How to Use HoneyBook or Dubsado as a Doula

We make DoulaFlow, so read this knowing that. It is also written to be useful if you have no intention of switching. Every section starts with how to do the job in the tool you already pay for.

Everything about HoneyBook and Dubsado below comes from their own help centers and pricing pages, checked in September 2026. Both products ship changes often, so if a menu has moved, trust your account over this page. If you want the broader comparison first, including pricing and when you should not pick us, that is in DoulaFlow vs Dubsado vs HoneyBook.

Why does every workaround fight over the same date?

HoneyBook and Dubsado both give a project one main date. That date is special. It is the one you can sort your project list by, the one that shows on your calendar and blocks your availability, the one a payment can fall due relative to, and the one an automation can be timed from.

Both tools also let you create custom date fields, and you will be tempted to put a due date in one. Know the trade before you do. In both, a custom date field cannot sort or filter your project list, cannot set a payment's due date, and cannot trigger an automation. It holds the date. It does not do anything with it.

So the project date ends up carrying the weight, and a doula practice asks it to carry three different dates:

• The due date, so payments and pregnancy-stage emails can be timed from it.
• The on-call window, as a range, so your calendar shows you as unavailable.
• The birth date, so postpartum visits are timed from when the baby came rather than when she was expected.

Keep that in mind through the rest of this page. Most of the rough edges below are that one conflict showing up in a different place.

How do I track due dates and weeks pregnant in HoneyBook or Dubsado?

In HoneyBook: open the project, go to the Details tab, and set the project date under Date & location to the estimated due date. Your pipeline can then be sorted by project date, which puts your clients in due-date order. If you also want to filter by due date, create a custom contact field of type date and fill it in too. The Contacts page can filter on custom date fields, even though the project pipeline cannot.

In Dubsado: set the project date to the due date, either in the project's Overview tab or by mapping a date field on your intake form to Project Date, so the client fills it in herself. The Projects page can sort and filter by project date. You can also add a custom project field and show it as a column, but you cannot sort or filter by it.

Where it stops: neither tool has calculated fields, so neither can tell you how many weeks pregnant a client is. You either do the arithmetic whenever you need it, or keep a weeks field and update it by hand. In Dubsado, a flow can change a client's status or tag at set points before the project date, which gives you rough stages like "36 weeks+" but not a week count.

In DoulaFlow: you enter the due date once and gestational age appears on the client board, the client list and the client's own record, down to the day, as in 32w 4d. It stops counting when it should. It is hidden once a client is postpartum or completed, it freezes at the week the baby actually arrived, and after a pregnancy loss it is removed rather than left climbing.

How do I block my on-call window in HoneyBook or Dubsado?

In HoneyBook: give the project a date range, with the start at 37 weeks and the end at 42, then set its availability to Busy (Details, Date & location, Availability). To make that the default for every booked project, turn on "Set calendar to busy for booked projects" under Company Settings, Preferences. Be aware that new projects start as Free, and a project marked Busy still shows you as available until it is officially booked, meaning a contract is signed or a payment made.

In Dubsado: set the project date to the same 37 to 42 week range and leave "Show as busy" switched on. If you would rather keep the project date as the due date, add a multi-week busy event to the Google, iCloud or Outlook calendar you have connected, and Dubsado's scheduler will respect it. The "Approve new project dates" setting will also list conflicts when you pick a date, though it warns rather than blocks.

Where it stops: in both tools, Busy blocks the times clients can book through your scheduler. It is a calendar setting, so it applies to every appointment type, including prenatal visits with clients who are not due yet. And the moment the project date is the on-call range, it is no longer the due date, so every payment and email timed from it now counts from 37 weeks instead. In HoneyBook, Busy also applies to everyone on the project, which includes a backup doula you have added.

In DoulaFlow: on call is a stage the client is in, not a calendar entry, so it uses no date at all. Under Settings, Automations, turn on "Move clients to On Call automatically" and choose the week. The default is 36, and if you go on call at 37 or 38, set that instead. Once a day DoulaFlow moves anyone who has reached it and sends you one summary email rather than one per client. If you move a client back by hand, it does not override you the next day. The due date stays the due date the whole time.

How do I set a payment due before 36 weeks in HoneyBook or Dubsado?

