Briefs, billable hours, and
approvals on one ledger.
Run the whole studio — pitch to paid invoice — on a single system where every brief, logged hour, approval round, retainer drawdown, and freelancer payout posts to the same books. No more reconciling the time tracker against the billing sheet, or the approval thread against a dozen versions named final_FINAL_v3.
Built for branding and design agencies, UX and product-design studios, motion and animation houses, content and social shops, and the visualisation teams that bill creative work for a living.
If you scope briefs, push work across a kanban, log billable and non-billable hours, juggle a roster of in-house designers and freelancers, send proofs out for review and chase the third round of approvals, then bill some clients on a monthly retainer, some on milestones, and some by the hour — while still raising a clean GST invoice and paying everyone correctly — this is the system that holds all of it together. One client list, one team, one set of numbers everyone trusts.
The modules a creative studio
actually runs on.
Clients, briefs & projects
One record per project carries the whole thing — the signed brief and scope, the client and its billing contact, the agreed rate card, the engagement type (retainer, milestone, or hourly), the budget, and the linked SOW or proposal. Because the project is the central entity, every hour, deliverable, approval, recharged cost, and invoice hangs off it, so “what did we actually make on the Acme rebrand” is one screen, not an afternoon in a spreadsheet.
Tasks, timelines & kanban
Break a brief into phases — discovery, concept, design, delivery — and into tasks that move across a kanban board (To do → In progress → Review → Done). Each task carries an owner, estimate, due date, and dependency, and the same data drives a Gantt-style timeline so you can see whether the launch date still holds. Blocked tasks and slipping milestones surface early, not at the client call.
Time tracking & utilisation
Designers log hours against a client, project, and task from web or mobile — with a running timer or a quick manual entry — each marked billable or non-billable. Approved timesheets feed both billing and a real utilisation view: billable vs. capacity per person, per week, per studio. You finally see who is over-loaded, who has slack, and how much of the month was actually earning rather than internal or pitch work.
Resource & designer allocation
Plan who works on what across the week with a capacity-aware allocation board — assign a designer, art director, or editor to a project for a set number of hours and the board warns you the moment someone is booked past 100%. Skill tags and role rates mean the right person (and the right cost) lands on the right brief, and the same plan rolls up into a forward pipeline so you know whether the next pitch can even be staffed.
Deliverables, proofing & approval rounds
Every logo set, deck, edit, or asset is a tracked deliverable with a status, owner, due date, and version history. Send a proof for client review with annotated, version-pinned feedback; each approval round is logged with who said what and when. The contracted number of rounds is built in, so when revisions exceed it the system flags scope creep and turns the extra round into a billable change order — instead of a silent loss buried in “just one more tweak”.
Retainers & drawdown
Set a monthly retainer per client — a fixed fee, a block of hours, or both — and watch it draw down against logged time and shipped deliverables in real time. The system flags an over-burned retainer so you raise an overage invoice instead of eating the hours, rolls unused hours forward or expires them per the contract, and renews the retainer automatically each cycle. A clear ledger of hours bought, hours used, and balance remaining goes to the client every month.
Milestone & hourly billing
Bill the way each client signed up. Milestone projects raise a tax invoice automatically when a phase is signed off; hourly engagements convert approved timesheets straight into a draft invoice at the right blended or role rate — designer, art director, motion — with no copy-paste. WIP, unbilled-hours, and write-off reports tell you exactly what is earned but not yet invoiced, and project profitability nets every hour, freelancer cost, and recharged expense against the fee.
GST on services & e-invoicing
Service invoices carry the correct SAC — 998391 for advertising and design, 998386 for photography, 998314 for design and development — with CGST/SGST for in-state clients and IGST for out-of-state work, and place-of-supply resolved automatically. Above the turnover threshold, invoices push to the IRP for an IRN and signed QR; export and SEZ clients are billed under LUT at zero rate. GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B are built from the same posted entries, so filing is a review, not a re-entry.
Collections, advances & UPI
Send every invoice with a Razorpay/PayU or UPI pay link and reconcile the receipt the moment it lands. Track advances and project deposits as liabilities, adjust them against milestone invoices, and chase overdue retainers with automatic reminders and an outstanding-ageing view. TDS that clients deduct on your professional fees is captured against the invoice and matched to Form 26AS, so your receivable reconciles to the rupee.
Asset & brand-file library
Keep working files, final deliverables, brand kits, fonts, and stock licences in a versioned library tied to each client and project — with the licence terms and expiry of every stock asset and typeface recorded, so you never ship art you no longer have the rights to. Share a review or hand-off link with an expiry, keep a clean audit of which version was approved and delivered, and stop hunting through chat threads for the file that actually got signed off.
Client communication
Reach every client contact through one channel that branches into email, SMS, and a client portal — proofs for review, approval requests, status updates, invoices, and payment reminders all logged with delivery status against the project. The portal gives the client a single place to see live status, approve a round, view the retainer balance, and download approved assets, so “where are we on this” and “I never approved that” stop being arguments and start being a record.
Freelancer payouts, payroll & books
Manage your roster of freelance writers, illustrators, editors, and stock vendors as suppliers, each linked to the project they worked on — capture their bills, deduct TDS under 194C/194J where it applies, compute RCM on services from unregistered freelancers, and schedule payouts with full ageing visibility, with Form 16A data ready at year-end. The same employee directory runs in-house payroll — EPF, ESI, Professional Tax, and TDS under Section 192 to current slabs, payslips and Form 16, ECR and ESI returns — and salary, freelancer cost, recharged expenses, retainers, and invoices all post to one double-entry ledger, so timesheets, billing, and the books reconcile to a single set of accounts.
A short tour through
a studio on Garuda.
Product tour · placeholder footage
The hours you log, the work you ship, and the invoice you raise should be the same record — not three spreadsheets that never quite agree.
Ledger for briefs, hours, approvals, billing & books
Approval rounds logged & version-traceable
SAC codes, e-invoicing & returns kept current
Re-keying between time tracker, billing & books
See your studio billing
running in five minutes.
The live demo is a real studio tenant, pre-loaded with clients, a retainer, a project on a kanban board, logged timesheets, and an approval round in flight. Click in, draw down a retainer, approve a proof, raise a GST service invoice — no sign-up. Then write to us about your studio.