The mystudio.ooo guide

Everything the app can do, in plain language — with little pieces you can actually click and try, right here on the page. Nothing here touches your real account.

mystudio.ooo is a calm home for a freelance studio: track projects, keep a client list, send invoices (and get paid by card), pencil dates onto a calendar that clients confirm in one tap, run a task board, and see the money side in analytics. It works on its own — no integrations to wire up — and your data is yours.

Creating your account

If you were invited to the beta, your invite email links straight to the sign-up page with your email filled in. Keep that email as-is — it's what unlocks free lifetime Pro.

1. Open the invite link, or go to the sign-up page and enter your name, studio name, email and a password (at least 8 characters).
2. Press Create account. We send a verification link to your inbox.
3. Click the link in that email to activate the account, then log in at the app.

You can also use Continue with Google to skip the password entirely — same result, and beta Pro is still applied automatically.

The first-run checklist

A brand-new studio greets you with a three-step checklist so you're never staring at a blank screen:

1. Add your first client — who you're working for.
2. Create your first project — a job with its dates, day rate and status.
3. Put a hold on the calendar — pencil in tentative dates a client can confirm.

Each step has a button that jumps you to the right place. Finish all three and you get a small "You're all set!" celebration. Not in the mood? Hit Skip (the ✕) and it disappears — it only ever shows while your studio is completely empty.

Explore with sample data

Want to see a fully-loaded studio before you type anything? On the empty Projects screen, click Explore with sample data. It fills the app with a realistic demo — clients, projects, invoices, calendar holds and tasks — so you can poke around every screen.

The dashboard & the privacy blur

Three summary cards sit above every screen: Total projects, Paid, and Outstanding. They're not just numbers — they're buttons:

• Total projects — shows quick filters for active projects, holds, and anything needing attention.
• Paid — click it to hide your money figures behind a blur (see below).
• Outstanding — click it to jump to Projects filtered to just the unpaid ones. Click again to clear the filter.

The privacy blur — the "Paid" card trick

Working in a café, or screen-sharing on a call? Click the Paid card and both the Paid and Outstanding figures blur out. The little eye icon in the corner closes to show the blur is on. Need a quick look? Hover either card and that number un-blurs just for you — without turning the blur off. Your choice is remembered next time you open the app.

Projects

Projects are the backbone. Each one carries a client, dates, a day rate, a running total, a status and a payment state. They're grouped into tidy Year → Month sections you can collapse.

Year & month sections

Projects stack into collapsible Year tabs, each holding its Month groups. A year tab has two separate click zones:

• Click the year number to focus it — the other years slide away one-by-one so you see just this year. Click the number again to bring them back.
• Click anywhere else on the tab to open or close that year's projects.

Your choice is remembered — the focused year and any open tab are restored next time. The invoice archive works exactly the same way.

Creating & editing

1. Click + New project in the Projects toolbar.
2. Fill in the row inline — click any cell (name, description, client, dates, days, rate) and type. Changes save as you go.
3. Set the Status by clicking it to cycle Working → Paused → Done.
4. Set Payment by clicking Paid / Unpaid (marking it paid fires a little celebration — see Invoicing).

Finding things fast

The search box (Search project, client, payment…) matches more than names — it also finds amounts and day-rate numbers and payment status, so typing 2400 or unpaid narrows the list instantly.

Row actions

Each project row can: open an invoice (or create one from the project), duplicate the project or its invoice, open details, jump to a linked task, and delete (deleting asks whether to also remove linked invoices).

Project details & images

Open a project's details for notes plus reference images Basic. The image viewer has a genuine annotation studio — draw, erase, drop text pins, and a wall/single toggle. See keyboard shortcuts for the viewer keys.

Focus mode Pro

Turn on Focus (top-right of Projects) and, as you move your mouse over the project table, everything else on the page dims to 40% so you can concentrate on one row at a time. The summary cards stay bright.

Image gallery & pin chat

Open any project's details (click a row, or hover it and press D) and you get more than notes — a full reference image gallery with an annotation studio and a per-spot chat. It's where feedback actually happens.

