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4. Working in Your Studio Backend: Sales, Customers & More

Let's walks you through the key sections of your backend so you can manage your business smoothly and efficiently.

Written by Nina

The Essentials: What Happens After You Upload Your Designs

Welcome to the control center of your Pattern Cloud site👋 Here you manage everything behind the scenes. From reviewing sales and customer activity to organizing stock and creating pinboards, this guide will help you confidently navigate the backend and make the most of each feature.

Landing Page Overview

After logging into the backend, you’ll land on your Dashboard, where Studio Analytics gives a quick overview of your sales, views and general activity.

Tip: to arrange your analytics, open Business Operations â€ș Analytics and click Edit layout.

Use the menu at the top (Design Management, Business Operations and Configuration) to explore and access different operational areas of your studio site.

Sales

Track, Approve, and Manage Online Purchases

Sales (under Business Operations) shows a list of all your studio’s sales, with the most recent at the top.

A Pending sale, with the Approve for download (tick) and Reject (cross) buttons

  • Approve or reject an online purchase: point at the sale and click the tick ✅ (Approve for download) or the cross ❌ (Reject). See Find and approve your sales.

  • If a sale is approved, the customer can download the high-res files.

  • If no action is taken within 24 hours, the purchase will be auto-approved.

  • Manually created sales or invoices are approved for download immediately.

Stock

Organize, Update, and Track Your Live Designs

Stock (under Design Management) shows all the designs in your studio, with their status: Visible, Hidden or Sold.

Stock in Table view: design ML-108 with the status Visible

Use the search and filter tools to find designs by:

  • Design reference

  • Designer

  • Tag

  • Design Type (Exclusive or Non-Exclusive)

  • Availability (sold or not), Design Visibility and Promotion

You can:

  • View, tag, or remove tags

  • Hide designs from the website

  • Permanently delete designs (⚠ irreversible)

Important: If you sell a design outside the platform, enter an invoice manually to mark it as sold. This allows your customer to access the file and keeps your records clear.

To move a design from Exclusive to Non-Exclusive, open the design and change its Pricing Type on Add Metadata (see Edit a design’s details).

Pricing Type set to Exclusive, and the Designer list

Customers

View and Manage Customer Activity

Customers (under Business Operations) lists all registered customers, with the most recent activity on top.

Clicking on a name opens that customer’s page. Its tabs include:

  • Basket: What they currently have in their basket

  • Pinboards: Their saved pinboards (you can create up to 10 custom ones)

  • Activity: What they’ve done on your storefront, including the PDFs they’ve downloaded (see See what your customers do)

  • Purchases: All completed purchases

  • Invoices: Review, create, or email invoices

  • Details and Edit: View and edit contact information

  • Pricing: Set currency, apply discounts (a percentage or a fixed amount), Pay By Invoice and PDF Pattern Print Out - VIP

  • Access: Grant or suspend access, and change their password (see Give a customer access to your storefront)

📌 Note: EU-based customers must have a valid VAT/TVA number to avoid tax being added at checkout.

On the Pricing tab, always remember to click Save Changes after making any changes.

Enabling Pay by Invoice for a Customer

If you want to allow individual customers the option of paying by invoice, follow these steps:

  1. Open Business Operations, then Customers

  2. Pick the customer

  3. Click the Pricing tab

  4. Switch on Pay By Invoice (Allow customer to pay by invoice)

  5. Enter the Invoice Due Date (Days): the number of days following the invoice

  6. Click Save Changes.

Customer VIP Access

You can grant your best and most trusted customers VIP access, allowing them to print or download a PDF design sheet for each design.

To enable VIP access for a customer:

  1. Open Business Operations, then Customers

  2. Select the customer

  3. Click the Pricing tab

  4. Switch on PDF Pattern Print Out - VIP

  5. Click Save Changes

Once enabled, you can see which designs a VIP customer has downloaded as a PDF on their Activity tab (Downloaded PDF). This record helps you understand their preferences and which designs they’re most interested in.

Watermarking Designs for VIP Customers

Your watermark logo is stamped on the design images in the PDFs your customers download from a pinboard.

To upload your watermark logo:

  1. Open Configuration, then Website

  2. On the Appearance tab, find Studio Logos

  3. In the Watermark Logo box, click Browse or drag your file onto it

  4. Use a 652 × 150px image (PNG, JPEG or GIF, up to 10MB). It saves as soon as it has uploaded

To change it later, click Replace next to it (see Add your company details and logo).

Studio Logos: the Main Logo, Watermark Logo and Browser Tab Icon (Favicon) boxes, each with its size and a Browse button

Invoice

Manage Invoices and Export Financial Data

The Invoices list, with invoices marked Paid, Unpaid and Overdue in the Status column

Creating an Invoice

  • Open Business Operations, then Invoices.

  • Click NEW INVOICE.

  • Make sure the customer and purchased designs already exist in the system.

  • Click an invoice to open it, then Edit, Email or PDF (see Find, send and update your invoices).

Exporting to Xero

From Invoices:

  • Tick the invoices you want, then click EXPORT to download them as a CSV (marked with export date).

  • Filter by date range if needed, then export.

  • Want to include already exported invoices? Switch on Include exported.

Xero Tips

  • Outside the UK? You may need to adjust the TaxType column in the CSV.

  • To import:

    • Open Xero > Business > Invoices > Import

    • Browse, upload CSV, and import as Draft

    • Review and approve

  • Default income account in TPC: 202

  • To create new accounts in Xero: Accounting > Advanced > Chart of Accounts > Add Account

  • Using multiple currencies? Set up a Branding Theme per currency to avoid import warnings.

Analytics

Use Insights to Guide Your Design and Sales

This section gives you valuable insight into how your designs perform.

You’ll find:

  • Your most viewed designs

  • Most popular tags and trends

To arrange your Analytics page:

  • Open Business Operations â€ș Analytics, click Edit layout, arrange the sections the way you want, then click Done.

Use this data to tailor your content and pricing strategy to customer behavior.

The Analytics cards, including Visible Designs, Designs Sold This Week and Most Popular Search

Pinboards

Curate & Share Personalized Collections

Pinboards allow you to curate and share custom collections of designs with customers.

The Create New Pinboard window with a name typed in, and the Create Pinboard button

To Create a Pinboard:

  1. Open Business Operations, then Pinboards, and click New.

  2. Type a name and click Create Pinboard (you can rename it later: click the pinboard name at the top of the pinboard)

  3. Click Add Design, search by name or filter by tags, then point at a design and click Add

  4. Click Close when you’re done

To Share a Pinboard:

  • Open the Customers tab and click Manage Customers

  • Under Add Customers, find the customer by name, company or email

  • Click Share. The customer now appears under Customers with Access

They’ll receive an email letting them know you’ve shared a pinboard. Watch our short video guide: Share designs with a pinboard.

Manage Customer Access: one customer under Customers with Access, marked Already Shared

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