How merchants manage ongoing projects

Register with email or connect a wallet as a merchant. Wallet login is a signed message, not a password. Pick the merchant role before you connect a new wallet. Existing wallets keep the role they already have. If you pick student by mistake, you will see orientation and an hour log, not a store’s projects. If the nonce route returns empty, the studio database is unreachable — try email, or call +1 (672) 200-7924 on a weekday if you cannot get in and money is stuck.

When you join as a merchant, the dashboard opens on projects. Each one has a status (intake, active, review, paused, launched), a progress bar, and a notes field for what is true this week. That is the file. We have run the studio this way so a Burnaby salon and a Montreal retailer can see the same kinds of facts: where the work sits, what is blocking, what you paid in CAD. We do not run the job in a forgotten email thread. We do not run it in Instagram DMs.

You do not need a dashboard to send the first brief to admin@sycgeeks.ca. You need one after you approve a quote, because that is when status, receipts, and the next request must live together. Book Square appointments with no account if you are still a guest. Once you are a merchant, the same booking appears under Appointments beside the project. Two calendars that disagree are how a Tuesday review gets missed.

Intake means we have the project and we are still locking the conversion, the languages, or the processor. Active means production is moving. Review means we need a human yes — copy, tax line, bilingual receipt, a photo that is not stock. Paused means we are waiting on you, on a college, or on a system we do not control. Launched means the URL is public and the project stays in the account. Launch is a status change, not a goodbye. Do not open a new thread with a stranger to ask for a button change.

The progress bar is a studio signal, not a marketing metric. It moves when a workflow step completes, not when someone sends a cheerful emoji. If it sits still for a week, read the notes. “Waiting on product photos from Jane at the Montreal warehouse” explains a still bar. A still bar with empty notes is a problem — write, or book a review. We will write why a week slipped. Silent calendars are how projects rot. You should expect the same sentence from your side.

Use the notes for decisions, not chat. “Need GST on BC services and HST on Ontario shipments; Jane approves Friday” is useful. “Looks good!!” is not. The next person at the salon or the shop should be able to pick up the file on a Tuesday. If legal has the privacy page, write that. If French is waiting on a reviewer in Quebec, write that. If Square POS and the site still disagree on a jacket, write that. Notes are how a studio since 2015 survives staff changes. Chat is how context dies.

Do not paste passwords into notes. Do not paste a customer export. PIPEDA is about purpose; the dashboard is for project truth, not a second CRM. Do not paste a new brief for a second product into an old project’s notes. That is how a colour-and-cut site quietly becomes an app we never quoted. Open checkout or write admin@sycgeeks.ca for a new engagement. We quote in CAD before anyone writes production code. Notes record the quote. They do not replace it.

Workflows sit beside projects. They show the current step of the studio work: structure, design, build, content, bilingual review, launch — or the steps we named on your quote. You should be able to open the dashboard mid-week and know which step is current without asking. If the step is bilingual review, do not send new English homepage copy as if we were still in design. If the step is launch, do not introduce a second marketplace in the notes. Wrong step, wrong ask, wasted week.

A focused marketing site often runs six to ten weeks if copy and images arrive. Ecommerce, appointments, and custom APIs add weeks because they touch money and other people’s systems. Square, Stripe, or a warehouse feed will not be rushed into a Friday deploy because a campaign starts Monday. The workflow will show that wait. If you want speed, assign one approver and put their name in the notes. A committee that meets after the market is a paused status wearing an active label.

English and French are a workflow fact, not a plugin. If day-one French is in the quote, bilingual review is a real step: URLs, legal copy, checkout labels, button widths. “Book” and “Prendre rendez-vous” are not the same width. A French receipt that is English with accents will hold launch. If French is a later add-on, the workflow will not pretend it is done. We refuse machine dumps as a second site. The step stays visible so nobody “soft launches” a broken language.

Purchases show what you paid in CAD. Quotes, care, and add-ons should match the catalog number you approved. Processors still take their Canadian fee — Square, Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Interac e-Transfer, or an optional ETH wallet if we quoted that rail. We do not hide fees in a USD sticker. GST in BC and HST in Ontario belong on the invoice when the work is taxable. If a receipt looks wrong, write the project notes and email. If checkout is down on a live store, call the weekday line.