Adding images Basic

In the details panel, use + Add Images or just drop files onto it — you can even paste a screenshot straight from your clipboard (Ctrl/⌘+V). Boards, stills, references, mock-ups, motion frames — anything.

The viewer: Single & Wall

• Single view shows one image at a time — arrow keys move between them.
• Wall view (press W) tiles every image on one board you can pan and zoom across. Press Space over any tile to zoom into it, and again to zoom back out.
• Zoom with + / − (0 resets), and switch the board background between light and dark to suit the artwork.

The annotation studio

Mark up an image without touching the original:

• Draw (D) and Eraser (E) to sketch feedback, Ctrl/⌘+Z to undo a stroke.
• Hide drawings (H) flips your markup off and on without deleting it, so you can compare against the clean image.
• Clear all wipes the strokes on that image when you're done.

Text pins = a mini chat on the image

This is the collaboration heart of the app. Click anywhere on an image to drop a text note pin exactly where the feedback belongs. Each pin is a small conversation:

• Write the note (Enter saves, Esc cancels). It lives as a numbered pin on that spot.
• Anyone on the project can open the pin and Reply — a chronological thread builds up, each message stamped with who said it and when.
• Type @ to mention a teammate — pick them from the list. Mentions are highlighted, and the person gets a notification that links them straight to that exact pin.
• Pins are drag to move, click to open. You can edit or delete your own notes and replies; others' stay read-only.

Sharing details with collaborators Pro

If you've invited people to a project, they see this same details view — the gallery, your notes, and every pin chat. Members can add images and join the pin conversations; it all syncs back to you. So the image board doubles as a shared review room: drop a pin, @mention the retoucher, and they get pulled right to the spot you meant.

Clients

A simple, fast roster — and the usual starting point, since you bill and book against a client. The screen has the add/edit form on the left and your searchable list on the right.

Adding a client

1. Open Clients from the top nav.
2. In the left-hand form, enter a first & last name, and (optionally) company, email, phone and address. Only a name is required.
3. Company auto-find — start typing a company name and mystudio suggests matching companies, each with its logo. Pick one and it fills the company name and attaches the logo for you.
4. Press Save Client — they appear in the roster on the right straight away.

Company logos

Each client can carry a logo — it shows on their roster row, in the client picker, and on their invoices. There are three ways to set one:

• Auto-find — typing the company name (above) finds and attaches the logo automatically.
• Upload — click Upload logo and choose an image. It's trimmed and shrunk to a tidy round icon for you.
• Paste — copy any image (a screenshot, or a logo from a website) and press Ctrl / ⌘ + V while the client form is open.

Use Replace to swap it or Remove to clear it. Uploaded and pasted logos are stored with the client, so they always appear — no re-fetching needed.

Editing & finding

• Edit — click a client in the roster, change any field, then press Update.
• Search — the box matches name, company, email or phone, so a few letters find anyone.
• Delete — remove a client from their row.

The roster reads like a table — logo · company · contact · email & phone — so you can scan it at a glance.

Invoicing

The Invoices screen is split: the editor on the left (a three-tab pill), and a live preview plus your archive on the right.

1 · My Profile — set this once

The My Profile tab holds everything that's the same on every invoice:

• Studio info — company name, your name, email, registered address, and a logo Basic (PNG/JPG/WEBP/SVG, up to 1 MB).
• Bank details — account holder, account number/IBAN, routing/sort code, SWIFT/BIC, plus PayPal and Zelle. These print on the invoice so clients know where to pay.

2 · New Invoice — build the document

1. Pick a template (Studio / Foundation / Classic — Classic is Pro).
2. Choose the client.
3. Add line items — each row has a description, quantity and rate, with the line total computed for you. Drag rows by their handle to reorder; use + Add Row for more.
4. Set the date, due date and VAT % if you charge tax.
5. Press Create Invoice (or Update when editing) — you'll see a Saved ✓ flash.

More options (worth knowing)

Expand More options for:

• Online card payment — a per-invoice toggle that shows a "Pay by card" button on the shared invoice. It is off by default; turn it on per invoice when you want it. Requires card payments to be connected (see Getting paid by card).
• Card processing fee — choose to absorb it ("client pays the invoice total") or pass it on ("add to client's total").
• Deposit / Progress / Final labels — tag an invoice, and for a Deposit split the total by 25 / 50 / 75% (or custom); the follow-up invoice is created for the remainder.
• Notes — a rich-text note area.
• Custom currency & amount — override the currency for a single invoice without affecting your main totals.

