I’m a freelance chef juggling 8 private dinners next month, and my Notion + Google Sheets combo keeps letting follow-ups slip; what lightweight CRM or workflow has helped you keep inquiries, contracts, and calendar in one place? Happy to swap templates — my client intake form and proposal deck are yours — and I’m up for testing a small referral setup if a few of us want to share overflow dates.
Bonsai’s been the least-fiddly for me: one lead form flows to a pipeline, auto-generates proposal/contract, takes deposit, and pushes dates to Google Calendar (less herding cats, more cooking). Set up a simple ‘Inquiry → Proposal → Deposit → Prep’ pipeline and trigger the contract/invoice when you move to Proposal (https://www.hellobonsai.com). If you prefer lighter, Airtable + Fillout + Zapier works, but you’ll end up babysitting zaps — happy to share the stage automations I use.