PWE Studio

Let us be clear about the relationship

Let's Paint Studio was founded by, and is taught by, Janet Meng, our lead creative — it is not a third-party client, it is our own studio. So PWE Studio's first user was us: taking our own enrolments, deducting our own class credits, balancing our own books. We put this first rather than at the end of a case note, because it is at once the strongest evidence for the system and the easiest thing to be accused of hiding. A team whose slogan is "create trust through clarity" should not make you find it out yourself.

Why write our own

Systems for art, music and dance studios are either too heavy to use or split across three vendors — enrolment here, ledger there, website elsewhere. We built one system and ran a full season in our own classroom before handing it to anyone: we are our own first customer.

What the system took off people's hands

• Check-in deducts the class. The lesson and the credits it used are written in one record; if the balance is short, the check-in is refused.
• Every change to a balance leaves a ledger line. Who, when, what kind of change and what was left afterwards. When there is a question, it can be traced line by line.
• Enrolments from the website go straight in. The form a parent fills in arrives as a record; once approved, the student's file is built from it, with nothing typed twice.
• Students low on credits, or missing lessons in a row, are flagged. They show in the back-office list and reports; holidays and cancelled classes do not count as missed.
• Each family has its own calendar feed. When the timetable changes, the subscribed phone calendar follows.

Permissions enforced in the backend

Owner, manager, teacher, front desk, staff — five levels. The front desk can take payment but cannot refund; the system refuses, not the interface. The social pressure moves from the employee to the software.

Minor-safety as an engineering constraint

As of August 2026 every release runs 201 tenant-isolation tests and ships only all-green. Publishing a child's work requires guardian consent, kept as an append-only event chain; share links expire by force.

Disclosure: Let's Paint Studio — this system's production proving ground — was founded by, and is taught by, Janet Meng, our lead creative. Not an arm's-length client.