Markree Castle is a wedding venue in Ireland that hosts over 100 weddings a year, with bookings stretching a few years into the future. That's a lot of moving parts - and a lot of payments. Each wedding can have up to 5 payment milestones, which adds up to over 500 payment touchpoints annually, all with different dates and amounts.
What I Found During Discovery
I interviewed the team and asked them to walk me through how they actually worked in Pipedrive - what data they tracked, what steps they followed for each booking, and where things got tedious or error-prone.
A few things stood out:
- Every payment request was manual. Someone had to log into Prommt (their payment provider), decide whether it was a card or bank transfer, enter the amount, send the request, then go back to Pipedrive and tag it. For 500+ payments a year, that's a lot of repetitive steps - and a lot of room for things to slip through.
- Tracking was inconsistent. Because tagging in Pipedrive (their CRM) was a separate manual step, there was no reliable way to see at a glance which payment requests had been sent and which hadn't.
- Guest data collection relied on spreadsheets. When the team needed event details from a couple, they sent a spreadsheet. Both the collection and the tracking of that data happened manually.
- Task management was informal. When a wedding moved into a specific year's pipeline, the team had to remember which tasks and activities to create across Pipedrive and ClickUp. Nothing was automated.
The interesting part was that their tools were fine. Pipedrive, Prommt, ClickUp - all solid choices. The problem wasn't the tech stack. It was that nothing was connected.
The Solution
What surprised me about this project is how little it took to solve the problem. The whole system runs on Make, and the core of it - the part that handles over 500 payment requests a year - is a single scenario.
The Payment Workflow
A wedding coordinator selects a dropdown in Pipedrive that combines the payment type and method. Make picks that up, sends a branded payment request through Prommt, and the team gets a confirmation that the request went out. That's it. The coordinator doesn't need to leave Pipedrive, doesn't need to log into Prommt separately, and the payment is automatically tracked. No manual tagging, no second step to forget.
And here's where the fee savings come in. Prommt was already in their stack, and unlike most payment processors, it lets couples pay via bank wire transfer - which is free of charge. When you're collecting deposits worth several thousand euros each, the difference between a card processing fee and a free wire transfer adds up fast across 100+ weddings a year.
For non-standard amounts or special situations, I built a separate scenario that gives the team full flexibility on what they request while still automatically logging everything in Pipedrive - the amount, the method, the status.
Beyond Payments
Once the payment workflow was in place, it made sense to connect a few more things that the team was still handling manually.
Task and activity creation. When a wedding gets assigned to a specific year's pipeline in Pipedrive, the system now automatically creates all the tasks and activities the team needs to complete - in both Pipedrive and ClickUp. Nothing depends on someone remembering to set it up.
Event data collection. When a reservation is ready for contracting, the team needs event details from the couple. Before, this meant sending a spreadsheet. Now, the coordinator changes the deal status in Pipedrive, and the system sends a branded Jotform automatically. Once the couple submits it, all details are logged in Pipedrive with a custom reservation ID tying everything to the right event. No spreadsheets, no manual data entry.
The entire system runs on Make, Pipedrive, Prommt, Jotform, and ClickUp - all tools the team was already using. I didn't replace anything. I built custom fields and webhooks in Pipedrive to make it the central hub, and connected everything through Make.
Results
- Real savings on processing fees. By routing payments through Prommt's free wire transfer option instead of card processing, the team avoids fees on deposits worth several thousand euros each - across 100+ weddings a year.
- 500+ payment requests a year handled automatically. The coordinator selects a dropdown in Pipedrive and the rest happens on its own. No logging into Prommt, no manual tagging, no forgetting to update the CRM.
- Full visibility on payment status. The team can now see exactly which requests were sent and which weren't, directly in Pipedrive. Before, that depended on whether someone remembered to tag it.
- No missed tasks. Every wedding automatically gets its full set of activities the moment it enters a pipeline.
- No more spreadsheets for guest data. Couples fill out a branded form, data flows straight to Pipedrive, confirmation is instant.
What I'd Do Differently
Two things I'd change if I started this project again.
I'd build custom payment amounts into the system from day one. Initially, the standard payment scenario only handled pre-set amounts, and the custom payment scenario came later. In hindsight, giving the team full flexibility on amounts from the start would have saved a round of iteration.
I'd also connect Prommt back to Pipedrive to track actual payments - not just payment requests. Right now the system automates sending requests and tracking which ones went out, but confirming that a payment was actually received is still a separate step. Closing that loop would make the system more complete.