How to Plan Delivery Deadlines You Can Actually Hit

Stop promising turnaround times you miss. Here is how to set gallery delivery deadlines from your real editing queue, so the date you quote is the date you deliver.

To set delivery deadlines you can hit, quote from your real editing queue rather than a standard promise. Look at how many editing hours are already committed before a new job's window, add the new job's hours, and quote the date the work genuinely clears. A deadline drawn from the queue holds where a hopeful one slips.

Know the queue before you promise

A blanket two week turnaround ignores whatever is already in front of the new job. If three weddings are ahead of it, two weeks is fiction. Seeing the committed editing hours on the weeks between now and the new job's deadline turns your promise from a hope into a number.

Build in the buffer, then quote

Add a little room for the unexpected, a slow day, a reshoot, a sick week, then quote the date after that buffer, not before. A date with slack built in survives a normal bumpy month. A date quoted at your theoretical best breaks the first time anything goes wrong.

Let the client see progress

Once a date is set, keep the client informed so the wait feels short. A client hub with a job status that moves from culling to editing to delivered reassures them without a single chase email, which buys you patience if a week does run tight.

Frequently asked questions