Studio settings

You never have to remember which tab a setting lives on. Click the Search box at the top of the dashboard — or press ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) — and type what you are after: 'logo', 'billing date', 'timezone', 'payment alerts'. Every studio setting is in there; choose a result and Ida opens Settings on the right tab, scrolls to that exact setting, and highlights it briefly so you land right where you need to be.

On the Studio tab, set your studio name, email, phone, and address. These appear across the app and on every email your families receive.

Also on the Studio tab, tell Ida OS where your studio is located by picking its timezone — the picker is searchable, so typing a nearby city like Toronto or Chicago finds it fast, and your choice saves the moment you pick it. Every class and event time — on the calendar, in the mobile app, in booking emails, and on your public trial form — is shown in that timezone, so families always see times that match the clock on your studio wall. Monthly autopay also bills at midnight in your timezone.

Also in Settings, the Locations card is where studios that teach in more than one place put each site on record. Adding a second location switches on location pickers and filters across the calendar, the roster, and the trial widget — the Multiple locations page of this guide walks through how it all works. Studio settings in the iPhone app has a Locations screen too, so you can manage locations from your phone as well.

The Branding tab is where you make Ida OS look like your studio. Upload your logo — PNG, JPG, WEBP, AVIF, or SVG up to 2MB — and a crop tool opens so you can frame it just right: drag to reposition, zoom with the slider, and pick the shape that fits. Square sits as a neat tile beside your studio name; Wide suits logos that read as a banner and gives them the width of the sidebar header. SVG files skip the cropper and upload exactly as they are. Once saved, your logo appears across the dashboard sidebar, the family portal, your login screen, and the emails families receive — and the Crop button lets you re-frame the saved logo whenever you like, no re-upload needed.

If your logo already spells out your studio's name, flip off the 'Show studio name next to the logo' switch and the sidebar shows just your logo, without the text label beside it.

Then pick a color scheme — choose one of the curated themes or set your own exact brand color as a hex value — and it applies app-wide for every staff member and family: buttons, accents, links, and highlights all follow. A live preview of the real branded invitation email shows exactly what families will receive, so you can check your logo and colors in context before sending anything.

The Login screen card lets you design the page families land on when they sign in at your studio's address. Set a custom background (hero) image, write your own headline and supporting text, and choose a layout. A live preview — shown in both a desktop browser frame and a phone frame — updates as you edit, so you always see how it will look.

There are four layouts to choose from: Image left (hero on the left, sign-in on the right), Image right (the mirror), Full background (a full-bleed image with the sign-in card centered on top), and Centered (no image — a clean centered card on a themed background). On the split layouts, the hero image and copy show on larger screens; the Full background and Centered layouts carry your message down to phones too.

• Background image: upload a PNG, JPG, or WEBP (landscape images look best) — large photos are optimized automatically, so a full-size phone photo uploads without fuss; 'Reset to default' restores the standard image.
• Headline and supporting text: leave a field blank to show the default copy, or tick 'Hide' to show no text at all for that line.
• Layout: pick the arrangement that fits your brand — the preview reflects your choice instantly.

Every studio gets its own web address on Ida OS — a subdomain like yourstudio.idaos.co — and your logo, colors, and login screen all show there. If you'd like families to sign in on a domain of your own, you can also connect a custom domain (for example portal.yourstudio.com); reach out and we'll help you set it up.

Studios teach differently, so you define your own dance levels rather than using a fixed list. On the Branding tab, the Levels card is where you name the levels your studio uses and set their order. Those levels are what you assign to students and tuition plans, and they're what the calendar can color-code by — so the whole app reads the way your school actually works.

Also on Branding, the calendar's building blocks are yours to shape. The Calendar event types card lets you rename any of the six built-in types — call rentals 'Studio hire', workshops 'Masterclasses' — hide the ones your studio never uses so they drop out of the legend and the new-event picker, and set each type's color. Classes are always shown (though you can rename them too), and a class tagged with a level uses the level's color instead, set alongside your dance levels. The workshop color reaches beyond the calendar, too: it tints the category badges on the Workshops page, for staff and families alike. Use 'Reset all to defaults' to start over.

