Our friends at The Audio Hunt, the online studio gear collaboration site, recently released a new cloud application designed specifically for audio professionals and studio owners called Studio Assistant. Studio Assitant claims to be the all-in-one application to help studio professionals manage their studio bookings, clients and finances all within a single cloud solution.
Here's what The Audio Hunt say about Studio Assistant:
Getting paid on-time, finding the time to manage new opportunities, quoting, invoicing, scheduling jobs... All the hassles of running a music business are made easy with our industry-tailored software suite.
Studio Assistant is a cloud-based software suite that helps you to run your studio or music business more efficiently and profitably. It's perfect for studio owners, freelance engineers and producers, DJ's, session musicians... or anyone else making money from making music.
The features within the Assistant are tailored specifically to the needs of the studio industry.
It's everything you need for your business in one place.
Main Features
- Create and send invoices, quotes & contracts
- Session scheduling & Dropbox integration
- Message & track clients
- Manage your team
- Track your business progress
Subscription
From a single user perspective, the monthly costs of Studio Assistant appear to be quite reasonable and competitively priced compared to similar online services that don't specifically cater to professional studio owners.
For several years I managed my studio bookings with an online booking system called BookFresh (Discontinued in 2017). BookFresh charged my business $20 a month. It didn't feature any invoicing or client emailing capabilities. Since the closure of BookFresh, I've reverted back to organising my studio bookings on my phone, which isn't ideal.
Online cloud invoicing applications such as FreshBooks costs $25 per month for a Plus account (The plan you want - bill up to 50 clients). If BookFresh was still available for my studio bookings and FreshBooks was my cloud invoice system then Studio Assistant would definitely be a smarter and more cost-effective alternative as Studio Assistant costs less than having two separate cloud accounts while offering some nice additions such as client payment options.
Visit the Studio Assitant website for more information. A free introductory 30-day trial is also available.