My Music Staff Erfahrungen

Couldn't run my music school without it

Vorteile:

It is extremely simple and easy to use. I only use the Students, Family and Calendar portions of it, and it serves well beyond what I need it for. So easy to view schedule and filter and organize it based on location, teacher, student, etc. i LOVE , as do the parents, the 24-hour in advance automatic reminders auto-texted or e-mailed (your choice).

Nachteile:

Besides a couple of very minor workflow impedances, it would be nice to integrate the calendar with an existing website, rather than only having the option to do so with the current website.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Jackrabbit Music

Warum My Music Staff gewählt wurde: Google Sheets became too cumbersome as our school grow, and I wanted something that the families/students could also access directly

Zuvor genutzte Software: Google Sheets

Gründe für den Wechsel zu My Music Staff: Jackrabbit just didn't seem to fit as well as MyMusicStaff

My Music Staff is like having a staff!

Kommentare: It's a good studio management tool. My parents don't take advantage of the features that are available to then, but, that's okay. Mine is a small studio.

Vorteile:

The schedule is easy to set up and manage. Tracking attendance and sending lesson notes is straightforward and easy. Communicating with families is also easy. Invoicing is straightforward, but doesn't allow me to set up a percentage per student for the ach fees I have to charge for those students whose lessons are paid for under a state education program.

Nachteile:

Bank fees for those students who pay online are easy. Other fees, especially those that are percentages of the invoice are not accommodated, subsequently, I literally have to manual create invoices for 85% of my students every month.

Must Have

Kommentare: Great experience. Highly recommend it pretty much has everything you need for your music stuido

Vorteile:

Lots of videos and info provided. If you get stuck, staff ready and available to help!

Nachteile:

I wish they were open until 5pm. Sometimes need help after 430. Or he expense summary could be more detailed and selective as far as what expenses. It would be nice to see the breakup of individual expenses instead of overall on the graph. The graph is nice but sometimes I wish I could see isolated expenses

On the surface it seems ok, but in the details they’re terrible

Kommentare: My music staff has been ok for us overall. There is a complete lack of data transparency. I’m most upset about their financial approach to the ledger. Support has been nearly useless. Blaming us for their software issues multiple times. My day job is software and systems design. I don’t recommend the software.

Vorteile:

It’s easy to use for our teachers and clients. The interface is clean and straight forward. We have almost never had to teach someone the interface.

Nachteile:

Where it counts most my music staff fails. The most critical failure is in their financial ledger. It is possible to entirely mess up a client ledger if a lesson is accidentally removed from the calendar. Or if a rate is changed. It’s a rule of finance that you NEVER make changes to a ledger after the end of the month is closed out and an invoice created. My music staff happily goes back in time and makes changes to billing that are nearly impossible to find. Zero stars in that category. Also they’ve made design decisions that are absolutely backwards of what you would expect. Such as needing to edit every single lesson to change the time zone of the studio.

Affordable for a multi studio

Kommentare: I used to have 2 software plus Excel spreadsheets. Once I started working with My Music Staff, I moved everything to one place. It is easy to use and intuitive from a computer usage.

Vorteile:

The support is amazing, quick and precise.

Nachteile:

There is no online booking at the moment. Sometimes, people just want to book 1 lesson online without emails or phone calls. They don't have an App. You have to open a window in your phone, which makes it harder to read.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Omnify und Jackrabbit Music

Warum My Music Staff gewählt wurde: I made the switch because they weren't meant to be used for music schools but for hairdressers and restaurants (book once). My Music Staff is made for schools and recurring bookings.

Zuvor genutzte Software: Calendly und Acuity Scheduling

Gründe für den Wechsel zu My Music Staff: Price and support. My Music Staff replied to my email the same day, and offered me an hour to go through a Demo, replied to questions and helped me to understand the process.

User of 10+ Years - I recommend MMS to all of my music teacher friends and associates!

Kommentare: My overall experience with MMS has been excellent. It is absolutely essentially to running and maintaining my music school, and has taken away a lot of the stress of scheduling lessons.

Vorteile:

The best part of the system, and by far the most used for us is the scheduling. Not only does in make keeping track of our lessons very simple and straightforward, we can very quickly make changes, and even provide our teachers with access so they can stay on top of their schedules. In addition, being able to synchronize the MMS calendars to Google Calendar or Apple Calendars means that I can see an updated schedule on my phone at any moment. I also love their automated payment system which has removed the need to chase down students/parents for tuition payments; everything goes through automatically at the end of the month and we can rely on a consistent stream of income to cover expense and make sure everyone is paid on time.