Right below the built-in types, the Custom free event types card lets you add calendar types of your own — Performance, Show rehearsal, whatever your studio runs — each with a name and a calendar color. A custom type is always free: its events carry no prices, and families sign up at no charge. The types you add join the end of the calendar's type picker and its legend, on the web and in the iPhone app.

Each type in the list can be renamed or recolored, hidden, or deleted. Hiding a type takes it out of the picker for new events while events already using it keep their name and color, so it is the right choice for a type with history — deleting only works when no calendar events use the type.

In Studio details, 'Week starts on' chooses the first column of week and month calendars — Monday by default, Sunday if that is how your studio thinks, or any other day. It applies to staff and family calendars alike, on the web and in the iPhone app, and saves the moment you pick it. Staff can also change it from Settings → Calendar in the app.

The Team tab manages the instructors who can teach and help run the studio. Add each instructor to the roster, then invite them to their own staff login when you want them working in the app.

The roster reads as a members table: each row shows the person's email, name, role, the family they book as (if any), and a status chip — 'Not invited' until you send their sign-in link, 'Joined' once they have a login, 'Inactive' when you have marked them so. People still waiting on an invite sort to the top, so who to invite next is always in view, and a count above the table keeps track of how many members you have.

Instructors get a scoped view: they can see the schedule, family and student rosters, attendance, documents, competition entries, and comms — but never revenue, the payments ledger, tuition, or studio settings. Those stay admin-only, so you can hand a teacher day-to-day access without exposing the studio's finances.

1. 1On the Team tab, add the instructor with their name and email.
2. 2Open the instructor's actions menu and choose Invite to portal — Ida OS emails them a branded sign-in link (you can also copy and share it directly).
3. 3They click the link, set up their account, and land in the staff dashboard with the instructor-scoped view.
4. 4Use Manage portal access later to resend the invite, or Remove access to revoke their login (they stay on the roster).

Sometimes an instructor is also a student at your studio — for example an older dancer who teaches a junior class. Ida OS lets the same login be both: keep their instructor access and also let them book classes and practices for themselves as a family.

From the instructor's actions menu choose Create as family. You can link them to an existing family record or create a one-person family for them in a click. Once linked, they keep their full staff view and gain a 'book for myself' option on the calendar — and the roster's 'Books as' column shows which family they book as.

The Payments & Bookings tab is organized as two short lists of settings. Under Payments, connect Stripe to receive payouts — the row shows whether your account is connected and ready, and where Stripe Tax stands: 'Tax configured' once GST/HST is being collected, or 'Finish tax setup' / 'Add tax registration' while something is still missing in Stripe. Buttons open your studio's Stripe Tax dashboard and, once you have finished setup there, Refresh tax — which starts collecting on everything by bringing your existing autopay subscriptions and open payment links up to date (a family without a billing address on file has autopay paused until they add one). The same list manages your billing currency, your tuition billing date, and the registration fee. Under Bookings, choose Instant (book and pay now) or Manual (staff approve first) for each type of studio time already on the calendar — private lessons, open practice slots, rentals, workshops, and your custom free event types, which start on Manual so sign-ups come to you first — set the non-student practice rate (the hourly fallback used when a booker has no matching tuition plan rate), set the private lesson and rental prices families see when suggesting their own time, and choose whether families see which instructor is assigned to each class. Suggesting a brand-new time — practice, a private lesson, or a rental — is always staff-approved and is not controlled by the Instant/Manual choices.

In the private lesson and rental prices, leave a duration blank to hide it from the suggestion form — leave both prices for a type blank and that type can't be suggested at all.

Most of these save the moment you change them — pick a new value and a small confirmation appears — while amounts like the rates have their own Save button. The tuition billing date works as before: choose a fixed day of the month to bill recurring tuition, or leave it on each family's own signup day. It applies to new autopay sign-ups only, and to monthly tuition — plans that bill per quarter, 6 months, or year always charge from their signup date.

