As wedding professionals, our network of contacts, vendors and professional service providers are a big part of our world. With Aisle Planner, you can keep your vendor database neatly organized and right where you need it the most. We'll walk you through getting your contact library all set up in this short tutorial, then scroll down to learn more and find answers to the most frequently asked questions about the Aisle Planner's Contact Library.
*Please note: Some of the screens shown in this video have been updated and may look a little different, but we think you'll still find the information in this tutorial super helpful!
Adding Files to a Contact Record in the Contact Library
While we currently do not support uploading files to vendor records in the Contact Library, you can upload files to a vendor record from within an event. You can also utilize the “Private Notes” and “Client notes” areas within each vendor record in the Contact Library to add any notes and information you’d like to reference.
We look forward to adding the option to upload files, images and other information to vendors in your Contact Library soon! Click here to learn more about uploading files to vendor records within a project, and read on below to learn more about Private and Client Notes that you can keep within each Contact Record in your Contact Library.
What’s the difference between Private Notes and Client Notes in each vendor record?
As wedding pros, our circle of vendors and service providers are a big part of our world. So we thought it would be helpful to include an easy way to keep both private and shareable notes on each of your vendors for easy reference, so their information is right there when you need it the most.
Private Notes - Any notes you include here are for internal purposes (for you and your team) only and are only accessible from the contact library. When you import this vendor into a wedding or project, these private notes won’t be shown. You can use this area for information that you’d like to keep on file for future reference, but may not want to show your clients:
Birthdays
Family member names for spouses and children
Favorite coffee from Starbucks
You can also use this area to store other important information for you and your team to take note of when either considering this vendor or working with this vendor. Some examples:
“This vendors’s fees are non-negotiable but worth every penny”
“This makeup artists does beautiful work but is a smoker, may not be a good fit for those who may be sensitive to smoker’s breathe.”
“It’s important to note that the luau next door to this outdoor venue starts banging their drums at 5:00pm, which is barely noticeable as long as you have music playing. Make sure the ceremony is done before then!”
Client Notes - These are notes or short introductions for each of your vendors that are imported into a wedding with each vendor record, so you can easily share important information with your clients without having to type them up from scratch each and every time.
We like to include a short introduction and general pricing in this area. If you bring in a vendor into a wedding from your contact library and they haven’t been marked as booked just yet, these notes will be shown on the cover of their vendor card. For this reason, we recommend that you keep all the notes about the same length, and share the same type of information for each vendor in a specific vendor category. This makes it easier to “compare” vendors at a glance and makes for a nice way to introduce them to a client when recommending a couple of different vendors in each category.
Adding Social Media Handles To Vendor Contact Records
You’re probably already using the @ area for each of your vendor contacts to track email addresses, but you can add custom addresses here as well, which is perfect for all of those social media handles you’d like to keep track of! You can add as many @ addresses as needed, so we recommend that you use the first field for each vendor’s email, then use additional addresses for social media.
Here's a walk-through on adding social media handles to a vendor contact record within a project, and while this example shows you how to add social media handles within a project, adding them to the contacts in your Contact Library follows the same steps!
✓ STEP ONE: Click into a contact record and then click the world icon to add a SOCIAL LINK
✓ STEP TWO: Click on ADD SOCIAL LINK and choose from the dropdown menu which type of link you'd like to add.
✓ STEP THREE: The prefix of the type of social media link will populate, so all you need to do is add the user name to complete the URL. Either leave the Type clear, or you can add a custom entry identifying the URL👍🏼
👍 THERE YOU HAVE IT! You have now added social media tags to your vendor contact record!
Am I able to download the Contact Records in the Contact Library?
Yes! Simply click on the gold action button in the upper right-hand corner of your window and select DOWNLOAD CONTACTS AS SPREADSHEET. All your contacts will be downloaded into an Excel Spreadsheet. For more detailed information, please visit this help article.
When I Make Updates to a Contact Record in the Contact Library, Does It Update the Contact Record in all Projects Associated with that Vendor?
We currently don't sync any updates out to that same vendor in your projects. This is because as pros are updating notes or pricing info in the Contacts Library, it might not apply to existing clients who have already booked that vendor at current pricing.
Does the Vendor List From Each Project or Event Sync Back Into the Contact Library?
We currently don’t sync any vendors added to a wedding back to the contact library at this time – this safeguard is in place to minimize any chance of your clients inadvertently messing with important information in each of your vendor records.
We’ve gotten a lot of requests for a way to sync back vendors to the contact library, so this is something we’ll look into adding. In the meantime, we suggest that you take some time to set up your contact library, so you can easily bring vendors into each wedding, without having to type in the information each time!
