How a Growing Event Management Company Completely Transformed Leads to Invoicing With Workflow Automation
An event management company approached Step 7 Consulting with a challenge familiar to many growing organizations: as demand increased, their operations were still being run through a heavy mix of Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, Dropbox folders, and manual process. Sales, event details, and billing lived in disconnected places — making it difficult to stay organized and nearly impossible to get a real-time picture of the business.
Our work replaced this fragmented process with a fully integrated system powered by Zapier — connecting Pipedrive, Trello, QuickBooks Online, and Dropbox into an interdependent set of automated workflows. The result was a dramatic reduction in manual work, elimination of errors, and significantly greater visibility across the entire business.
The Challenge
Before hiring Step 7, the company managed nearly everything manually:
- Sales opportunities lived in Excel spreadsheets, which often had inconsistent formatting or missing data.
- Project information was stored in Word documents, with information often becoming more outdated with the passage of time.
- When a new deal closed, project managers had to manually create Dropbox folders and Trello boards — each being slightly different than the other.
- Invoices were created manually in QuickBooks, and customer payments had to be manually associated with the project.
- Leadership struggled to get a unified view of pipeline, project workload, or billing status.
As the company grew, these manual processes became a major operational bottleneck. Hours were spent on tedious data entry. Important information was buried in emails. And the team lacked reliable visibility into upcoming events or financial performance.
Our Solution: Transformative End-to-End Workflow Automation
After completing a thorough assessment, Step 7 Consulting designed and implemented a unified, automated workflow using Zapier to connect Pipedrive, Trello, QuickBooks, and Dropbox.
1. Workflow Audit & Architecture
We mapped the entire documentation process, identified bottlenecks, and validated the automation design with the client.
2. CRM Modernization — Migrating from Excel to Pipedrive
We rebuilt their sales process inside Pipedrive, migrating data from spreadsheets and configuring custom fields, pipelines, and automations that aligned with how the event management company sold and delivered services.
3. Automated Project Setup in Trello & Dropbox
When a deal moves to “Closed – Won” in Pipedrive, Zapier automatically:
Utilizes data captured in Pipedrive to create a new board in Trello. Then it automatically adds a list of cards representing key tasks that need to be completed. As tasks are completed new cards and associated tasks are automatically added to the board and assigned to the right team member.
Creates a new event-specific folder structure inside Dropbox and automatically adds specific documents.
Names folders consistently using the event’s date, client, and project type
This eliminated the manual, error-prone process of copying and pasting templates across multiple tools.
4. QuickBooks Invoicing Automation
We connected Trello and QuickBooks so that:
When the team completes designated tasks in Trello new invoices are automatically created in QuickBooks.
Advanced workflow tools and logic are utilized to choose the correct price level when creating the line items on the invoice.
- When customers make a payment online the project is automatically updated in Pipedrive, Dropbox, and Trello.
Manual work associated with invoicing and payment were effectively eliminated while greatly improving billing & payment accuracy.
5. Reducing Errors & Strengthening Consistency
We built in validation steps, required fields, and alert notifications so the team is notified when something is missing or incorrectly formatted. This helped prevent miscommunication and reduced errors across systems.
The Results
The automated workflow delivered immediate benefits:
Project creation time fell from 10–15 minutes to under a minute
Event folders and Trello boards became 100% standardized, eliminating confusion
Billing cycle times improved dramatically, thanks to automated invoice creation and payment recognition
Visibility improved significantly, with leadership now able to see upcoming events, workload, and revenue at a glance
Operational capacity increased without hiring additional staff
Client Testimonial
“The thoughtful consulting we received from Step 7 will surely prove to be invaluable to the future success of our business. Step 7 has effectively eliminated our clunky business processes and woefully outdated CRM and replaced them with a set of tools which are easy to use for our business.”
— Leanne Mumm Pardo, President, One Hour Parties
Why This Matters for Mid-Market Teams
This project highlights how mid-market organizations — even without internal engineering teams — can achieve enterprise-grade operational efficiency using no-code tools like Zapier. By connecting the right systems, this event management company now operates with greater clarity, reliability, and scalability.
Ready to Automate Your Workflows?
If your team spends hours on repetitive processes, manual documentation, or cross-platform data handling, you’re a perfect candidate for a 30–60 day Automation Sprint. Learn more about our process and schedule a consultation to learn more about how we can help.
Project Artifacts
PipeDrive Sales Funnel Board
Zapier integration with PipeDrive
PipeDrive Customization
