Media
What this is for
A studio owner wants the group photos from Nationals. A parent asks
for the solo footage from both days on one USB. Somebody gets promised
the weekend video package as part of a deal. Orders like these are
real money and real promises, and they usually live in a text thread
until someone calls in March asking where their video is.
The Media register writes each one down as an order: who’s buying,
which event it came from, the lines they bought, and whether it has
shipped. The money side deliberately lives elsewhere — an order bills
through a one-click draft invoice in Receivables — so this register
tracks the promise, from open to delivered.
Look for Media in the left-hand menu, under Modules. If it
isn’t there, it’s not in your plan yet — ask us to enable it. Raising
an invoice from an order also needs the Receivables module;
without it everything else works, and the invoice action says plainly
what’s missing.
Recording an order
Go to Media and click New order
Pick the Customer
Studios you work with are in the list — pick one and the eventual
invoice bills that studio’s account. For a parent or any other
walk-up, choose Someone else — type a name and type it.Pick the Event, if one applies
An order pointed at an event stamps its money for that weekend’s
books; with no event it still counts, it just isn’t part of any
weekend’s P&L.Add the Lines
Pick a media product and its price fills in from your catalog —
type over it for a one-off deal. Free-text line is there for
the thing you’ll never sell twice (Custom edit of the finale
number). Quantities, line totals, and the order total add
themselves up.Selling something that isn’t in the catalog yet? Create it
without leaving
Pick New media product… on the line: a name, a SKU code
(suggested for you), and a price — or leave the price blank to type
it per order. It lands in the catalog and picks itself for the
line — adding Weekend Video Package mid-order doesn’t mean a
detour. Media products are their own kind of SKU; they don’t track
stock the way merch does.Add Notes and click Add order
Wants the solo footage from both days on one USB. The order lands
on the register as Open.
Three tiles across the top keep score: Open orders (what’s still
owed to customers, in dollars), Delivered (what’s shipped), and
Not yet invoiced, which turns amber when live orders exist that
Receivables has never heard of — the money that’s been promised to you
but never billed.
Comps stay on the order
A $0 line is legal, and it’s not a mistake — it’s the record. Comp the
teacher’s copy of the video and the line stays on the order at $0, so
what was promised is written down next to what was sold.
When the invoice is raised, only priced lines ride it. Comps never
mint a $0 draft — and an order that is all comps refuses invoicing
with a sentence, because there’s nothing to bill. The promise still
sits on the register either way, which is the point.
An order’s life
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Open | Ordered, not yet shipped. Fully editable, and the only state that can be deleted. |
| Delivered | Shipped. The order is now a record — frozen except its notes. |
| Cancelled | The customer walked. The row stays, struck through. |
An open order moves to Delivered or Cancelled from its row
menu, and both are terminal: shipped media doesn’t un-ship, and a
cancelled customer who comes back gets a fresh order so the old one
stays a clean record.
Notes stay editable forever. USB reshipped after the first one
bounced is exactly the kind of thing you learn after delivery, so a
closed order’s row menu keeps Notes… even though everything else
is frozen.
Delete exists only while an order is open and uninvoiced. After
delivery, or once an invoice is linked, the way out is Cancel
order — the register keeps your history honest the same way the rest
of the books do. Cancelling an invoiced order tells you the draft
lives on in Receivables, and to void it there if it shouldn’t bill.
The invoice, in one click
An open or delivered order can raise its invoice without retyping
anything.
Open the order’s row menu and choose Create invoice
Herding Cats drafts it in Receivables
A studio order bills the studio’s account; a walk-up order bills
the typed name as a one-off customer. One line per priced order
line, with the order’s event and brand carried onto it. The toast
names the new invoice number.Send it from Receivables
The draft is a draft. Nothing has posted and nothing has gone to
the customer until you send it — same as any other invoice. See
Invoices. When it’s sent, the revenue posts
to your media sales account.
Back on the register, the order’s row links the invoice number, and if
the invoice’s life moves on — paid, void, still a draft — the register
says so next to the number, so a dead or unsent invoice can’t hide
behind a healthy-looking row.
One order, one invoice: an order that already has its invoice doesn’t
offer the action again. If two people manage to click it at the same
moment, the second click is refused and names the spare draft to
delete in Receivables.
Honest limits
- There’s no storefront for parents yet. No checkout page, no card
processing, no per-dancer ordering portal — the register records
orders you took somewhere else (an email, a text, the media table). - Delivery is one status, not a production pipeline. Nothing here
tracks editing progress, uploads, or which videographer owes you
footage. Delivered means you shipped it; the notes carry the
rest. - Payment lives on the invoice, not the order. The register never
marks an order paid — the linked invoice number and its status
annotation are that story, over in Receivables. - One invoice per order. An order paying in installments needs its
invoices raised by hand in Receivables.