the final files. Send a gallery. A new gallery already offers Original plus one optimized size. Check under Settings → Downloads that the sizes match what they have licensed. Then decide whether to keep the download PIN on for a team that will be passing the link around. See Downloads.

A few tips

• Use a selection request when an agency needs to mark which frames go to retouch. It gives them a brief, an optional maximum, and a list you can read back. The ready-made Retouch list starts at a 10-photo limit. See Collections.
• Watch what is outstanding on the Payments page. It carries Total received, This month and Outstanding across the top. Read your earnings under Reports → Finance.
• An invoice with no payment methods is a perfectly good record of an agreed fee for a client who pays by their own process. It sends and reads normally, it just offers no pay button.

Next step

See how a client moves through CoreHue, or sort the essentials in your first 30 minutes.

Questions about setting up for commercial work? Email us at hello@corehue.co.