Decline reasons

Saying no is the part of booking that eats your evening. You know the request is not for you within ten seconds, then spend twenty minutes writing something kind enough to send. Decline reasons are saved messages you pick from, so a no is never a blank page.

They are templates, not final answers. Choosing one drops its wording into the decline window, where you can change a line or add a recommendation before it goes anywhere.

Edit them under Settings, Info/Policies, Decline Reasons.

Every account begins with four templates, covering the reasons that come up most:

• •Not my style, a warm no that points the client towards an artist better suited to the piece.
• •Fully booked, for when your diary is the problem rather than the idea.
• •Budget mismatch, which leaves the door open if they want to rethink the scope.
• •Other, deliberately blank, for the ones that need writing from scratch.

Rewrite all four in your own voice. They are a starting point, and a client can tell the difference between a message you wrote and one you did not. If you make a mess of it, Reset to defaults at the top right puts the original set back.

Click Add Reason to create one. Give it a short label, because the label is what you see on the button when you are declining, then write the message underneath. Click Done when you are finished, and the pencil to reopen a saved template.

Use the Insert field button above the message to drop in details that fill themselves in per client: their first name, your project title, a link back to their request. Anything you insert is replaced with the real value when the email sends.

Open a request, choose to decline it, and your templates appear as Quick fill buttons under the message box. Tap one to load its wording, edit whatever you want, and tap Preview email if you want to see it as the client will. Edit in Settings in that same row jumps you straight back to your templates.

There are two buttons, and they say what they do. Decline and email sends the decline email, with your note in it if you wrote one. Decline quietlydeclines the request without contacting the client at all: no email, and no alert in their hub. That is the right choice for spam and for requests that were clearly never serious.

Declined requests are kept in your archive, so a decline is never a delete. You can go back and read what you sent.

Your chosen reason fills the message body. Everything around it, the subject line, the greeting and your branding, is the standard decline email. The panel shows a live preview of it beside your templates so the two are never a surprise to each other.

To change the subject line or the look, use Change appearance & wording above the preview. That opens the same editor as the rest of your system notifications.