The Challenge: Taking Control Over Hundreds of Payments
Markree Castle, a stunning wedding venue in Ireland, hosts over 100 weddings annually with bookings extending a few years into the future. But behind the scenes, their payment process was anything but a fairytale:
- Up to 5 payment milestones per wedding
- 500+ payment touchpoints annually, all with different dates and amounts
- All payment requests sent manually
- Generic spreadsheet for guest data
- Payment tracking manually updated in Pipedrive
With 500+ manual payment requests every year and manual data updates, Markree Castle’s system did not match a luxury castle experience. Thankfully, it took just a few scenarios to simplify everything.
The Solution: Elegant Simplicity at Scale
Here’s what many automation consultants get wrong: they build complex systems for complex problems. Sure, complex systems might impress your clients.
But sometimes, the most powerful solution is surprisingly simple.
The Core of the System: 1 Scenario, 500+ Payments
First, I created one Make.com scenario that handles all standard wedding payment collections. One. That’s it.
Here’s how it works:
First, a wedding coordinator selects a dropdown option for the specific payment type in Pipedrive (combining payment amount and method). This helps them automatically keep track of which payment requests were sent.
Next, Make.com triggers and sends a branded payment request via Prommt. The hidden benefit of using Prommt over tools like Stripe is that couples can pay via card or wire transfer (saving hundreds of euros in processing fees).
Lastly, on each Prommt payment request, the team receives a confirmation that the request was made.
Of course, while this single scenario already adds tremendous value, it’s just one scenario out of several that create a complete ecosystem.
The Supporting Automations
On top of the scenario that does the heavy lifting, three supporting automations complete the transformation:
- Automated Creation of Activities. Once a wedding is assigned to a specific year pipeline, the system automatically creates a set of tasks and activities across Pipedrive & ClickUp. This ensures the team doesn’t miss a single thing they need to take care of.
- Custom Payment Requests for non-standard amounts or special requests. All automatically logged in Pipedrive with the amount and payment method requested.
- Event Data Collection. Once the reservation is ready for contracting, the team needs to collect event details. In the past, they relied on spreadsheets – both for tracking and collecting the data.
Today, they just need to change the status of the Pipedrive deal, and the system does the rest, sending a branded Jotform straight to the wedding couple. And once the couple submits it back, all details are automatically logged in Pipedrive.
And that’s it – just four scenarios help the team keep track of all the key details around each wedding – from all the tasks they need to complete to collecting all payments for the event.
The Technology Stack: Strategic Simplicity
The entire tech stack is just as simple, and yet just as powerful as the scenarios built on it – and its power comes from choosing the right tools for the right jobs:
- Make.com. The automation backbone that connects all key apps (Pipedrive, Jotforms, Outlook, Prommt, ClickUp), with visual, maintainable workflows.
- Pipedrive. Because Pipedrive was already their CRM of choice, all I had to do was come up with a way to connect all the dots and build the necessary custom fields and webhooks.
- Prommt is the game-changer for payment processing. By offering the flexibility to accept wire transfers alongside card payments, they dramatically reduced transaction fees on large wedding deposits.
- Jotform replaced clunky spreadsheets with mobile-friendly forms. These significantly reduce data entry errors thanks to custom reservation ID assigning all data to a specific event. Once clients submit the form, all data is instantly sent via Make directly to Pipedrive. On top of that, Make sends back instant submission confirmations. All that comes with custom branding, which significantly increases trust:
Each tool minimizes complexity while maximizing the benefits. There are no bloated enterprise platforms, no unnecessary features, and no code-heavy solutions.
The Outcomes: From Chaos to Castle-Worthy Operations
It took just four scenarios to turn chaos into a well-oiled machine:
- All types of payment requests, from pre-deposits to completely custom, can be sent in seconds straight from the Pipedrive dashboard.
- Wedding couples no longer have to fill out spreadsheets.
- Huge savings on fees thanks to wire transfers.
- No important tasks are missed by the team.
Why This Matters
This simple project proves three critical points:
- Scale doesn’t require complexity. Hundreds of thousands of euros are collected using just one scenario.
2. Less obvious apps can beat industry’s most popular choices. By choosing Prommt over Stripe, the team can collect deposits via wire transfers. With each deposit being worth several thousand euros, the savings on fees add up very quickly.
3. You can often improve your operations without disrupting your tech stack. If you’re already using any tools to manage your business, it’s possible you don’t need a revolution. All you need is an iterative development to gain significant time and cash savings.
4. Small optimizations compound. If one scenario can automate 500+ payments, just think of what five or ten well-aimed scenarios could do.
Get Your First Automation Now
Markree Castle is a typical small business – they didn’t need an enterprise automation platform to experience huge gains from automation. They didn’t need months of development. They needed someone who could see that their complex problem had a simple solution.
Four Make.com scenarios. A few days of implementation. And now their team focuses on creating magical weddings instead of chasing payments.
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