Features

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Feature Overview

Cortado Pro brings leads, events, quotes, invoices, payments, and client communication into one place — built for event planners, caterers, and small event businesses. This page is a tour of everything the platform does, grouped by the area of the app where you’ll find it.

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Leads & Pipeline

Turn inquiries into bookings with a visual kanban board that tracks every lead from first contact to a signed booking.

• Pipeline stages: New, In Progress, Quote Sent, Accepted, Rejected, and Stale — drag and drop leads between stages or update them from the detail page. Once a booking exists, Accepted shows as Booked so you don’t send another quote that can never be accepted.
• Rejection reasons: When a lead moves to Rejected, you’re prompted for a reason (Budget, Timing, Competitor, or your own custom options) plus optional notes. A banner on the lead keeps the context visible.
• Quick tags: Flag leads as Follow Up, Urgent, Hot Lead, VIP, or Waiting with one-click icons for fast triage.
• Source attribution: Every inquiry records where it came from — paid ads, organic search, social networks, newsletters, your own site, or any channel you tag with a utm_source of your own — and shows it as a source badge on each lead.
• Advanced filters: Filter by received date, event date range, stage, event type, or tag. Filters sync between kanban and table views and persist across sessions.
• Scheduling conflict detection: Cortado automatically flags other events and leads that overlap a proposed event time, using your setup and teardown buffers.
• Accept on behalf of a customer: Move a lead to Accepted and select an existing quote to instantly create the booking, events, and invoice — no customer action required.
• Lead assignment: Automatically route new inquiries to a default person or rotate them across your team, with an owner avatar on every card and an Owner column in the table.
• Jobs pipeline: When enabled for your organization, Home > Pipeline lists every job from first inquiry through final payment — table or board, phase tiles, event and invoice popovers, and a job page. See Pipeline.

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Events & Calendar

Plan, schedule, and track every event in one calendar that also shows the leads heading your way.

• Multi-event inquiries and bookings: A single lead or quote can hold multiple event dates — perfect for multi-day weddings, corporate series, or recurring gigs.
• Unified calendar: See leads and events together in day, week, or month views, with multi-day events plotted on every date they span.
• Stage filters: Hide and show lead stages (New, In Progress, Quote Sent, Accepted) and event stages (Upcoming, Complete, Cancelled, Rescheduled, Postponed) to focus on what matters.
• Upcoming and completed tabs: The Events page separates what’s next from past history while keeping both one click away.
• Direct event creation: Add a booking and its first event from the Events page without going through the pipeline.
• 15-minute durations: Event length on leads, quotes, bookings, and staff assignments steps in 15-minute increments.
• Timezones: Event times display in the event’s own local timezone across admin, portal, and email — with a one-click “Use location timezone” when an address is set. Calendar day, week, and month views show that same timezone on each event’s time label. Set a business default under Settings > Company.
• Cancel and void: Marking an event Cancelled asks which of the booking’s open invoices to void, so a cancelled job doesn’t leave a live bill behind.
• Auto-completion: Past events and bookings are automatically marked Complete, keeping your schedule accurate without manual cleanup.
• Staffing fields: Track guest count, barista count, cart count, and assignments directly on each event.
• Booking questionnaires: Review customer answers on the event detail page, add or edit questions for that booking, and control whether a lead or quote requires a questionnaire before acceptance.

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Contacts & Companies

Your CRM side of the house — every contact, every company, every interaction.

• Contacts directory: Searchable list with inline editing and duplicate-email detection when adding contacts on the fly.
• Contact detail pages: Avatar header, related inquiries, related events, company links, and a unified notes/tasks tab.
• Company directory: Store company name and website with their own detail pages.
• Archive contacts and companies: Hide people and accounts from lists and pickers without losing history. Archived records stay visible on past leads, events, and relationships, and can be restored.
• Auto-matching: New inquiries automatically link to the right company based on the contact’s email domain.
• Contact swapping: Reassign a lead or event to a different contact without losing any history.

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Quotes

Build professional, multi-event quotes and get them in front of customers fast.

