Setting Up Your Studio | Help Center

When you first sign in to Trio as a studio owner, a setup wizard on the onboarding page walks you through the first setup. The page greets you with "Welcome to your studio!" and takes about five minutes.

Only the owner gets this wizard. Until you finish it, your teacher pages send you back to it. Team members you invite do a shorter personal setup instead; see Team Management.

The Onboarding Wizard

A progress bar shows where you are, with "Step X of Y" and the step name. The steps are:

Studio Profile
Weekly Availability
Add First Student
Getting Paid

If your account has no verified phone number, a Phone Setup step comes first and the other steps move down by one.

Phone Setup

Enter your Phone number, tick the SMS consent box, and click Send code. Enter the 6-digit code and click Verify & continue. With a phone on file, Trio can send you text alerts. Click Skip to go on without one.

Studio Profile

Enter your First name and Last name, your Studio Name, and the instruments you teach in the Instruments Taught list. All four are required. Then select a Timezone (Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific, Alaska, or Hawaii). Set your time zone before you schedule anything, because Trio uses it for every lesson time.

Weekly Availability

Add the times on each day of the week when you teach. Parents see these times when they book, and Trio uses them to warn you about double-booking. Click Set up later to skip this step. You can change your hours at any time on Availability.

Add First Student

Enter the Student First Name and Student Last Name, and choose an Instrument if you like. Then enter the parent's first name, last name and email in Parent First Name, Parent Last Name, and Parent Email. Trio creates a family named after the student's last name (for example, "Garcia Family") and invites the parent to the parent portal.

If the parent's email already belongs to a family in your studio, Trio shows "This email already belongs to a family in your studio." Use a different email, or click Skip for now and add the student later from Students with the Add Student wizard.

When the student is saved, the step shows "Saved. You can edit the details or keep going." and a line such as "✓ Maya Garcia added" with an Edit button.

Getting Paid

The last step helps you start to collect tuition. What you see depends on your plan:

On the Free plan, Trio shows what Trio Pro adds: online card and bank (ACH) payments, autopay, automatic late fees, unlimited students, and staff invites, for $5 per month or $50 per year. Choose Upgrade & set up payments to move to Pro and set up payments, or Continue on Free - you can upgrade anytime to finish now.
On a paid plan, choose Set up payments to connect your Stripe account, where you confirm some business details and link the bank account for payouts. Choose Do this later to finish without it.

You set lesson rates and cancellation policies later in Billing.

Skipping and Coming Back

Weekly Availability and Add First Student each have Set up later or Skip for now, and Getting Paid lets you finish without payments. Trio saves each step when you finish it. When you come back, the wizard opens at the first step that has no saved data. If you skipped Phone Setup, it comes back each time until you add a phone.

After Setup

When you finish, Trio opens your dashboard. Its Get set up card lists the setup tasks that are left; see Your Dashboard. You can also fill in the gaps here:

Owner Settings - studio details, branding, time zone, payments, and subscription
Studio Settings - instruments, skill levels, locations, rooms, and lesson defaults
Billing - lesson rates, cancellation policies, and makeup rules
Availability - your full weekly hours and one-off date changes
Students - add more students at any time