Yes.
You need a simple CRM — and for your trade, HoneyBook is the one built for exactly this.
What's really going on
500 inquiries a year, several events a week, and every brief, contract, invoice and questionnaire lives in one person's email. The real problem isn't that you lack a CRM — it's that each project has five artifacts (brief, quote, contract, deposit, questionnaire) and no single room they live in. One missed questionnaire the week of an event and you're monogramming the wrong initials on-site. That's the cost you're already paying in stress, even when nothing visibly breaks.
What to do instead
- HoneyBook (~$36/mo, check current pricing) — one project workspace per booking that holds the contract, invoice, questionnaire and client messages together. Built for US event/creative shops, which is you.
- Zapier (free tier) — pipe your Google Form straight into a new HoneyBook inquiry so nothing gets retyped and nothing sits in a form response tab for three days.
- Today, in 30 minutes: open HoneyBook's trial, build ONE contract template and ONE pre-event questionnaire (monogram text, event address, load-in time, table size) from your last booking. That template alone will save you an hour per event forever.
What you're being oversold
Someone will try to sell you HubSpot Sales Hub or a "real" pipeline CRM for 500 inquiries a year. Wrong tool — those are built for sales reps chasing deals, not studios delivering events with contracts and deposits. Airtable looks tempting and is cheaper, but you'd spend a month building what HoneyBook ships on day one. Doing nothing costs you in deposit-less events, duplicated questionnaires, and the one on-site mistake per quarter that eats a day of rework and a referral.
When to revisit this
When you hire a second person who needs to own their own events without stepping on yours — then look at whether HoneyBook's team seat or a shared pipeline tool fits better.
The part worth getting right
The real fork is what a "project" means in your business. If each event is one client, one contract, one invoice, HoneyBook fits you cleanly and you're done. But if you're running recurring corporate activations — same brand, quarterly events, master agreement, PO-based invoicing — HoneyBook will feel wrong by month three and you'll be migrating again. Which shape is most of your 500?