Splitting an invoice — deposits & staged payments

Big jobs rarely get paid in one go, so an invoice can be split into parts. Under More options, tag it Deposit, Progress, or Final and mystudio does the maths:

1. Choose Deposit and pick the split — 25 / 50 / 75%, or a custom percentage.
2. That invoice bills only that share (a 50% deposit on a $2,000 project charges $1,000), and the project total is preserved.
3. The follow-up invoice for the remainder is created for you automatically — send it when the work's done, tagged Final, with any Progress invoices in between.

Each part is its own invoice with its own amount and paid/unpaid status, but they stay linked to the same project — so you can collect a deposit up front and the balance later without re-entering anything.

Billing a single invoice in another currency

Have one client who pays in a different currency? Under More options → Custom currency & amount, set the currency for that invoice only (e.g. EUR or GBP) while the rest of your studio stays in your default currency. A custom-currency invoice is excluded from your main totals, so your dashboard and analytics aren't skewed by exchange rates.

3 · Design — the invoice designer Pro

The Design tab turns an invoice into a branded document, with the live preview on the right updating as you change things. The tour:

1. Accent colour — the colour used for headings, rules and totals. Set it to your brand.
2. Logo — show or hide it and scale it to the right size in the header (upload the file itself in My Profile).
3. Title & wording — rename the document title (e.g. "Invoice" → "Receipt") and edit the heading and footer text.
4. Decorative graphic — drop in a premium shape and tune its size, opacity, rotation and position. Drag a slider to preview live; it saves when you release.
5. Sections — the building blocks (Header, Bill-to, Line items, Totals, Notes, Bank details, Footer) can be dragged to reorder and toggled on/off, so each invoice shows only what it needs.

The design is saved to your studio's template, so once it looks right, every new invoice inherits it. Want a fast start instead? The New Invoice tab's template picker (Studio / Foundation / Classic) gives you a polished base to tweak.

Sending, sharing & getting paid

• Share copies a hosted invoice link to your clipboard (the button flips to Copied ✓). Send that link however you like — the client opens a clean web invoice and can pay by card there if you enabled it.
• Viewed badge — the archive shows when a client has opened the link, and how many times.
• Download PDF renders a crisp A4 PDF named Invoice_<id>.pdf.
• Mark settled / paid — flips the status and fires the celebration below.

Marking an invoice paid

When you mark an unpaid invoice as paid, the button turns green and a little burst of your currency symbol pops out. The amount also moves from Outstanding to Paid on your dashboard.

Calendar & holds

A hold is a tentative date you pencil in before a job is confirmed — no more double-booking. The calendar shows project bars and priority-coloured hold bars, with a month grid, an active-holds sidebar, a history deck of past holds, and a Gantt-style timeline.

Placing a hold

1. Click + New Hold.
2. Set the project/description, client, start and end dates, a priority (1st / 2nd / 3rd), and a confirm-by date.
3. Save. The hold appears on the grid and in the active-holds list, sorted by priority.

Letting the client confirm

This is the magic bit — the client confirms with a single click, no phone tag:

1. On a hold, choose Send email. Pick a tone — Friendly, Professional, or Direct — and we pre-fill a message with the client's name, the dates and the confirm-by date. Edit anything, then Review & Send (or open it in your own mail app).
2. The client clicks confirm or decline in that email.
3. Their answer comes back into the app: the hold flips to Confirmed (green) or Cancelled, and a chip appears on your dashboard — ✓ confirmed / ✕ declined — pulsing until you acknowledge it.

Tasks Basic

A lightweight board for the to-dos behind your projects. Each task has an ID, an optional project, a title, assignees, notes, a due date, a priority and a status.

1. Open Tasks and click + Add task.
2. Set a priority (None / Low / Medium / High) and a status by clicking them inline.
3. Filter by project or status along the top; use Edit statuses to add, rename or recolour your own columns.

Tasks can be assigned to collaborators, and assignees can update status from their Shared view (below).

