A studio that stopped billing from inboxes.
A forty-person studio needed client workspaces, entitlements, and invoices that matched how productions actually run — not how SaaS billing assumes they run.
Aperture's work was project-shaped and their software was subscription-shaped.
Aperture's work was project-shaped and their software was subscription-shaped. Producers negotiated scopes in decks, then finance rebuilt those scopes as line items in a tool that could not represent a change order. Clients asked for a portal. What they got was a folder and a PDF. The studio was losing margin in the gap between the conversation and the invoice.
Problem, approach, and what shipped.
A case study is a named week with a handover — not a mood board. The record below is what the operator still runs.
- 01
The problem
Aperture's work was project-shaped and their software was subscription-shaped. Producers negotiated scopes in decks, then finance rebuilt those scopes as line items in a tool that could not represent a change order. Clients asked for a portal. What they got was a folder and a PDF. The studio was losing margin in the gap between the conversation and the invoice.
- 02
The approach
We started from the change order, not the homepage. Meridian had to represent a living engagement: original scope, approved extras, who can see what, and when an invoice is allowed to exist. The client workspace was designed as a reading room for decisions, not a social feed. Producers remained the authors. Clients remained reviewers. Finance became a closer, not a translator.
- 03
The build
Meridian launched in beta inside Aperture with three active productions. We built workspaces, entitlement rules per role, and a billing surface that can emit an invoice only from an approved state. The marketing site stayed where it was. The product lived behind a login the producers already understood. Integrations were limited on purpose: one accounting export, one file store, no CRM rewrite.
Outcomes the team can still point at.
- 01
Change orders stopped living as email threads with attachments.
- 02
Clients could see approved scope without asking a producer for a recap.
- 03
Finance issued invoices from the same object producers had already signed off.
Numbers from the operating week.
- Invoice cycle time
- −38%
- Unbilled approved extras
- Near zero
- Productions on Meridian
- 11 in six months
Role
Product framing, information architecture, and the beta build.
Stack
The product this engagement shaped.
Other operator records.
Have a similar operating problem?
Tell us what the team still runs at 2am. We will say whether it is a product, a build, or a no.