This one works well in both tools, as long as the project date is the due date.

In HoneyBook: in the invoice's payment plan, set the deposit to be due on the invoice date, and set the final payment to a smart date of 4 weeks before the project date. That lands at 36 weeks. A middle payment can use the mid-project option. If autopay is on and you later edit the schedule, the client has to accept the change before future payments process.

In Dubsado: create a payment plan template under Invoicing, Payment Plans. Make the first installment due 0 days after the contract is signed, as a fixed amount for your deposit, and the last one 4 weeks before project start. Until the project has a date, that installment shows as TBD. Payment plans are on Dubsado's Starter plan, and they are more flexible than most: you can split the balance across several installments.

Where it stops: it is the date conflict again. If you set the project date to the on-call range, "4 weeks before" now means 33 weeks, so you would change it to "1 week before" to compensate. Neither tool can time a payment from a custom date field.

In DoulaFlow: Settings, Automations, "Suggest a balance-due date on new invoices." Choose based on due date and pick a week of pregnancy, and the balance-due date is filled in from the client's due date when you choose her package. It is a suggestion you can change before saving. Invoices carry a deposit, a deposit due date and a separate balance due date, so deposit at signing and balance at 36 weeks is simply how the invoice is laid out. If you want the balance before she is on call, set it earlier than your on-call week. One honest difference: DoulaFlow does deposit plus balance, not a plan of many installments. If you split your fee into four or five payments, Dubsado handles that better.

How do I schedule postpartum visits when the baby hasn't come yet?

In HoneyBook: the dependable way is to trigger on an event instead of a date. Create an automation (this needs the Essentials plan or higher) with the trigger "Tags added to project" and a tag such as Baby born. Have it send an email with a scheduler link for the first postpartum visit, wait a set number of days, then send the next one. After the birth, you add the tag from your phone. HoneyBook's project-date triggers are less suited to this, because they start an automation once, and you cannot put a wait inside an automation that is measured from the project date.

In Dubsado: a flow (Premier plan) can send a scheduler link or create a task a set number of days after the project end date. After the birth, change the project date to the actual birth date. Dubsado has said that pending actions timed from the project date adjust when the date changes; test it on a dummy project before you rely on it with a real client. Alternatively, apply a separate postpartum flow once the baby is here, so nothing is keyed to the estimate at all.

Where it stops: in both, somebody has to remember to add the tag or change the date after the birth, at a point when you have been awake for a very long time. And anything you did time from the due date runs on the due date. If the baby is ten days late, a "congratulations, let's book your postpartum visit" email can go out while she is still pregnant.

In DoulaFlow: postpartum timing runs from the birth you record, not from the due date, so a late baby cannot set it off early. In Settings, Automations, choose how many days after the birth a postpartum visit is due, and once the birth is recorded, the visit shows on your Home screen when it comes due. It prompts you. It does not email your client, deliberately, because an automated message is the thing that goes wrong when a baby is late. It also only prompts for postpartum visits that are in the package she bought, so a client who did not buy postpartum care is never nudged toward it in the week after her birth.

How do I share a client with my backup doula?

In HoneyBook: open the client's project, choose Add participant, and add your backup as a Collaborator. Collaborators cost nothing unless they sign up for their own plan, and you can add them to one project without giving them your whole account. They do need a HoneyBook login, and only the account owner or a super admin can add them.

In Dubsado: invite your backup under Settings, Team members, with the Basic role, then assign her to the client's project. Basic team members see only the projects assigned to them, and invoices and contracts are extra permissions you can leave switched off. Your first three team members are free on either plan.

Where it stops: in HoneyBook, every participant on a project can see all of the emails, files and payments in it, and there is no way to hide the payments from a collaborator. So covering a birth means your backup sees what your client paid you. In Dubsado, the permissions are tighter, but your backup is working inside your workspace. Emails she sends go out from your connected email address, and access lasts until you remember to remove her.

In DoulaFlow: your backup gets a packet, not access to your account. From the client's record you send her the client's appointment calendar as a calendar file, including the due date, the documents you choose, a contact card with the client's and partner's phone numbers, address and planned birth place, and a short birth-details form. What she submits comes back to the client's record for you to review and accept. There is nothing else for her to see, because she was never given the client record. We wrote more about what a backup actually needs, and why most arrangements quietly expire, in What Is a Backup Doula?