Sharing & collaboration Pro

Invite people to a project and work together without giving up control.

• Invite by email from a project's details, with a role of Member or Manager. Pending and accepted invites are tracked; you can resend, cancel or remove.
• Invitees see a Shared tab (it only appears once something is shared with them) listing projects other people own, with your role badge.
• Members can add project images and update the status of tasks assigned to them; Managers can change any task. Everything syncs back to the owner.

Invited to someone else's project? See Creating your account — your invite link brings you to sign-up if you don't have an account yet.

Analytics

The money picture, per year. You get a Performance card with year-cumulative, paid and pending-pipeline tiles, and a line chart of Paid vs Total by month with hover tooltips.

• Everyone can view the analytics.
• Exporting an income summary to PDF or CSV is Pro.

Settings & appearance

Open the gear in the header. From here you can manage your plan and billing, import data, connect card payments, sign out, and delete your account. The Appearance & preferences section is where you make the app yours:

• Theme — Light, Dark or Auto.
• Colours — pick your accent, background and tab colours, or hit Reset to brand defaults.
• Text size — nudge everything up or down.
• Currency — a dozen options (USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, and more).
• Language Pro — English, Español, Português, Deutsch, Italiano, Українська.
• Backup & export Pro — download your whole studio as JSON, or import a backup.

Importing from another tool

Import data brings in spreadsheets or exports from Monday, Airtable, Notion and Trello (xlsx / csv / xml) with a column-mapping step and a preview before anything is added.

Desktop app Pro

Pro users can install mystudio as a desktop app — it runs in its own window with a dock/taskbar icon, no separate download or setup. It stays fully in sync with your account, since it's the same studio you use in the browser, just running standalone. Click Install desktop app in Settings, or use your browser's install icon in the address bar (Chrome & Edge on desktop).

Uninstalling — it removes like any installed web app, with no leftovers:

• From the app window — click the ⋯ menu in its title bar and choose Uninstall mystudio.ooo.
• Chrome / Edge — go to chrome://apps (or edge://apps), right-click mystudio, and pick Remove/Uninstall.
• Windows — it also appears in Settings → Apps → Installed apps, where you can uninstall it like any program.
• macOS — remove it from Launchpad or ~/Applications/Chrome Apps.

Uninstalling only removes the app window — your studio and all its data stay safe in your account and are still there in the browser.

Plans & billing

Three tiers. Here's the short version of who unlocks what:

The Upgrade modal (or any locked feature) lets you pick Basic ($5/mo, $48/yr) or Pro ($10/mo, $96/yr) — yearly gives two months free. Checkout and Manage billing run through Stripe.

Getting paid by card

Let clients pay an invoice with a card, straight from its shared link.

1. In Settings, choose Set up card payments Basic and complete the Stripe onboarding. When it's done you'll see Payments connected · LIVE.
2. On any invoice, open More options and turn on Online card payment (it's off by default).
3. Share the invoice. The client's web invoice now shows a Pay by card button, and paid invoices update automatically.

Payouts, fees and refunds are handled by Stripe under your own connected account — mystudio just shows the button and records the result.

Keyboard shortcuts

These make daily work much faster. Shortcuts pause while you're typing in a field.

Projects list

Image viewer & annotator

Date picker

In most inline edit fields, Enter saves and Esc cancels.

Hidden gems & tips

Small touches that make the app nicer once you know they're there:

• Privacy blur — click the Paid card to hide money; hover to peek. (The one at the top of this guide.)
• Outstanding shortcut — click the Outstanding card to jump to just the unpaid projects.
• Search finds money — type an amount like 2400 in project search, not just names.
• Drag to reorder — invoice line items reorder by dragging their handle.
• Double-click a column divider in the projects table to reset that column's width.
• Right-click an image in the viewer for a context menu.
• Odometer counters — your dashboard figures roll like an odometer when they change.
• Jump & flash — clicking a notification smooth-scrolls to the item and flashes it so you can't lose it.
• Email read receipts — hover a hold's send-status line to see exactly when the client opened it.
• Everything remembers — theme, accent colour, text size, currency, the privacy blur and your filters all persist between visits.

Troubleshooting