Quickstart - What Is PencilCase

Quickstart - Who is it for?

Quickstart - The Pencil System

Quickstart - Scheduling in PencilCase

Quickstart - Challenges and pencil order

Quickstart - How blocks appear to studios and freelancers

Quickstart - Freelancer Quick Start

Quickstart - Freelancer Scheduling Calendar

Quickstart - Studio Quick Start

Quickstart - Studio Booking Dashboard

Quickstart - Booking Etiquette & Best Practice

Groups & Timeline Filters

Groups help studios organise freelancers into custom lists such as departments, skillsets or favourite collaborators.

Groups are available to all studios, with a limit of two groups on the free tier.

🧱 Creating a group

To create a group, a studio:

  1. Goes to Dashboard → My Connections.
  2. Selects one or more freelancers from their connections list.
  3. Clicks Create Group.
  4. Enters a group name, for example “CG artists” or “Senior comp”.
  5. Saves the group.

The new group appears under the My Groups tab.

✏️ Editing a group

From My Groups, studios can:

  • Rename an existing group.
  • Add more freelancers from their connections.
  • Remove freelancers who no longer belong in that list.
  • Delete a group completely if they no longer need it.

Editing a group does not affect the underlying connections, it only changes how the studio organises their view.

🎛️ Filtering the calendar by group

Once a group exists, it can be used as a filter on the studio calendar:

  • A filter above the calendar lets the studio choose a group.
  • When a group is selected, only freelancers in that group are shown in the timeline.
  • All booking behaviour stays the same, the view is simply narrowed to the chosen subset of freelancers.

This makes it easy to answer questions such as:

  • “Which CG artists are available next month?”
  • “Which of our regular compositors are free for this project window?”

By combining groups with the studio booking dashboard, PencilCase turns what is usually a messy spreadsheet exercise into a clear, visual timeline that reflects real-world availability.