Set up CoreHue for mini sessions

Mini sessions are their own kind of busy: one day, a row of short slots, a fixed price, and a rush to fill them. CoreHue is made for that. You publish the dates, clients book and pay for their slot themselves, and you just show up and shoot.

Here is how to set it up.

How mini sessions usually flow

You open a set of back-to-back slots on one or more specific days. Clients grab a time and pay up front, so the day fills itself. Afterwards you deliver a gallery to each one.

Set it up

1. Create a mini session service. In Bookings → Services, press Add service, name it, and choose Mini sessions. The mode is fixed once the service exists, so pick it here.
2. Set the price and the slot. On the Price & slot tab, set Price per slot and pick a Slot duration from the menu of 10, 15, 20, 30, 45 and 60 minutes. It starts at 20. Spots per slot decides how many bookings one time can take, up to 50. That is how you run a shared set, or a drop-in line, rather than one family at a time.
3. Lay out your dates. On the Dates & location tab, add each day you are running. Every date carries its own Booking gap, Start time and End time, plus its own Location name and Address. So a Saturday at the studio and a Sunday in the park live on one service. CoreHue builds the slots between those times for you, and everything saves with the service in one go. See Mini sessions.
4. Take payment at booking. On the Booking flow tab, expand step 4 Payment, switch on Collect payment and set Payment at booking to Full payment. A service that collects payment holds the slot while the client pays, and releases it if they never do. That is what stops one person sitting on your 10 a.m. See Unpaid bookings.
5. Add anything optional. A few extra minutes, extra images, a printed set. Each add-on has a price per unit, and you can let clients choose a quantity with an optional cap. See Add-ons.
6. Publish and share. Publish the service, turn on your Public booking page, and post the link. A slot that fills reads Full, and so does a date with nothing left. Once the whole service is claimed, its card on your booking page reads Sold out and stops opening. Clients pick for themselves without messaging you.
7. Deliver each gallery. After the day, send each client their own branded gallery. Downloads come switched on, along with a download PIN, so send that with the link.

A few tips

• Connect Google Calendar so your mini-session day blocks out cleanly against everything else.
• Leave "Block shared availability" on if you also take regular bookings, so a booked mini slot removes that time from your other services. It works one way: a regular booking does not close a mini-session slot. See Per-service availability.
• Reuse the service next season. Holiday, spring and back-to-school minis can all run off the same service. Replace the dates and publish it again. Everything else stays as you built it.
• Keep a short questionnaire ready for names and special requests, set to send itself after the booking is confirmed. See Questionnaires.
• Post the link, not a sign-up form. Clients booking and paying in one sitting is the whole point. A form means you are back to chasing.

Next step

See how a client moves through CoreHue, or get the basics in place with your first 30 minutes.

Questions about setting up mini sessions? Email us at hello@corehue.co.