Care is $450 CAD a month or $4,500 CAD a year — two months included on the year. Both cover hosting watch, small copy and dependency updates, one reserved studio hour, and a note of what changed. Buy it at checkout or add it later. Post-launch add-ons are about 25 percent off if the account has care. A store without someone watching the processor is a weekend problem waiting for Monday. Care does not mean new features are free. New features are a published add-on on the same project.

If the ask fits the reserved care hour — a broken label, a dependency, a small copy fix — we do it there and log it. If the ask changes what you bought — a new page, a second language, a checkout change, product stills, a collection, extra hours — pay the published CAD add-on, we set status back to active, and we keep the history. We will not silently fold extra weeks into care. That is how trust dies. If you are unsure which bucket you are in, ask. The answer is a sentence.

Do not treat Purchases as a second briefing room. A receipt is not a spec. If you paid for a marketing site, the receipt will not grow an API because you stared at it. Open the project, write the ask, and wait for a number. We refuse handshake scope. We refuse USD surprise. We refuse a “just quickly” that is a second store. The dashboard exists so that sentence is visible to the next person, including us.

Book time on Pacific time through Square. You could do that before you had an account; you should still do it after. The booking should appear under Appointments. Email-only confirmation is how people double-book a Tuesday. If you need a discovery hour for a new offer, book it and say so in a new project or a new email. If you need a review on the launched site, book it and point at the existing project notes. Do not bury “can we talk Friday” inside a note about photos.

Toronto and Montreal merchants are welcome on the same calendar. The overlap is the constraint. Read the confirmation as Pacific, especially across a daylight saving weekend. If production is down, do not book a slot three days out — call. If you only have a brief, write. The dashboard does not replace those doors. It records what those doors decided. Three doors, one file.

If a student on your team will join a session, they sign in as a student, finish orientation, and log hours with a date, a number from 0.25 to 24, and a general description of what they did. They do not use your merchant login. They do not paste their hours into your project notes as a substitute for the hour log. Capacity is a studio fact. Mixing roles is how hours vanish and notes become a diary.

We refuse to keep the current step only in someone’s head. We refuse to keep a tax decision only in a hallway after a showroom visit. We refuse to keep a French approval only in a text. The dashboard is where those sentences go. You can mention a text in the notes; the decision still goes in the notes. If your staff will not open a browser, assign one person who will. A merchant account that nobody checks is a decoration. We will still write there.

We refuse stock people photographs as project assets. If you upload a folder of smiling strangers, we will not put them on the site. Use your room, your product, or illustration. We refuse to collect personal information in notes that we will not use. Customer lists, health details, and card numbers do not belong in the progress field. WCAG issues — a form a keyboard cannot finish — do belong, because they are launch work on a public Canadian site.

We refuse a second inventory next to Square POS because a theme demo looked cleaner. If the notes say “let’s just type the jackets into the CMS,” we will write no and point at the system you already pay for. We refuse crypto as the only rail on a Canadian cart. Optional ETH can sit beside a card processor if we quoted it. Apple Pay sits on a configured processor; we will not fake the button. Those refusals belong in the file so the next contractor does not undo them.

If the dashboard is the wrong tool for the heat — cart down, launch today — call. If the dashboard is the wrong tool for a first brief — you are not a merchant yet — write. The merchant view is for ongoing work: status, progress, notes, workflows, purchases, appointments. Use it like a shop binder, not like a social feed. Short sentences. Names. Dates. CAD numbers. The next Tuesday will thank you.

Once a week, open the dashboard on Pacific time. Read status. Read the current workflow step. Read the last note. If you owe photos, prices, or a yes, write the date you will send them. If we owe a quote, look at Purchases after it arrives. If a booking is coming, confirm it under Appointments. This habit takes ten minutes. It prevents the Friday surprise where nobody knows whether HST is in the cart.

A Burnaby salon can write “book button still points at walk-in copy; need Thursday evenings before the long weekend.” A Montreal retailer can write “Ontario orders must show HST; GST stays on BC warehouse pickups.” Those sentences are more useful than a brand workshop. They are also the sentences a future developer can read without calling us. When we hand over an API or a store, the dashboard history is part of the product. If it only lived in a founder’s head, it was not shipped.

Register or connect a wallet as a merchant. Update status, progress, and notes on each project. Read the workflow for the current studio step. Keep purchases and appointments in the same binder. Write admin@sycgeeks.ca when the ask is a new quote. Call the weekday number when production is down. That is how merchants manage ongoing work with this studio. It is not fancy. It is how a file stays true in two languages and one currency.