How do I switch from Studio Designer to MONA?

Quick answer: Export your data from Studio Designer through Reports (the 01 Addresses and 01 Contacts reports for people, a Project Worksheet report per project for items, PDF forms for proposals and invoices, and the financial reports Studio Designer itself recommends before cancellation), then bring it into MONA in three moves: Clients, then Import CSV for people, a chat with MONA to turn each worksheet into a live project schedule, and a drag onto the project's Files tab for everything else. There is no one-click Studio Designer importer yet, so plan about ten minutes per project, and finish the exports before you cancel.

The Project Worksheet is the part that matters most. MONA rebuilds it as a schedule with rooms, vendors, quantities, costs, and selling prices you can keep working from, and the MONA agent can then find alternates, build a client presentation, or turn it into a proposal or invoice.

Before you start

• Export first, cancel second. Studio Designer's own pre-cancellation guide says that once cancellation is finalized it cannot retrieve your data. Its subscriber terms promise only commercially reasonable efforts to make data available for 90 days after termination, so do not plan around that window.
• Cancellation is by email. You cancel by writing to help@studiodesigner.com. Annual plans carry no refund or credit if you cancel early, so line the switch up with your renewal date. A cancelled account can be reinstated within six months.
• Check your permissions. If Export or Download is missing on a screen, your user role does not allow it. Ask the account administrator to run the exports.
• Excel exports show what the preview shows. A report's Excel file contains every column visible in the report preview and nothing else. Add or reorder columns before you click Export.
• Dropbox images are not stored in Studio Designer. Images you added from Dropbox are synced, not copied. Deactivating the Dropbox account holder's Studio Designer license removes them permanently, so export the photo worksheet while that user is still active.

Which Studio Designer are you on?

Studio Designer sells two products under one help center. Studio Designer (Essentials, Enterprise, and Premier) is the item-based system with built-in accounting, where everything starts from an Address ID and lives in Reports. Studio Designer Starter powered by Mydoma (also called Mydoma NEXT) is the acquired project-management tool with Products and Services, design boards, and Files and Media. Most of this guide is for Studio Designer. If your left menu says Products and Services and Files and Media, skip to the Mydoma section near the end.

Step 1: Export your data from Studio Designer

Everything comes out through the Reports icon in the lower left of the main menu. Any report exports to an Excel file with the Export button at the bottom of the screen; most also print to PDF.

Clients, vendors, and contacts

Go to Reports, type Address in the search field, select the 01 Addresses report, and click Export. A file named 01 Addresses.xlsx is saved to your Downloads folder with every address record: clients, projects, vendors, manufacturers, showrooms, and ship-to addresses, each with its Address Type. Keep it as one file; you will sort it by type in the next step.

Run the 01 Contacts report the same way. Contacts are the individual people attached to an address record, and they export with the Address ID they belong to.

Each project's items

Do this once per project.

1. Go to Reports and search for Project Worksheet.
2. Click 01 Project Worksheet or 2010 01 Project Worksheet Detail by Room. The report preview opens on the right with filters on the left.
3. Click the filter line labeled Client ID, set the operator to is, and pick the project's ID in the right-most dropdown.
4. Check that the columns you need are visible: Item number, Room, Description, Vendor, Quantity, Purchase Cost or Unit Cost, Selling Price, and Sales Code. If a column is missing, clone the report and add the field with the custom report builder (Essentials and up).
5. Click Export. The Excel file downloads.

Then run 2010 04 PW by Room with Image for the same project and export it as a PDF. Studio Designer has no bulk image download and no product-link field on items (Studio Capture saves the image and the text from a vendor page, not the URL), so this PDF is how the photos travel.

If you want every project in one pass, run the worksheet without the Client ID filter; the Client column tells MONA which project each line belongs to, but you will need to split the file per project before importing.

Proposals, invoices, and purchase orders

For the raw data, go to Reports, then Forms, find the form, and click the pencil icon next to it. Go to Generate, select the document number, and click Export. Studio Designer notes this is unformatted data. In Classic, go to Reports and search for the form instead. For the client-facing version, print each document to PDF from the project.

