Screenshots Tour

This is a summary of the web pages we have that describe the various capabilities of Studio Manager. Each related page contains a discussion of features and benefits and one or more screenshots. Some of these screens have been reduced to fit on the main page. Click on the image to see the graphic at full size (if applicable). Where we have been able to include them, these screenshots demonstrate what Studio Manager screens look like at 100%.

ON THIS PAGE
Billing
Job Tracking
Contact Management
Marketing and Sales
Estimates and Change Orders
Estimate Options
Scheduling
Timesheets
Mail Log
Receivables
Payables
Purchase Orders
Security

Billing

FileMaker Pro does math just as well as Excel. In Studio Manager generating invoices is easy and they look great. By designing your invoice with FileMaker Pro’s simple layout tools, you’ll save tons of time and have invoices with numbers that add up (and line up) every single time. Getting invoices out in a hurry can be the difference between a healthy cash flow and disaster.

Job Tracking

The heartbeat of a creative services firm is in its jobs. One key difference between Studio Manager and a regular accounting program, is that Studio Manager lives for jobs. The Jobs module in Studio Manager gives you a complete tracking system for the activities and information associated with jobs. You can see the schedule, estimates, change orders, specs, purchase orders, invoices and time and expenses – all without leaving a job record. Anyone working on a job can record notes. Everything is integrated and available in one master control panel.

Contact Management

You can keep all the information you want about your contacts and have your contact information flow automatically into all other system functions, like estimates, invoices, purchase orders, correspondence, etc. Take a look at the screenshot we have and find out how your contacts file can become a key control center for your business.

Marketing and Sales

Marketing and sales have become top-line necessities for creative services firms, so we thought you might like some simple yet powerful help in this area from Studio Manager. We give you the core 20% of what dedicated contact management programs offer (without all the extra features that few people ever use anyway.) More Info about SM9 Marketing

Estimates and Change Orders

After years of experimentation, we developed a way to computerize job estimating that is flexible enough to fit any creative services business. You get a checklist of your own set of categories for estimating. Just fill in the estimated hours and costs and Studio Manager does the rest. Like a spreadsheet, but much better because it integrates your estimates with the rest of your job-related operations. This allows you to effortlessly pull up estimates vs. actuals at a moment’s notice.

Estimate Options

Studio Manager also gives you estimate options. You can display up to 4 dollar columns in a single estimate to allow for different quantities, different specs or estimate ranges. You can also create flat-fee estimates. Estimate Options allows you to generate up to four columns for comparison.More Info.

Component estimates permit you to break large jobs into smaller “component” parts and show them all on one estimate. If the necessity arises, you can print detailed estimates for each component as backup.

Scheduling

Creative services firms are always looking for a better way to manage the schedules of multiple jobs. We’ve created something extraordinarily simple designed just for you! It’s not a PERT chart, but you do get a really sweet 4-week calendar of deadlines for all jobs and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to operate.

Timesheets

What a concept! Now that you have a computer on every desk, let your design staff enter their time directly into Studio Manager from their computers so you’ll always know how much time has been expended on a given project.

Mail Log

The contacts file connects to a dedicated table for the 90 to 95% of your correspondence that adheres to a standard format. We include an email screen, a single-page letter and a fax cover sheet to get you started. You can modify these layouts to your specifications and then duplicate them to create other kinds of forms.

Receivables and Payables

Although we don’t try to replace your financial accounting, because that’s pretty standard across industries and it is hard to compete with MYOB and QuickBooks due to the volume they sell, we do offer optional receivables and payables tracking that is quite good. Receivables includes aging and sales tax reports.

Payables is fully integrated with Job Cost tracking. Once an invoice is entered as a payable it is tracked in Job Costs and shows up on job status reports. By vendor and aging.

Purchase Orders

Some firms are big on purchase orders and some aren’t. This capability is optional and powerful if you like to issue purchase orders. It integrates fully into Job Cost tracking and Payables (see above).

Security

Studio Manager’s security features allow you to efficiently maintain as many as twelve security levels, each with its own set of permissions. Each user is assigned to a particular access level, determining which layouts, fields, functions and reports they can access.

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