From Three Spreadsheets to One System: How One Studio Streamlined their School Candid Photography Process

Studio Spotlight · By Airstudio with Scott Rodgers, Stuart-Rodgers

You may hear some groans when you ask our staff about school service work, though the games, concerts and pep rallies themselves are fun to photograph. The groans come from the back end: scattered schedules, last-minute changes, and nagging emails about uploads days after the event.

“We can't make a Tuesday night JV game glamorous. We can make the work around it less painful, less costly and easier to manage.” — Scott Rodgers, Stuart-Rodgers

This season, Stuart-Rodgers moved the whole workflow off three spreadsheets and into Airstudio. The results show up in fewer photographer trips, fewer hours of tracking, and fewer mistakes.

The old way: three spreadsheets, three versions of the truth

Stuart-Rodgers' School Service Work candid program ran on three separate sheets, each owned by a different part of the team:

• Event list (Sales team): every event and level (varsity, JV, middle school) each school needed covered

• Master schedule (Scheduler): all events combined into one calendar, with photographers assigned

• Production tracker (Production tech): when images were uploaded and when they were posted

The scheduler's job was the hardest. They pulled every sales sheet together and looked for overlaps: games where two schools Stuart-Rodgers contracts with are playing each other. Those matchups are where the real savings are, because one photographer can cover both schools at a single event.

“Every handoff was manual. Sales updated their sheet, and the scheduler had to notice. The scheduler made a change, and production had to catch it. Nobody had the full picture, and the same information was typed in two or three places.” — Scott Rodgers

How Stuart-Rodgers set it up in Airstudio

The team replaced all three sheets with one workflow built from standard Airstudio features: a Job Type, a Task Collection Template, and a “dummy date” on the Schedule. The full walkthrough is in the Airstudio guide, Scheduling School Candid Events.

1. Create a School Event Candids job type

In Settings → Job Types, create a job type called School Event Candids. Under Task Collections, link it to your candid template so every candid job added to the Schedule gets its tasks automatically. See Job Types.

2. Build the Candid Task Collection

In Tasks → Collection Templates, create a Job template with two tasks (Task Collection Templates):

• Candid-Upload Images: set to Auto Assign Job Employees, so every photographer on the job is added to it, along with the Candid Processing group.

• Candid-Processing and Posting: assigned to the Candid Processing group and started in an On Hold status.

  
  

Add a State Transition: when Candid-Upload Images reaches Complete, move Candid-Processing and Posting from On Hold to To Do. That's the automatic hand-off to production.

3. Load Every Event onto a Dummy Date

Pick an empty date after the sports season, such as a Sunday with no events. Sales adds every event and level needing coverage there as a job with a Pending status. In year one, add events from each school's Organization page; in later years, copy last season's jobs forward to the dummy date.

To see what still needs scheduling, open the dummy date and review the list, or export it with Actions → Download.

“It didn't require a big overhaul. It took one smart idea, the dummy date, and the scheduling and task tools Airstudio already had.” — Scott Rodgers

4. Schedule, and Double up where Schools Meet

The scheduler moves each job from the dummy date to its real date and changes the status to Candid-Scheduled. When two contracted schools are playing each other, the status becomes Candid-Dual School and one photographer covers both teams.

Moving a job also moves its task due dates, so reminders always line up with the real event date.

5. Let the Tasks Chase the Uploads

The notification rules on the template email photographers until their images are in:

• 24 hours after the job: a reminder to upload, with a direct link to the task

• 48 hours after the job: a second reminder

• Every 24 hours after that: a reminder until the upload task is complete

After uploading, the photographer opens the task from the email, enters the number of images and any job notes, and marks it Complete. The reminders stop, and processing moves to To Do. When the production tech marks processing complete, Airstudio can email the school contacts that the gallery is posted. Rule options are covered in the Workflow and Tasks Setup Guide.

6. Report on Late and Missing Jobs

• Late uploads or processing: go to Tasks and filter on Candid. Every candid task and its status is in one list, with past-due tasks flagged in red.

• Season overview: Tasks → Dashboard shows tasks completed, due and overdue by day, week, month or year.

• Staffing: Schedule → Actions → Reports includes Role Assignments and Employee Hours. See Schedule Reports.

7. Give Schools a View of their Schedule

School contacts with login access see every scheduled job for their school on the Schedule tab of the Client Contact Portal, with dates, times and locations. The Notifications tab logs every email sent to them.

The results: less time, fewer mistakes, lower costs

• Savings on every shared matchup. With all events in one schedule, the scheduler sees head-to-head games between contracted schools right away. One photographer covers both schools instead of two being sent to the same field.

• Everyone works from the same data. Sales, scheduling and production all see the same schedule in Airstudio. There's no more reconciling three sheets or wondering which version is current.

• Follow-up runs itself. Emails about missing uploads go out automatically through tasks.

• Reporting takes minutes. Filtering Tasks on “Candid-” shows every late upload or unposted job in one list, so the team can address them before they affect a school.

• School clients can see what's coming. Clients have access to what's scheduled and when, which means fewer “are you coming to Friday's game?” calls and more confidence in Stuart-Rodgers' service.

• Fewer errors, less duplicated effort. Because each event is entered once and moves through a single workflow, the copy-and-paste mistakes that come with three spreadsheets are gone.

“Follow-up runs itself. Our team spends its time fixing problems, not hunting for them.” — Scott Rodgers

Projected savings: fewer trips, fewer hours

The savings come from two places: fewer photographer assignments and less time spent tracking the work.

Photographer assignments. On a season of 100 events, covering about 20 head-to-head matchups with a single photographer cuts assignments from 100 to 80.

Tracking and processing time. The staff member who tracks and processes this work went from 12 hours a week to 8. At $18.00 an hour, that's 4 hours and $72 saved every week.

• Photographer assignments per season (at $150 each, pay + mileage): 100 → 80, saving $3,000 per season

• Tracking and processing time per week (at $18.00/hour): 12 → 8 hours, saving 4 hours and $72 per week

• Tracking and processing time per year (52 weeks): 624 → 416 hours, saving 208 hours and $3,744 per year

• Total projected savings: $6,744 per year

At $100 to $200 per photographer assignment, the assignment savings range from $2,000 to $4,000 a season. They depend on spotting every matchup, which is far easier with all events in one Airstudio schedule than across three spreadsheets.

What's next

Moving the School Service Work candid program into Airstudio didn't require a big overhaul at Stuart-Rodgers. Three spreadsheets became one workflow, and everyone on the team now spends less time managing data and more time serving schools.

If your studio is still juggling spreadsheets to cover school events, the Airstudio team can help you set up the same workflow. Email help@airstudio.io or book a setup session.