• Multi-event quotes: Add multiple dates to one quote, each with its own time, duration, and guest count. Quote events are a separate copy from the lead — refresh them with Replace with Lead Events if the inquiry dates change.
• Quote templates: Save event-type-specific pricing with base rates, hourly rates, and default line items. Matching templates auto-apply when you create a new quote.
• Enforced tips: Set a required minimum tip percentage per event type that auto-applies on quotes and checkout.
• Quote workflow: One-click send after creation, and the lead automatically advances to Quote Sent the first time you send it.
• Quote statuses: Draft, Sent, Viewed, Revised, Accepted, Rejected, Expired, and Cancelled.
• Editable expiration dates: Extend or shorten how long a quote is valid.
• Email customization: Configure subject lines and custom text slots per template to match your brand.
• Dedicated Quotes page: Status tabs, a summary strip, and an Event Date column (soonest first) give you a home for tracking every outstanding, accepted, and declined quote.
• Optional quote add-ons: Offer catalog extras — or a one-off custom add-on — that the customer can opt into on the portal before they accept.
• Summary and Preview panel: A side panel tracks live totals or mirrors exactly what the customer will see — including quantity, unit price, and unit type on each line — with a Before you send checklist that flags anything missing.
• Quote validity defaults: Set how many days (1–90) new quotes stay valid under Settings > Services > Quote Templates. When an event is sooner, Valid Until is capped to the day before that event.
• Mileage-based transportation pricing: Add a Transportation line item and Cortado calculates the driving distance to the event location automatically, priced at your configured per-mile rate.

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Invoices & Payments

Run the whole money side of your business — invoices, schedules, payments, refunds, disputes.

• Stripe Checkout: Customers pay through Stripe’s secure embedded checkout with real-time status updates.
• ACH bank transfer: Accept bank payments with automatic microdeposit verification and email guidance for customers.
• Per-invoice payment methods: Override your organization-wide default to accept card only, ACH only, or both for a specific invoice.
• Payment schedules: Fixed-amount or percentage-based installments, editable on existing invoices — including splitting unpaid rows after a deposit is paid — with progress bars and per-schedule Pay buttons.
• Manual payments: Record cash, check, or other offline payments with receipt and void emails. If the customer already chose a tip in the portal, the remaining amount includes that unpaid gratuity.
• Refunds: Issue full or partial refunds, including goodwill refunds that exceed the original amount.
• Disputes: Stripe dispute events are captured automatically with a dedicated dashboard to review status, reason, and amount.
• Tips: Apply tips to the final schedule or spread them across every schedule — with paid totals shown in green and a clear tip breakdown.
• Invoice editor: Details, line items, and the payment schedule sit as cards, with a Summary / Preview panel and a Before you save checklist — the same layout as the quote builder.
• Send and share: Send invoices by email, share draft invoices via link before finalizing, and copy secure portal links tied to JWT tokens.
• Payment receipt PDFs: Download a receipt for a completed payment schedule from the invoice in Cortado or from the customer portal.
• Alerts: Email notifications when a quote is accepted and when a payment (card or ACH) is received.

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Customer Portal

The customer-facing side of Cortado — where your clients review quotes, sign, pay, and tip.

• Quote review and acceptance: Customers compare quote revisions side-by-side and accept online.
• Invoice payment: Pay via card or ACH directly in the portal, with a sidebar that navigates between multiple invoices for the same booking.
• Customizable tipping: Choose which tip percentages appear, pick a default, allow or disable custom amounts, and write a personalized message for customers who choose not to tip. Enforced minimums are respected automatically.
• Terms & conditions: Define multiple reorderable clauses shown in the portal footer as a modal.
• Booking confirmation: Post-acceptance confirmation includes event duration and a personalized greeting.
• Event details questionnaire: After payment, customers can answer the questions you configured for that booking — parking, on-site contact, and other logistics — and update those answers later.

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Inquiry Forms

Capture leads straight from your website with a form that matches your brand.

