Tracking System for a Design Studio: Clients, Rooms, Suppliers
How a design studio can manage clients, rooms, and suppliers in one system instead of copies of Excel files.
A design studio lives in spreadsheets: briefs, estimates, material selections, supplier contacts, approval statuses.
Usually this means several files with similar names and versions like "final", "final2", "final_revisions".
Structure Instead of File Copies
Instead of duplicating rows for each client — linked tables:
- Clients — customer and contacts;
- Projects — property or space;
- Rooms — zones within a project;
- Suppliers — vendors and price lists;
- Items — furniture, finishes, decor lines;
- Tasks — stages and deadlines.
One client — several projects. One project — several rooms. Everything is linked, not spread across tabs.
Different Views of the Same Data
The same records can be viewed in different ways:
- Table View — full list of items and amounts;
- Kanban — stages: draft → approval → order → installation;
- Gallery — visual selection of materials and references.
No need to rebuild the spreadsheet for every scenario — only the view changes.
The Client Sees Status, Not the Whole Database
Client Portal gives the client a link to the current project status: what is approved, what is in progress, what the deadlines are.
Without access to internal purchases, markups, or supplier correspondence.
Summary
A studio does not need heavy ERP software. It needs one structure where clients, rooms, and suppliers are connected — and where the team sees the current picture without hunting for "that one file".