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Demo Available. We have a "try before you buy" opportunity for those of you who like to test out your software prior to taking the plunge and spending your hard-earned bucks. This is a fully-functional but protected free demo and an entertaining (no kidding) walk-thru demo manual. We recommend that you print out the pdf demo manual, peruse it on the couch or your favorite easy chair and then keep it by your side as you run through the demo software.

Our free demo of Studio Manager 9 has a 60-day time limit starting from the first time you open the file. Just click on this Download Demo link and fill out the form. After submitting the form, you will be able to download the demo. The download includes the Studio Manager 9 Demo manual – the most fun you will ever have evaluating a software product for your business. We also include a quick 12 page Getting Started tutorial that walks you thru the demo.

Customizing

We are available to help you customize Studio Manager at our regular consulting rates. Because we built it, we are really good at changing it , but don't feel for a minute that you are locked into working with us.

As a Studio Manager customer, you have the ability to change anything in the product on your own or using a local FileMaker consultant of your choice. And, we are still very happy to help you or your favorite consultant if you get stuck or have a question.

We have a program that certifies qualified FileMaker Pro consultants worldwide. We now have authorized consultants in New York, Kansas, Colorado, Boston, Vancouver BC, Tokyo and New Zealand. And there's more Studio Manager knowledge tucked away in the minds of other consultants and customers who have done major customizations that we don't yet know about. See our Consulting Program for more details.

Requirements

You'll need FileMaker Pro 9 to Run Studio Manager 9.

The lowest machine recommended to run Studio Manager is a G4 Mac like a Mac mini booting from a fast external drive or a G4 PowerMac on the Mac side or non-Celeron 1.5 ghz PC or higher. With FileMaker 9, the speed of the server makes a significant difference (see below). The speed of your client machines is also a key determinant of the speed you'll get with Studio Manager. Make sure anyone who does lots of reporting in Studio Manager has a fairly fast machine.

Get a Dedicated Server

If you have a high end IT set-up and are using virtualization maybe even otherwise, there are ways to run FileMaker Server on an existing server doing other things. You have to know more than we do to pull this off. For the rest of us, follow along below with FileMaker Inc's standard advice.

If you have multiple users, we recommend that you designate a Mac or PC to do only one thing – serve your Studio Manager files over the network.

You probably already have a file server. Don't use it for this. On the lower-end, a machine like a Mac Mini or G4 tower will often serve your purposes. If you use PCs, any relatively new PC running XP professional SP2, Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition SP1 or Windows 2000 Server SP4 will suffice.

Bigger shops would do well with a G5 Power Mac or Intel Mac Pro tower or XServe on the Mac side or a server-class PC. These robust machines will provide top performance for your work group.

The four ingredients for a fast server are: (1) a fast network, (2) a fast hard drive, (3) a fast processor and (4) at least a gig of RAM.

Again, make sure your server has a fast hard drive. The G4 towers come with fast drives but the Mac mini has a slow hard drive. Look for a 7200 rpm drive. We've seen the 7200 rpm external firewire drives that fit under the Mac mini do wonders for performance. If you are backing up to a second drive (recommended), you can get by with a 40 to 80 gig server drive.

The best reason to have a dedicated machine that runs only FileMaker is to protect your data from crashes that could inadvertently corrupt your database. We don't want that. You don't want that.

FileMaker Server?

You can't serve more than 9 concurrent users with a regular copy of FileMaker Pro 9. Even if you don't absolutely require FileMaker Server, consider springing for it anyway. You can take advantage of FileMaker Server's built-in backup facility. It lets you keep Studio Manager running 24/7 with nightly or even hourly backups. Automated backup closes the files, backs them up and then immediately re-opens them. We have ours set to backup at 3 am.

Starting with FileMaker 9 Server, the new verification of database file integrity and automated warning emails when problems occur, make server indispensible for anyone who wants a robust set-up where their data is protected as well as possible.

You might not need FileMaker Server for performance reasons, but the more users you have and the more often you are tweeking the db, the nicer it is to have a facility that helps you (1) see whose using the db, (2) send messages to users and (3) close and open files easily even from a remote location.

Studio Manager News

Free Studio Manager 9 Demo Manual is Up

3-14-08

Now when you download the demo, you will get both the Getting Started 12-page tutorial and the 24-page Demo Manual for Studio Manager 9. If you already have the Studio Manager 9 demo, you can directly download the SM9 Demo Manual here without filling out the form again. We just finished version 2 of the demo manual today.