• Two embed modes: A multi-step wizard or a single-page layout showing every field at once — each with its own embed code.
• Custom subdomain: Host your form at yourcompany.cortadopro.com using your organization slug.
• Branded customization: Configure services, add-ons, questions, theme (colors, fonts, corners), and the order items appear in (drag and drop).
• Empty-step skipping: Steps like Add-ons are hidden automatically when there’s nothing to choose.
• Google Analytics 4: Track submissions, step completions, and user interactions as GA4 events (supports G-, GT-, and AW- tag formats).
• Google Ads conversions: Fire a conversion event on submission by adding your Google Ads conversion label — no code changes required.
• CC address: Add a secondary email to receive every new inquiry notification.

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Reports

Understand your business at a glance with reports that update in real time.

• Revenue intelligence dashboard: KPI cards for Collected revenue, Outstanding balance, Total Pipeline, Average Invoice, and Close Rate, plus a monthly collected-vs-invoiced trend chart.
• Revenue by event type: See which event types drive the most revenue, with counts for context.
• Lead conversion funnel: Visualize how leads move from New through Accepted.
• Leads dashboard: Total leads, close rate, average deal size with period-over-period comparisons, plus a stage breakdown chart.
• Sales tax report: Taxable sales, tax invoiced, and a breakdown by tax rate — issued invoices only, after discounts, by invoice date. Preset ranges include This Month, Last Quarter, or Last Year.
• Daily activity summary: Every note and completed task from any given day, each linked to its parent record.
• Flexible date ranges: Presets and custom ranges with optional comparison periods across every report.

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Notifications

Stay on top of what’s happening across your organization — without living in the app.

• In-app notification center: A bell in the header surfaces new inquiries, payment updates, event changes, and more. Mark read, archive, or jump straight to the item.
• Bulk actions: Mark all as read or archive all in one click.
• Email summaries: Daily, weekly, or monthly digests with configurable delivery time and day.
• Content filters: Choose exactly what each digest includes — events, tasks, leads, or payments — and filter by stage (e.g., overdue tasks, upcoming events, pending payments).
• Extra recipients: Add additional email addresses to any notification type so the right teammates stay in the loop.

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Workflows

Automations that run when something happens in Cortado — a new lead, a quote sitting unopened, a payment that just cleared.

• Canvas builder: One trigger, then wait, branch, switch, send email, send a webhook, create a task, update a field, or stop.
• Template gallery: Install a ready-made automation and edit it, instead of starting from a blank canvas.
• Active runs: Watch in-flight automations from the Workflows sidebar and stop or retry from run history.
• Run it yourself: A Run Workflow action on leads, events, quotes, invoices, and contacts starts an eligible workflow immediately.
• Email formatting: Paragraph and signature line breaks in a Send email step stay intact in the message the customer receives.

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Global Search

Jump to any record from anywhere in the app.

• Keyboard shortcut: Press ⌘K on macOS or Ctrl+K on Windows to open search instantly.
• Unified results: Search across contacts, leads, events, and invoices in one place, ranked by relevance with fuzzy matching.
• Keyboard navigation: Arrow keys to move, Enter to open, Escape to close.
• What you can search: contact names, emails, and phone numbers; lead contact names and event types; event contact names and dates; invoice numbers, titles, and contact names.

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Gibby

Cortado’s in-app assistant — a floating orb you can open from most pages.

• Search and act: Look up contacts, companies, leads, events, quotes, invoices, payments, and workflows from one ask, and take the same actions your role already allows.
• Reports and activity: Ask for the same report numbers you see in Reporting, or what happened on a record — still limited to what your role can view.
• Questionnaires: Gibby can ask structured follow-up questions instead of guessing, and you can start with a two-step “Build a request” prompt.
• Keyboard shortcut: Press Cmd+I on macOS or Ctrl+I on Windows to toggle the panel.
• Attention: Full chat collects proposals, questionnaires, failed actions, and stuck conversations in one Attention inbox, with a count when something needs you.
• Used for this answer: Expand a completed reply to see which tools and data shaped it.
• Capabilities: A plain-language, always-current list of what Gibby can and can’t do yet.

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Integrations

Connect Cortado to the tools you already use.

