What if you want to move away from Millstone?
A studio tool should be easy to leave. Every record you keep in Millstone comes out as a spreadsheet, whenever you want it, without asking anyone.
Rob Nichols2 min read
It is a fair question to ask before you put your studio into anything: if I want out, how hard is it?
It should be easy. A tool you cannot leave is not one you chose. It is one you are stuck with.
How tools pile up
I have been on the other side of this. A studio picks up tools as it goes: one for time, one for invoices, one for proposals, a CRM someone set up once. Each one costs a bit more, and each one holds a bit of the studio's history.
Then a day comes when you want to streamline, and you find it is hard to. The data is in ten places, half of it does not export cleanly, and the cheapest option is to keep paying for all of it. That is how you end up with a lot of expensive tools that nobody really chose.
I did not want Millstone to be one of them.
Everything comes out
The studio owner can export any of it, whenever they like, without asking anyone:
- Clients, people and the rates you agreed with them
- Projects, deliverables, reviews and tasks
- Time, costs and payment requests
- Invoices and their lines, proposals and agreements, with who signed and when
- Meetings, bookings, forms and the answers clients gave
- Comments and discussions
Tick what you want, press Download, and it comes as spreadsheets in a single file, one per register, with a note of what is in it. Signed proposals and agreements download as PDFs too, with the audit trail on the last page.
Keep your own copy
Nothing stops you exporting every month and keeping it somewhere of your own. Your records are yours, and having your own copy is just good practice for any studio, whatever it runs on.
Take it somewhere else
Spreadsheets are the one format every tool can read. The same files that come out of Millstone can go into whatever you move to next, the way Millstone reads the exports of the tools studios move from.
Why it matters
If leaving is easy, staying is a choice you keep making. That is the only reason I want any studio to be on Millstone: because it is the best way to run their studio, not because it is too much hassle to go.