This article provides an overview of the Studio Designer "default hierarchy" system. This will help you understand how your account defaults are applied throughout your Studio Designer account.
Studio Designer Default Hierarchy
- My Company
- Address
- Sales Code
- Editing the Item
Explanation: My Company gets overwritten by Addresses, which gets overwritten by Sales Code which then gets overwritten by editing the item directly. Below is an explanation of each step in the hierarchy and why it gets overwritten by its subsequent step.
My Company
By navigating to Settings and clicking on My Company and then selecting Codes, you are setting up what is to be considered “Company Policy”. These are overarching rules and default values that apply to the majority of your customers. You can set defaults like Tax Locations, Designers and Mark Up percentages here. Keep in mind that while these are very important for company policy, they get overwritten by every other step in this process.
Figure 1. My Company’s Codes tab.
The reason that “My Company” is the easiest to overwrite is that we find that most design studios have general “rules” that their companies operate under like a standard Mark Up percentage per customer and that these only change under some very rare circumstances. That is why My Company sits at the top of our hierarchy.
Addresses
One step below My Company is the Address. Each Address listing is filled in by the My Company properties but can be overwritten. These properties are similar to the My Company properties (e.g. Mark Up, Tax Location, Designer, etc…). These are one step down from the My Company properties in case you happen to have a client that is charged at a different rate than your “company policies”. We also found that many designers tend to have different billing options on a per-customer basis. That is why this overwrites the My Company Properties. 
Figure 2. A sample of an Address’ Codes Tab
These are the most frequently referenced properties when entering information for an Item.
One step below the Address default values are the Sales Code default values. We found that some designers will have different rates depending on product type (e.g. Fabric, Furniture, Design Work, etc…). For that reason, you are able to overwrite the properties set at the My Company and the Address level with Sales Code properties. These can be found by going to Settings > Sales Codes.
Figure 3. Sample Sales Code Properties Listing
The properties in for each Sales Code are similar to the My Company and Address properties (e.g. Mark Up, Tax Location, etc…) but the Sales Code has “final say” when it comes to these default values. If you do not wish Sales Code to overwrite what you’ve set in My Company and Addresses but need to add a Sales Code to your Item, simply leave each value blank. The image above is an example of a Sales Code with no default properties entered. In this case, the Item will defer to either the Address or My Company properties for its default values.
The last step in the process is editing the Item directly. While Studio Designer will auto-fill properties in an attempt to expedite the Item creation process, you are always able to directly edit and change any property on an Item in Studio Designer.
Figure 4. A Sample Item Edit Screen
Note: Note that some of the properties may be on the Codes tab of the item as well (like Designer and Sales Tax). So you may need to look there to edit these properties on a per-item basis.
Summary
Studio Designer has a lot of flexibility when it comes to creating and setting default values to expedite Item creation. Knowing the hierarchy of these default values and when to set these properties will help to ensure that you are working as effectively as possible. It is also great troubleshooting for when it appears as though Studio Designer’s defaults are not functioning correctly.