Financial reports

Studio Designer's own pre-cancellation checklist lists these. Export each from Reports, filtered by year, as Excel and as PDF:

• General Ledger
• Balance Sheet
• Income Statement
• Reconciliation reports (Outstanding and Reconciled)
• Sales Tax by GL Account and by Location
• Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable
• Client Deposits and Vendor Deposits, if you hold client funds

Time billing

If you bill time, export 02 Time Sheet by Employee by Activity and 01 Activities.

My Products catalog

Studio Designer does not document an export for the My Products catalog. Ask help@studiodesigner.com for a spreadsheet of it, or rebuild the pieces you reuse in MONA's Products library from their vendor links, which takes a few seconds per product with the MONA Clipper.

Step 2: Prepare the spreadsheets

Two small edits save you a mapping pass in MONA.

The address file. Open 01 Addresses.xlsx and save it as a CSV. Rename the Address Type column to Type and change its values to client, vendor, or contractor. Manufacturer and Showroom rows are vendors. Ship-to rows are usually the client's site; either delete them or mark them client. MONA skips any row whose type it does not recognize and tells you which ones.

Each project worksheet. MONA reads column headers by name, and Studio Designer uses a few that mean something else in MONA. Rename these before importing:

• Purchase Cost or Unit Cost to Cost Price (what you pay).
• Selling Price to Unit Price (what the client pays). Left as is, both columns read as the client price.
• Sales Code to Category. Left as is, MONA reads it as the item code.
• Long Description to Notes, so it does not compete with Description.
• Delete the Client/Project column and any subtotal rows. Report title rows above the header are fine; MONA skips them.

If you kept vendor links in a notes field, add a column named Product Link and paste them there. MONA fetches a photo for every line that has one.

Step 3: Import clients, vendors, and contacts

Go to Clients and click Import CSV. Choose the address CSV. MONA shows every column so you can decide where each one goes (name, email, phone, company, address, type, notes, and more) before anything is saved. Rows with a matching email update the existing contact instead of creating a duplicate, so it is safe to run again with a corrected file. Up to 2,000 rows per file.

Then import the 01 Contacts file the same way. If a person's company column matches a client or vendor you just imported, MONA links them.

Step 4: Create the project and import the worksheet

Go to Projects and click New Project. Use the same name as in Studio Designer so your files line up.

Open the project, click the Schedule tab, open a chat with MONA, drag in the worksheet, and say:

Import this spreadsheet into the schedule for this project.

MONA reads the header row, matches item number, room, description, vendor, quantity, cost price, unit price, category, and notes to the schedule's columns, and shows you the mapping before it writes anything. Columns without a home are kept in each line's notes, so nothing from Studio Designer is lost.

A few things to know:

• Files up to 15 MB and 1,000 lines import in one go, .xlsx or .csv.
• Photos are fetched from product links for the first 60 lines of each import. Lines without a link import without a photo; the PW by Room with Image PDF keeps the picture, and you can hand MONA the vendor page later and ask it to attach the photo.
• Imported lines are schedule lines for that project. To save a piece in your reusable Products library too, open it from its link (Products, then Add product, then From URL) or tell MONA "save this."

Step 5: Upload documents and photos to the project

Open the project's Files tab and drag in the PW by Room with Image PDF, proposals, invoices, purchase orders, spec sheets, and anything else from that job. MONA files each by type and can read the PDFs in chat, so you can ask it to pull a price, a spec, or a client note out of any of them. Company-wide files, including the financial reports, go to the Library.

Step 6: Start Books from a cutover date

MONA Books has no opening-balance or transaction-history import, and Studio Designer's accounting does not map cleanly onto another ledger. Pick a cutover date, keep the exported financial reports in your Library for everything before it, and create invoices, purchase orders, and bank reconciliations in MONA from that date on. The QuickBooks switch guide walks through the cutover model, and Reconcile a bank account covers the first reconciliation in MONA.

If you are on Studio Designer Starter powered by Mydoma

The Mydoma side exports differently, and its product records carry a Product URL, which makes the MONA import better.

