First-Run Activation
How OneTake tracks the three setup essentials — completed automatically from real data for most studios, or through a setup wizard for the invite-only Founding Studio cohort.
Every OneTake account has three setup essentials to complete. What happens next depends on which of two cohorts your account belongs to:
- Self-serve — the default. Everyone who signs up and sets up their own studio. You land on your dashboard right away, and the three essentials are completed automatically as you use OneTake — no wizard involved.
- Founding Studio — a separate, invite-only cohort onboarded directly by the OneTake team. These accounts are routed through a three-step setup wizard until the essentials are done.
This page covers the underlying activation state model — how OneTake tracks what's done, and how it decides which path an account takes. The wizard itself is documented at First-Run Setup Wizard.
The three essentials
Both cohorts track the same three essentials, in the same order:
| Step | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Studio identity | Your studio's name and profile details. |
| First gear | Adding at least one piece of equipment. |
| Insurance branch | Answering whether you insure your gear. |
You only need to complete each step once. Once a step is marked complete, it stays complete — archiving or deleting gear later does not reopen it.
How each cohort completes the essentials
Self-serve accounts
A self-serve account never sees the setup wizard. Instead, each essential is read straight from your real data:
| Step | Counted complete when |
|---|---|
| Studio identity | Your account owns a studio. Every account gets one automatically at sign-up, so this is satisfied immediately — whether or not you've renamed it. |
| First gear | You have at least one piece of equipment in a studio you own. |
| Insurance branch | You have at least one active (non-archived) insurance policy recorded in a studio you own. |
Because these are derived rather than filled in by hand, a self-serve account completes all three essentials just by using OneTake normally — adding gear and recording a policy. If you never insure your gear, the insurance-branch essential simply stays open indefinitely. Nothing forces it, and you're never shown a wizard to close it.
Founding Studio accounts
A Founding Studio account completes Studio identity and Insurance branch by stepping through the matching screen in the setup wizard — owning a studio on its own isn't enough, since every account owns one from sign-up regardless of cohort. First gear uses the same real-data check as self-serve accounts: having gear already satisfies it, whether or not it was added from inside the wizard.
The gear check — for either cohort — only counts equipment in studios you own, not studios you've been invited to as a member. The same ownership scoping applies to the insurance-branch policy check for self-serve accounts: a policy that exists on a studio you're a member of but don't own doesn't count toward your own activation.
This matters if you import gear via CSV before your essentials are otherwise complete. The importer adds equipment rows but doesn't touch any milestone timestamp directly — the real-data check is what credits it, so you're never asked to "add your first piece" when you already have 200 items imported.
How activation is determined
OneTake never stores an activation_mode flag. Instead, it derives your
activation state fresh each time from your progress record and real data about
your studio. This means the state is always accurate — a st