• Stripe: Accept card and ACH payments, manage disputes, and reconcile refunds with full webhook-backed reliability.
• Gmail: Send emails directly from Cortado and keep threads in sync with your leads and events.
• Google Calendar: Choose which calendar to sync to. Cortado events are pushed to Google Calendar automatically, with a manual sync button when you need it now. Guests added in Google stay on the event; Cortado still overwrites title, time, location, and description. Changes made in Google Calendar are not pulled back.
• Slack: Connect your workspace via OAuth and pick one or more channels (public or private) for new inquiry notifications.
• Google Analytics: Track your inquiry form with GA4 and fire Google Ads conversions on submission.
• Claude and other AI apps: Every organization can connect Claude, or another app that supports the same connection standard, with permission-scoped access to your leads, contacts, notes, tasks, and quotes. Connected apps can also check a date, move a lead’s stage, add a note, or mint a portal link.
• API keys: Issue read-only keys so your own tools and automations can pull leads and contacts straight out of Cortado.
• Webhooks: Register HTTPS endpoints and add a Send webhook step to a workflow so Zapier, n8n, or your own systems get a signed event when something happens.

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Tasks

Keep work moving with tasks linked to the leads, events, bookings, and invoices they belong to.

• Kanban board: Drag tasks between Not Started, In Progress, and Completed columns.
• Filters: Narrow by assignee, priority, or due date.
• Parent context: Every task card shows the name of the related lead, event, booking, or invoice so you always know the why.
• Dashboard view: Your personal task list on the dashboard shows only tasks assigned to you.
• Follows the deal: Notes, tasks, and files added on a lead stay visible as it becomes a quote, booking, invoice, and event — nothing gets left behind.

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Team & Roles

Invite teammates and control who can do what.

• Built-in Admin role: Every organization has a system-managed Admin role that grants full access.
• User types: Invite someone as Admin (billed seat, roles you choose) or Event Staff (free, read-only Calendar, Events, and Contacts). Event Staff do not use a billed seat.
• Custom roles: Create additional roles with View or Manage access per area (leads, events, quotes, invoicing, payments, settings, and more). Manager, Event Staff, and Bookkeeper presets fill the matrix for Admin members; locked pages tell teammates to ask an admin instead of failing silently.
• Multi-role invites: Invite Admin members by email and assign one or more roles with a multi-select dropdown.
• Scheduling: Assign staff to events, track acceptance status, and manage shifts inline on the event page.

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Feedback

Share what’s working and what isn’t — directly from inside Cortado.

• Submit feedback: File suggestions, feature requests, or bug reports without leaving the app.
• Categories: Tag each item as Bug, Feature Request, or General.
• Upvotes: Support ideas from other teammates — popular items rise to the top.
• Edit and delete: Manage your own submissions from the card menu.

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Settings

Configure Cortado to fit how you actually run your business.

• Company: Business info, brand assets, organization timezone, contact and inquiry CC email, lead assignment, and subscription (including included Admin seats).
• Services: Catalog, event types, booking questionnaires, quote templates, inventory, discounts, sales tax, and enforced tips.
• Email: Senders, domain, templates, automated emails, and deliverability.
• Inquiry Form: Publish, fields, availability, theme, confirmation, and analytics.
• Client Portal: Domain, terms, and customer tipping.
• Integrations: Slack, AI assistants, Google Calendar, API keys, and workflow webhooks.
• Payments: Stripe Connect, disputes, and payment webhooks.

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Security & Reliability

Cortado is built to protect your data and your customers.

• Multi-tenant isolation: Every organization’s data is fully scoped — no cross-org access.
• Role-based access control: A built-in Admin role plus custom roles with per-area View/Manage permissions let you enforce least-privilege access across your team.
• Audit logging: An activity feed records inquiries, quote updates, payments, event changes, and other key actions as they happen.
• Encryption in transit and at rest: All traffic is encrypted, and data at rest is protected by the underlying managed database.
• Stripe PCI compliance: Card data is handled by Stripe Checkout — Cortado never sees or stores raw card numbers.
• Idempotent payments: Payments, refunds, and manual entries use idempotency keys to prevent duplicate charges if a request is retried.
• Resilient background jobs: Payment processing, notifications, and calendar syncs use tiered retries and centralized error monitoring to recover from transient failures.