Commissions are one of the steadiest ways to build income from your practice, and they go smoothly when your client knows exactly what to expect at every stage. Artwork Archive gives you one place to capture the inquiry, present the concept, share progress, document changes, and collect payment. Everything connects back to a single Piece record, so you are never digging through an email thread to find out what you agreed to in March.

This guide follows a commission from first inquiry through delivery.

A commission moves through five stages, and a different feature carries each one.

A few features run underneath all five. Schedule keeps your check-ins and follow-ups from slipping, and Tags and Collections let you see every active commission in one filtered view.

Create a Contact record as soon as a commission inquiry arrives, before you decide whether to take it. This means the opportunity is captured while you think it over, rather than sitting in an inbox you are avoiding.

Navigate to Contacts and click + New Contact. Beyond name and email, capture:

Set up a Piece record once you decide to pursue the commission. This is the project file for everything that follows, and you cannot create a Proposal without an existing Piece record.

You can create a new Piece record by navigating to Artwork > Pieces > + New Piece.

A naming convention that stays readable as your inventory grows:

Then apply your tags. At minimum, add a tag you use on every commission, such as Active Commission, since that is what makes the filtered view in Step 8 work.

No image yet? Add a sketch or a client reference photo as a placeholder and swap it out as the work develops. Each Piece record holds up to 30 images, so you can hold onto the reference images and sketches, the halfway point, and the finished work all in one place.
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A Proposal turns a verbal agreement into something your client can review, approve, and refer back to. It presents your work at gallery quality instead of as attachments in an email, and it protects you by putting an expiration date on your pricing.

When you are ready, use Share Proposal to send it to your Contact, or Copy URL to send the link externally. When you share directly with a Contact, the sharing record saves to their Contact record automatically.

As the conversation develops, update the Status: Negotiating while you are working out details, Invoiced once the client accepts, and Paid when the balance clears. Schedule a reminder if you are waiting on a response.

While you are waiting to hear back, open the Proposal and select Add Reminder. Set one for three days after you sent it, and one for the day before the "Valid Until" date expires. That way a quiet inbox does not turn into a lost commission.

Acceptance is the moment several things need to happen at once.

Open the Proposal and select Generate Invoice. Artwork Archive does a lot of the work for you here: every Piece on the Proposal is automatically marked as sold, a sales record is created for each one, and those pieces are added to the new invoice. Your Proposal status updates to Invoiced.
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The buyer's Contact record from Step 1 carries through as well, so their details, the shared Proposal, and every invoice all sit together in one place.

Most commissions start with a deposit, so the invoice you just generated usually needs to be set up for partial payment before you send it.

Whether the client pays online or by check, cash, or another method, record it in the invoice's Payment History so your totals stay accurate. You will come back to this invoice in Step 7 to collect the balance.
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Add framing as a separate line item (if any), or as a separate invoice if you would rather keep it off this one. Shipping can be entered in the Shipping field when creating or editing the invoice.

Everything then lives together: contact details, shipping information, shared Proposals and Private Rooms, and every invoice.

Set every reminder for the commission now, while the timeline is fresh. Ten minutes here prevents the "I meant to check in three weeks ago" scramble later.

Navigate to the Proposal and select Add Reminder. Set reminders for:

Any reminders set within the Proposal are automatically added to your Schedule, so they show up alongside the rest of your deadlines without you entering them twice.

Emailing progress photos gets messy fast. Files are too large, images get buried in a long thread, and it rarely looks as professional as the work deserves. A Private Room gives your client one link they open in any browser, with no login or account needed on their end.

Private Rooms are useful at two points in a commission.

Build a Private Room of past works in a similar style, scale, or palette so the client can see what they are commissioning. Pair it with your Proposal.

Create one room per commission and update it as you go, rather than building a new room at every milestone. The client keeps the same link the whole way through.

Publishing does not make the room public. Only people with the link can open it.

If the commission involves confidential pricing or a client who values discretion, add a Passphrase under Privacy Settings. Use something you have not used for another room, and send it separately from the link.

Upload progress images to the Piece record at consistent points so the room always has something new to show:

The difference between a stressful revision round and a smooth one is written record. After every feedback conversation, log it in the Piece record notes while it is still fresh.

You can include:

Then upload the revised images to the Piece record, update the Private Room, and note the client's approval when it comes in.

If a request falls outside what you agreed to, your notes give you a clear reference point for the conversation. Something like: "Happy to make that change. Since we have completed the two revision rounds included, this would be additional work at [rate]. Want me to send an updated invoice?"

Update the Piece record with final high-resolution images, then return to the invoice you created in Step 4. Add any remaining line items, and re-share the invoice with your client to collect the balance. Move the Proposal status to Paid.
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Then spend two minutes on cleanup, which is what makes your commission records useful a year from now:

The finished record now holds the full arc of the commission: the sketches, the progress images, the agreed scope, and the payment record. That is exactly what you want on hand the next time this client comes back, or the next time someone asks what your commission process looks like.

Once you have more than two commissions running, you need a single view of all of them. This is what the tagging in Step 2 was for.

In one screen you can see every active commission, its status, its price, and the client attached to it.