A full, honest walkthrough of Ledger and Studio — what each one actually does, and the job it does for you at the bench.
CrafterTill is a jewelry studio ledger, built in two tiers — other crafts can use the same engine in Settings. Ledger is free, forever — an offline, install-anywhere app for pricing pieces and running an honest inventory, with no account and nothing to sign up for. Studio is one subscription, $96/year or $10/month, that adds everything it takes to sell through more channels, close the books every month, and hand a real year-end file to whoever asks for one — your accountant, an insurer, or future you.
This guide walks through both, in the order you'd actually use them: price the work first, then run the year.
Before anything else, a piece needs a real price — one built from what it actually cost you, not a guess. Ledger is the free half of CrafterTill: the inventory, the pricing math, and the day-to-day log of what's coming in and going out. No trial, nothing you outgrow to keep using it.
CrafterTill starts by asking what you make, not by assuming.
Every piece, where it stands, and what your whole studio is worth right now.
A price built from your own numbers, not a rule of thumb.
Materials tracked from the day you start, in whatever unit actually makes sense.
The on-hand ledger above runs quietly for every maker from day one. Only the visible "Materials on hand" card with its Recount and Add-back controls is a Studio feature — see Money & materials below. Nothing to migrate when you upgrade.
Installed, offline, and yours.
A maker never has to leave this tier to run a real, organized studio. Studio adds the selling, reporting, and ritual layer on top of it.
Ledger prices the work and keeps the inventory honest. Studio is everything it takes to actually run a year of selling on top of that — more channels, the shows, the books closing every month, and the paperwork that shows up every December. Six jobs, not a longer feature list.
Every way a piece actually leaves the studio, in one place — a shop consignment, a custom order, a repair, a layaway hold, or a wholesale account.
A custom order starts as an Inquiry — just the customer's name and what they asked about, no price needed yet. Send quote puts a price on it and moves it to Quoted, which is also the moment a one-page Quote PDF becomes available to hand or email the customer. Record deposit moves it to In progress, and from there a seven-step trail — Agreed, Deposit taken, Design approved, Making, Ready, Delivered, Paid in full — tracks the rest, with steps CrafterTill can already prove checked off automatically.
Link the pieces actually being made to a commission, and the Desk shows what it cost you in materials and time against what you quoted — without ever judging whether the number was a good one.
Packing for a show, and knowing afterward whether it was worth it.
What's actually on the shelf, what it's worth, and the two files that get asked for every year.
A running on-hand balance for every material, kept up to date automatically as purchases come in and materials go onto pieces — a purchase adds to the balance, a piece's materials subtract from it, and editing or deleting either one corrects the balance the same way. Two manual controls sit alongside it: Recount, to set the balance to what's actually on the shelf after a real physical count, and Add back, a smaller positive nudge for scrap or offcuts returned to stock. Running low or negative is shown plainly, never hidden or blocked — CrafterTill reports what's true rather than enforcing what should be.
Everything a tax preparer asks for, gathered into one place and exportable as CSVs alongside a printable summary. It's built as a small annual ritual, not just a report: it opens with a one-line nod to reading a whole year back at once, and closes with a quiet, factual note — no price, no pitch — that this is also a natural moment to check whether Studio earned its keep this year. Worksheets built from what you entered — not tax, accounting, legal, or insurance advice.
The same numbers you're already logging, organized around a question you'd actually ask — not a stack of reports to page through.
Three points in the year built to become a habit, not a chore.
Fifteen minutes at the end of the month: a tidy-up checklist of anything incomplete, the month's story in plain sentences, a comparison to last month and the same month last year, a look ahead at what's coming, and a close that stamps the month and backs up your studio — reversible any time, nothing locked.
The Monthly Close and the Season Plan are meant to become natural, recurring reasons to open the app. The Year-End Pack, above, is the third — its own annual version of the same idea.
| Tier | Price | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Ledger | Free, forever | Standalone, offline PWA. No account. Inventory, pricing, and the five money books — everything in Price the work, above. |
| Studio | $96/year, or $10/month | Everything in Ledger, plus every section in Run the year, above — selling & commissions, shows, money & materials, insights, and the rituals. |