Setting up your studio: the four onboarding steps

The first time you sign in, Encore Studio walks you through four setup steps: Business, Staff, Clients, and Payments. Everything you enter can be changed later in Settings, so do not agonize — get through it and refine as you go.

Expected to see an existing studio instead? The top of the page says which email you are signed in as. If your studio was set up under a different one, use Sign out there and sign back in with that email.

Step 1: Business

Your studio's identity and how it operates. The one question that shapes the rest of the app is "How does your studio operate?":

• Brick & mortar — students come to you. You will add your locations and the rooms inside them, which the scheduler uses to prevent double-booking a room.

• In-home — you travel to students, so no locations are needed.

• Both — a mix of studio and in-home lessons.

You will also set:

• Studio name and an optional tagline.

• Instruments you teach — these become the options for enrollments.

• Contact email, business phone, and optional from and BCC addresses for outgoing mail — the BCC takes several addresses, separated by commas.

• Timezone — important: every lesson time in Encore is interpreted in your studio's timezone.

• Country, website, and EIN (all optional except country).

Step 2: Staff

Add your teachers — name, email, and their buffer minutes (the minimum gap the scheduler keeps between their lessons). You can invite them to the teacher portal now or later from Admin → Teachers.

Step 3: Clients

Upload your existing families from a CSV file, one row per child. Only the billing contact's name and each child's first name are required. If your roster lives somewhere painful, choose "Skip — I'll add clients later" and add families through the Enroll wizard instead.

Step 4: Payments

Connect your own Stripe account so families can pay invoices online. Refunds and payouts stay in your Stripe dashboard — Encore never holds your money. You can skip this step; the app will remind you that you can connect anytime in Settings → Billing.