• Products and Services. Open the project, click Products and Services, pick the view you want to export, switch it from Card to Table view, make every field you need visible (include Product URL, Vendor, Price, and Quantity), and export it as a CSV or PDF. Views you saved as FF&E schedules export the same way. The CSV imports straight into a MONA schedule, and MONA fetches photos from the Product URL column.
• Files and Media. Open each folder and click a file to download it. Files come down one at a time.
• Tear sheets and spec sheets. On a product in your catalog click the three dots and choose Tear sheet PDF. For a whole view, select Export to PDF from the Products and Services list.
• Clients. Mydoma does not document a client export. Copy names and emails into a sheet, or ask Mydoma support for one, then import it under Clients, then Import CSV.

What does not carry over as-is

Studio Designer item photos without a vendor link stay in the PDF worksheet rather than on the schedule line. Proposals, invoices, purchase orders, and the general ledger come over as files for reference, not as live records. Item history, which Studio Designer cannot export at all, stays there. Custom report and form templates are Word files built for Studio Designer's merge fields and do not apply in MONA; recreate the ones you need as MONA templates in the Library.

Want a hand?

Every plan includes a setup session. Book 30 minutes at calendly.com/mona-justin/30min and we will move your first project over together on a Google Meet. Coming from another tool? See the guides for Houzz Pro, DesignFiles, and QuickBooks.

Frequently asked questions

Can I import my Studio Designer data into MONA? Yes. Studio Designer exports addresses and contacts as Excel through the 01 Addresses and 01 Contacts reports, each project's items through the Project Worksheet reports, and documents and financial reports as Excel or PDF. MONA imports the address files into Clients, the worksheets into project schedules, and the PDFs into your Library. There is no one-click Studio Designer importer, so plan about ten minutes per project.

How do I export my projects from Studio Designer? One project at a time, through Reports. Search for Project Worksheet, open 01 Project Worksheet or 2010 01 Project Worksheet Detail by Room, set the Client ID filter to the project, and click Export for an Excel file. Run 2010 04 PW by Room with Image and export it as a PDF to keep the photos.

How do I export my clients and vendors from Studio Designer? Go to Reports, type Address in the search field, select the 01 Addresses report, and click Export. The file 01 Addresses.xlsx holds every address record with its Address Type. Run 01 Contacts the same way for the individual people attached to those records.

Will my product photos come over from Studio Designer? Not automatically. Studio Designer items store photos but no product link, and there is no bulk image download. Export the 2010 04 PW by Room with Image report as a PDF so the photos stay with the project, and put any vendor links you kept in notes into a Product Link column; MONA fetches a photo for every line that has a link, up to 60 lines per import.

Do I need to convert the Studio Designer Excel file to CSV? Not for schedules. MONA imports .xlsx and .csv files directly into a project schedule, up to 15 MB and 1,000 rows each, and skips the report title rows above the header. For Clients, save the address export as a CSV first; the Clients import accepts .csv and .vcf files.

What happens to my proposals, invoices, and purchase orders? They come over as PDFs or raw Excel data for reference, filed in your Library and readable by the MONA agent. They are not live records. Create new proposals, invoices, and purchase orders in MONA from the imported schedule when you next need to bill or order.

Can I move my accounting history into MONA Books? No. MONA Books has no opening-balance or transaction-history import. Export the General Ledger, Balance Sheet, Income Statement, and Reconciliation reports from Studio Designer, keep them in your Library, and start Books from a cutover date. Your accountant works from the exported reports for earlier periods.

How long do I have before Studio Designer deletes my data? Export before you cancel. Studio Designer's own guidance says that once cancellation is finalized it cannot retrieve your data, and its terms only promise commercially reasonable efforts to make data available for 90 days after termination. Cancellation goes through help@studiodesigner.com, and a cancelled account can be reinstated within six months.

I am on Studio Designer Starter powered by Mydoma. Is the export different? Yes. In Mydoma open the project, go to Products and Services, choose a view, switch it to Table view, make the fields you need visible, and export it as a CSV or PDF. Files download one at a time from the Files and Media tab. Mydoma product records include a Product URL, so MONA can fetch photos from that column when you import the CSV.