Please Excuse us while we tweak our CSS

3-14-08

We are currently revamping the look of the Studio Manager site. Your patience is greatly appreciated. We'll finish this up as soon as possible.

Studio Manager 9 Released, Free SM9 Demo

12-19-07

The Studio Manager 9.0 demo is here for download. The Studio Manager 9.0 product is for sale starting at $895 for the single user version. The demo download includes a revised Getting Started manual. Come see. You can buy by calling 415 789-5219 or emailing your card details in multiple emails. We will be fulfilling orders as rapidly as possible. Might not fill on Christmas day but that is about it.

Studio Manager 9 New Features Manual

12-18-07

We have a download for you. Number 2 team member, the brilliant Kathy "Scout" Tomyris, has written a new Studio Manager 9 instruction guide to supplement our existing Studio Manager 8 Manual until we get the rewritten SM 9 Manual out the door. Here's the first version of the SM9 New Features Manual. Control- or right-click and save the file to download it right now. The experience with the downloaded pdf is a little nicer than the experience with the web version. For example, on my 24" iMac, the document is shown with a 2-page spread while the web version is one page at a time.

Studio Manager 9 New Features Page

12-18-07

The SM 9 New Features page is up. Make sure to scroll down and see 10 new screenshots of Studio Manager 9.

Studio Manager News Archives

12-17-07

You can see our past news items on our Studio Manager News Archives page.

Why Studio Manager?

The Big Picture:

Studio Manager is different. It's turning heads in the creative services industry. Here's why:

  • Fit. Studio Manager is a vertical market product built for creative services businesses. Unlike the typical vertical market package, it's based on our deep and broad knowledge of the industry. As custom developers, we built over fifty different custom systems before we created the product. We had access to all those good ideas and learned from the bad ones. Since then, we've continued to focus on the creative services segment and have worked with literally hundreds of design and advertising firms around the world.
  • Design. This is a well-designed product. A talented graphic designer was in charge of the UI. Planning and forethought went into it. There's consistency throughout. Once you learn one part, the rest works the same way.
  • Quality. We proudly admit to being perfectionists when it comes to making Studio Manager rock solid. You'll find all the i's dotted and the t's crossed in Studio Manager. It looks good, does what it is supposed to do and, even behind the scenes, you'll find quality. Anyone who looks into the field definitions, layouts or scripting will see organization and consistency. Quality makes Studio Manager trouble-free.
  • Flexibility. These are turbulent times and we all need flexibility. Unfortunately, software has a well-deserved bad reputation for being rigid and hard to change. Enter FileMaker. Because of it's excellent design and focus on delivering power with simplicity, FileMaker has an equally well-deserved reputation for being flexible and easy to use. People like to tweak their FileMaker systems, and keep tweaking them. That's why we've done the only sensible thing and unlocked this product! We broke the rules. You are not dependent on us. You don't have to beg us to put in a new feature and then wait around. Just change it!
  • Support. Besides the impressive technology in this product, you get first-rate support. We are connoisseurs of fine people skills. Way before we check for technical ability and knowhow, we make sure our people have integrity and are great communicators. For a software firm, we have a collective emotional IQ that is off the charts! Call us and see for yourself.
  • Value. We've got low prices. And we are afraid that you’ll think badly of us for it. But, we've got a plan. There are jillions of small creative services businesses on this planet and we want a lot of them to buy Studio Manager. We want big firms to buy too, but if we priced the product as high as some have suggested, only a fraction of firms could use our product. So we are taking the gamble and going for volume and building our market share. Before we come to our senses, buy Studio Manager now!

Studio Manager Capabilities

The Details (with screenshots):

This is a summary of the web pages we have that describe the various capabilities of Studio Manager. Each related page has a full-size screenshot and a discussion of features and benefits.

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 & 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 SM8 Marketing

Estimates & 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 sweeet 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 & 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.

Have a question or want to order? Then contact us:

Janet Tokerud, Principal
Email: janet (at) tokerud (dot) com

Sally Shannon, Admin & Customer Support
Email: sally (at) tokerud (dot) com

Tokerud Consulting Group
Tel: 415 789-5219
122 Marinero Circle
Tiburon, CA 94920
USA

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