Windows · v0.1

A PDF editor for finance work.

Redact bank statements. Sign engagement letters. Generate trustee resolutions, gift letters and intra-family loan agreements — branded, on your own machine, no Adobe required.

Free with any Aethelgard licence — £99/year standalone.

Adobe charges by the month for things you do once a quarter.

Most accountants and family-office principals don't need a full Acrobat subscription. They need to redact a sort code, place a signature, generate a tidy gift letter for HMRC, and move on. PDF Studio is built for that: small, fast, branded, and gone in three clicks.

Real PDF editing — not just viewing.

True redaction

Drag a rectangle and the page is rasterised — text, metadata and search are all gone. Not just a black box on top.

Sign by hand or upload

Draw with a trackpad, or upload a transparent PNG of your signature. Click anywhere on a page to place it.

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HNW templates

Six built-in templates designed for wealth work — letters, trustee resolutions, board minutes, gifts, loans and ISA/SIPP transfers.

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Multi-entity branding

Keep separate brand profiles for each company, trust or holding entity. Apply letterhead, watermarks and footers in one click.

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Form filling that flattens

Fill AcroForm fields — bank, mortgage, ID forms — then flatten so the recipient sees fixed text, not editable inputs.

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Local-first, private

Files never leave your machine. No cloud account, no telemetry, no upload — same privacy model as the main Aethelgard ledger.

The documents wealth professionals actually need.

Each template is a structured form — fill in the values, hit Generate, get a fully branded PDF that opens in the editor for sign-off.

Letters & memos

Letter / memo

Branded correspondence with sender block, dated subject line, and signature.

Trusts & gifts

Gift letter (Declaration of Gift)

Formal gift declaration suitable for HMRC, mortgage providers and lawyers.

Trusts & gifts

Trustee resolution

Written resolution capturing trustees, recital, operative wording and signatures.

Trusts & gifts

Loan agreement (intra-family)

Short-form loan agreement — principal, interest, repayment, governing law.

Companies

Board minutes

Minutes of a directors' meeting — present, apologies, business, chair sign-off.

Transfers

ISA / SIPP transfer request

Authorisation letter to a current provider — wrapper type, in-specie / cash, special instructions.

Plus your own — define custom templates with placeholders, save them locally, generate from the gallery alongside built-ins.

Free if you already use Aethelgard. £99/year if you don't.

Already have Aethelgard?
Free

Any Aethelgard licence — Personal, Sovereign or Corporate — entitles you to PDF Studio at no extra cost.

  • All features and templates
  • Activates with your existing AETHG-… key
  • Same privacy model — local-first, no cloud
Download for Windows
Standalone
£99 /year

For people who only want the PDF tool. Annual subscription, billed once a year.

  • Full editor + all six HNW templates
  • Custom templates with placeholder fields
  • Single user, single machine
  • ·No lifetime tier — annual only

Questions we get

How is "free with Aethelgard" enforced? +

When you launch PDF Studio for the first time, paste your Aethelgard licence key (the one that starts with AETHG-). The app validates it offline against the same shared secret that signs Aethelgard keys — no network call, no account required. Standalone subscribers get a different key starting with PDFST- after purchase.

Why does PDF Studio not have a lifetime tier? +

Standalone PDF Studio is annual only by design. If you'd rather make a single payment, get an Aethelgard Lifetime licence instead — that includes PDF Studio for free, forever, plus the full wealth ledger.

Does it open the same PDFs Adobe does? +

Yes. PDF Studio uses the same engine (pdf-lib + pdf.js) that powers most modern PDF tooling. Anything you'd open in Adobe Acrobat will open here. Encrypted/password-protected PDFs need to be unlocked first — same as elsewhere.

What about Mac? +

Windows-only at launch, matching Aethelgard's current platform support. Mac is on the roadmap once both products' Mac builds are ready — drop your email above to be notified.

Where do my files go? +

Wherever you save them. PDF Studio is a local desktop app — no cloud, no telemetry, no automatic uploads. The only thing it writes to disk by default is your activated licence key in %APPDATA%\Aethelgard PDF Studio\ and your custom brand profiles in browser-style local storage.