Understanding Workspaces
Summary
A workspace is the top-level container in Jewlerist. It represents one business or studio, and everything you create — assets, contacts, orders, costs, payments, tasks, and team members — belongs to a workspace. Data never crosses workspace boundaries.
Who this is for
This article is for any user who wants to understand what a workspace contains, how it is configured, and when to use more than one.
What a workspace contains
When you create a workspace, you establish an independent environment with its own:
- Inventory: All assets (stones, metal lots, jewelry pieces, parcels, and components) and their event histories.
- Contacts: Customers, vendors, and labs.
- Orders: Commercial work, including order lines, costs, and payments.
- Tasks: Assignments and deadlines.
- Team members: The people who work in the workspace, each with a role and set of permissions.
- Configuration: Base currency, locations, cost categories, tax profiles, invoicing settings, and other workspace-level preferences.
- Catalogues: Shared options for stone attributes, metal attributes, jewelry piece attributes, component attributes, and stone dimensions.
Nothing in one workspace is visible from another. If you work with two separate businesses, each needs its own workspace.
Creating a workspace
When you sign up for Jewlerist, you create your first workspace. You will be asked for:
- Workspace name: The name of your studio or business (2–100 characters).
- Handle: A short identifier used in URLs (3–32 characters, lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens). For example,
almasio-studio. - Base currency: The currency you primarily operate in. This defaults to USD but can be changed later.
You can create additional workspaces at any time from the Switch workspace option in the user menu at the bottom of the sidebar.
Switching between workspaces
If you belong to more than one workspace, you can switch between them from the user menu. Click your name or avatar at the bottom of the sidebar, then select Switch workspace. You will see a list of workspaces you belong to, plus any pending invitations.
Switching workspaces changes the data you see. Each workspace has its own sidebar, its own inventory, and its own team.
Base currency
Every workspace has a base currency. This is the currency used for internal reporting and for converting foreign-currency transactions.
When you record a cost, payment, or order line in a currency different from the base currency, Jewlerist stores the exchange rate used and the equivalent amount in the base currency. Historical records keep their original currency and rate, so changing the base currency later does not alter past entries.
To change the base currency, go to Configuration in the sidebar and update the currency setting. Existing records are not converted.
Workspace settings
The Configuration page (in the Workspace section of the sidebar) contains workspace-level settings. Key settings include:
- Base currency — The primary operating currency.
- Require asset location — When enabled, every asset must have a location before it can be created. This is off by default.
- Invoicing — Configure your jurisdiction and tax settings for issuing invoices.
- Catalogs — Manage locations, stone/metal/jewelry/component attributes, expense categories, and order request fields.
Workspace access and plans
A workspace operates under a subscription plan that determines which features are available and whether the workspace is writable or read-only. The workspace owner manages billing from the Plan & Billing option in the user menu.
If a workspace loses its active subscription or beta access, it may become read-only. Existing data is preserved, but no new records can be created until the plan is restored.
When to use multiple workspaces
Most jewellery studios need only one workspace. Consider creating a second workspace when:
- You operate two distinct businesses with separate inventory, contacts, and financial records.
- You want to keep personal work completely separate from a commercial studio.
Do not create multiple workspaces to organise different categories of inventory within the same business. Use locations, tags, and asset types instead.