Piece tracking set up
Before piece tracking is available, studios need to determine and set up their studio firing fees. Click on Studio > Firing Fees. In this area you can manage general Firing Fees settings and click Save Firing Settings. You can also Create New Firing Price. You can charge firing fees by volume or weight of the pottery piece. Lastly, this area allows you to Run Firing Fees Manually.
Firing Fees
We do not bill for firing fees as soon as a piece is added to Kiln Fire, the problem is that most firing fees are cheap, a few dollars maybe. If you get charged a transaction fee of 30+ cents for each one of these, that can add up quickly, especially for small pieces.
Instead, we allow you to set a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly schedule, where the system will wait until midnight on the day of your choosing, and automatically collect all unbilled work for each user. It creates an invoices for each user and using their saved credit card automatically charges each person. It will send emailed receipts to them, and send emailed notices if a credit card fails to be charged, with this email, they are directed to log into Kiln Fire and pay for their firing fees manually. You as a studio manager will receive a summary email with details about this billing process and how it went.
Creating a piece
In Kiln Fire a User will click on My Pieces > New Piece. They will name the piece, take a photo of it, and input the dimensions the studio requires. They also have the ability to add additional pieces at the same time (identical pieces and different pieces).
As a studio owner, when you click Pieces > Manage Pieces you will see pieces submitted by your users.
Firing pieces
A studio can now go to Kiln Firings > Types. You will create the different categories and timing of Kiln Firings your studio completes. Then click on Kiln Firings > Start New Firing. You can click on Add Pieces and manually add what pieces are going into the kiln. At this point, you also have the option to use Kiln Fire’s Firing Ticket Package. Once all pieces are added to the load, click on Start Kiln Firing. In the timing you selected in your Firing Fees users will be charged for the firing fees they have accumulated.
Firing ticket package
The studios with this additional hardware will set up a receipt printer and scanner. When users create pieces, a receipt is printed. When a piece goes into the kiln, the person loading the kiln clicks on Kiln Firings > Start New Firing. As they scan the piece receipts, those pieces are added to the kiln load.
Unloading the kiln
When the kiln load is fired, you will click on Kiln Firings > Unload. All the users with pieces in that kiln load will now be notified that their pieces are ready for pickup. To customize the message with instructions for your studio click on Studio > App Messages > Kiln Firing Piece Ready Email Message.
User perks for firing fees
As a studio you also have the ability to assign free firing for specific users (students, employees, etc.). You can assign a free number of pieces or up to a specific weight or volume. You can find these settings in Studio > User Perks.