The Payments & Bookings tab also sets your studio's currency. Every price in Ida OS — tuition, trials, workshops, the payments ledger, on web and in the mobile app — displays in it. Before Stripe is connected you can pick any supported currency; once Stripe is connected, the currency is locked to what your Stripe account settles in, so charges always match your payouts.

The Payments list also carries your business country — where your studio legally operates, and therefore where Stripe registers your payment account. Confirm it before connecting Stripe: Ida asks rather than assumes, because Stripe fixes the country permanently once your account starts processing payments. Until then you can still change it — Ida discards the unfinished Stripe setup so you can start over in the right country; after payments have begun, a country change goes through support.

The Subscription tab holds your studio's own Ida OS plan — what your studio pays for the software, entirely separate from what families pay you. The card always shows where you stand — a Free trial badge with the days remaining, Active with your next renewal date, or a notice when a payment needs attention — and offers the one right action for that moment.

During your free trial, Add payment method opens the secure Stripe billing portal to save a card, and your plan continues automatically when the trial ends. On an active plan, Manage billing opens the same portal to change your card, switch between monthly and annual, or cancel. You can also switch Ida OS billing currency anytime (USD, CAD, GBP, or EUR): on a trial it switches immediately; on a paid plan the current subscription is canceled and replaced in the new currency (using the card on file when available, otherwise Checkout). If a renewal payment fails, the card flags it and Update payment method puts it right. Only when you have no live subscription — the trial ended without a card, or you cancelled — do you pick a currency and a plan, then press Subscribe (or Resubscribe).

Open Notifications from the user menu to control email alerts. Studio-wide payment alerts — a 'New payment received' summary to every admin whenever a payment lands, online via Stripe or recorded manually, on the web or in the iPhone app — and time suggestion alerts — emailed when a family suggests practice, a private lesson, or studio rental — are both on by default and can be turned off for the whole studio. Below the studio switches, each admin can mute either category for their own inbox without affecting anyone else — though a category turned off studio-wide stays off for everyone until the studio switch is back on. Families use the same page to manage their booking approval and cancellation emails. Mobile push for the same events is managed separately in the iPhone app.

Admins can also get push notifications the moment things happen: a 'New payment received' alert when a payment lands, and a new-request alert when a family suggests a time — the alert names what was asked for, whether practice, a private lesson, or a studio rental. Tapping an alert takes you straight to the right place — a payment alert opens Payments, a time suggestion opens the Calendar — even when the app was closed. Turn each alert on or off in the iPhone app under More → Notifications (admins can also reach the same screen from Studio settings): the Studio-wide alerts switches save as you flip them and apply to every admin on the studio, and a Preview button sends a sample notification so you know exactly what an alert looks like. A Your preferences card on the same screen lets you mute either alert for just yourself — your choice follows your account to every device you sign in on, while other admins keep receiving theirs. Push and email are independent: each channel has its own switch, so you can keep the email summary and skip the ping, or the other way around.

Each phone also has to allow notifications once. The first time you use the app, the Home screen offers an Enable notifications card — accept it, or tap Not now and the app will not ask again. You can always set it up later from the This device card at the top of More → Notifications: it tells you whether this phone can receive alerts, enables them with one tap, and if your phone has notifications blocked for Ida it sends you to the system settings to allow them.

Studio settings travels with you: open the More tab and tap Studio settings. It works like your iPhone's own Settings app — a menu of grouped destinations rather than one long page: Studio (profile, branding & appearance, locations, timezone, calendar), Money (billing, currency, booking), Alerts (push notifications), Integrations (Stripe and Instagram), and Team (instructors). Each row shows where things stand before you tap — your studio name, timezone, and currency, whether Stripe and Instagram are connected, which push alerts are on, and how many locations and instructors you have. Tap a row to open that one setting on its own screen, make the change, and save; the back arrow returns you to the menu, and the back arrow on the menu itself takes you back out to More. (The Locations, Calendar, and Notifications screens appear for admins.) Notifications also has its own row right on the More tab, under Settings — one tap away for everyone, families included.