How do I track birth statistics in HoneyBook or Dubsado?

In HoneyBook: keep anything you want to count as a tag, such as Birth: cesarean, Birth: home, Birth: hospital. Tags can filter your pipeline and the built-in report graphs. Put the details you only need to read, like labor length, in a custom project field or a note. Questionnaire answers can be printed or saved as a PDF but not exported as a spreadsheet, and HoneyBook's Zapier connection cannot read custom fields, so tags are the most countable option.

In Dubsado: create short-answer custom project fields for labor length, delivery type and place of birth, plus a date field for the birth date. Fill them in yourself or through a post-birth form, but only short-answer and date questions can be mapped to fields, so dropdowns will not save into them. Tell whoever fills them in exactly what to type, or you will end up with "C-section", "cesarean" and "Cesarean" as three different answers. Then export the Projects page as a CSV, which includes those fields, and do the counting in a spreadsheet.

Where it stops: neither tool can total or average custom field data. The built-in reports in both are about revenue, bookings and lead sources. Your average labor length exists only once you have exported the data and calculated it yourself, and it goes stale the next time you have a birth.

In DoulaFlow: the Insights page does the counting. Births recorded, outcomes, multiples, average labor length, average time you spent supporting the birth, births by month, and the split by delivery type and by hospital, home or birth center. It counts babies rather than births, so twins count twice where they should. A pregnancy loss is reported on its own, and never folded into the count of baby boys and baby girls. There is no CSV export of birth data today. The point is that you should not need one.

What none of these tools do, including ours

The question most doulas actually want software to answer is: can I take this client, or is she due the same week as two others?

No tool on this page answers that for you. HoneyBook and Dubsado will block your scheduler during a busy range, but neither will stop you signing a client due in the same week as another. DoulaFlow will not warn you either. What it does do is put every client approaching her due date among the first things on your Home screen, so a pile-up is visible when you open it. Visible is not the same as warned, and we would rather say that here than have you find it in a free trial.

If you want to work out how much overlap your practice can carry, the doula capacity calculator is free, and How Many Birth Clients Can a Doula Take? explains the arithmetic behind it.

When the workaround is good enough

If you set your project date as the due date, take payment on a plan timed from it, and keep your on-call window in your head or your personal calendar, HoneyBook and Dubsado will run a doula practice fine. Plenty of doulas do exactly that. HoneyBook and Dubsado both have mobile apps, which DoulaFlow does not yet. Dubsado's automation and payment plans go further than ours.

The workaround starts to cost you when the practice grows: more clients whose dates move, a backup who needs information at two in the morning, a birth you want to learn something from. That is where the one date runs out of room, and where software that knows what a due date means earns its place.

Common questions

Can HoneyBook or Dubsado calculate how many weeks pregnant a client is?
No. Neither has calculated fields, so neither can turn a due date into a gestational age. The usual workaround is to store the due date as the project date and work out the weeks yourself, or keep a separate field you update by hand. DoulaFlow calculates gestational age from the due date and shows it on every client.

How do I set a doula payment due at 36 weeks in HoneyBook or Dubsado?
Set the project date to the client's due date, then make the final payment due 4 weeks before the project date. In HoneyBook this is a smart date in the invoice's payment plan. In Dubsado it is a relative installment set to 4 weeks before project start. It only works while the project date is the due date, so if you use the project date for your on-call range instead, adjust the offset.

Can a backup doula see my client's payments in HoneyBook?
If you add her as a collaborator on the project, yes. HoneyBook shows every participant on a project all of its emails, files and payments. In Dubsado, a Basic team member does not see invoices unless you give her that permission. In DoulaFlow, a backup doula receives a packet with the calendar, the documents you chose and contact details, and never gets access to the client record.

Can HoneyBook or Dubsado report on birth outcomes?
Not directly. Both can store birth details in custom fields or tags, but their built-in reports cover revenue, bookings and lead sources, not custom field data. In Dubsado you can export the projects list to a spreadsheet and calculate from there. HoneyBook does not export questionnaire answers as a spreadsheet, so tags are the most countable option.