Nachteile:

The only thing I don't like about MMS is the recent GUI change. I'd been using the earlier system for many years and have become quite comfortable with where everything was located. The GUI updated moved some features around which has been somewhat annoying - however I'm gradually getting used to the new layouts.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Jackrabbit Music

Gründe für den Wechsel zu My Music Staff: At the time I was a smaller operation with fewer teachers on staff. MMS allows the price to scale based on the number of instructors you have which made their pricing very enticing for my business.

Excellent tool

Vorteile:

My Music Staff provides a clear value for the money. The ease of scheduling and tracking income and expenses has made a huge difference in my productivity. More time is spent on teaching (and earning), far less on administration.

Nachteile:

The single-day view on the calendar needs improvement. Currently, it divides lessons by location. This makes sense for a multi-teacher studio. However, for one teacher who is moving between locations, it's really confusing. Sometimes I just need to be able to look QUICKLY and see the day's lessons, not have to jog back and forth over three columns.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Fons

Gründe für den Wechsel zu My Music Staff: My Music Staff offers far more value for the price point. Other products were more expensive, sometimes offering tools I choose not to use; sometimes note. My Music Staff was the Goldilocks tool: just right.

Best program for managing your music studio!

Kommentare: Best decision ever! MMS has made managing my music school so much simpler and efficient.

Vorteile:

I like everything about MMS. The calendar feature is fantastic. My students/parents love the portal. They can manage their own lessons, track practices, book make-up lessons and plan for upcoming recitals. The invoicing and payment features are great. So easy to use. And it hosts my website too as an added bonus!

Nachteile:

Honestly the only issue I have had with MMS is when I make an error. It has worked flawlessly.

Making managing my studio super easy

Vorteile:

- Scheduling lessons, with automated reminders- Scheduling open times for make-up lessons- Ease of billing, including family billing

Nachteile:

It would be nice to easily see a preview of the email/text messages just before they get generated.

How to improve your leadership in music

Kommentare: Wonderful experience at the time to work and execute.

Vorteile:

Has been a great way to improve music skills with leadership. An essential part of any musician.

Nachteile:

I don't see any thing wrong about, but great way to carry on a musician life.

My Music Staff Falling Behind

Kommentare: We've been using MMS for over 4 years now. When we first found this program it was the all-in-one solution we were looking for but unfortunately, as the years have progressed, the site has gotten much slower to work with, updates made are off-point and not helpful and the program is falling behind in offering features that are standard with others. Most noticeable is the lack of an activity feed or notification system. While other customer management and team work platforms have made this piece a base offering, My Music Staff has no way to indicate who is making changes in the database, when changes are made or a way to be notified. They occasionally roll out new features which are of little use. The Beta Attendance update, still in Beta after more than a year has more steps than the original method and makes the routine more cumbersome instead of streamlining. Despite being around since 2013, My Music Staff is still lacking an application made specifically for your phone further hindering their usability. While we'd really like to continue using this program, the lack of investment to keep up with development and customer needs puts it on the verge of being outdated.

Vorteile:

Ease of set it and forget it weekly lesson management and invoicing for clients.Calendar is user friendly

Nachteile:

Not responsive to feedback, input. No feed or alert for user changes in any way makes it extremely difficult to track if a teacher makes a change or someone has changed something that will impact your client's billing.The adjustments they do make seem to glitch the system at times.

Finally - Simplified Billing!

Kommentare: The tech support was great when I was trying to work with my service provider to get my own domain working with MyMusicStaff. When designing my own website with their template, they were also responsive and helpful with complex formatting on some of the pages.

Vorteile:

I like that I don't have to have my home website named something strange like "teacher's helper"--instead I can have my own domain name and a super easy to use website creator (and nice templates to choose from). The "portal" for parents is automatically added to the website. This way, I can use my own domain name in marketing materials. I have been in business for 20 years and grew exhausted checking out different software packages, none of which were specifically for the music teaching business. As for functionality, I like the bulk attendance.

Nachteile:

Most of it is great. Would like to see continued addition of reports, or the ability to select more options for report content. More uploads--for example, when I put together my schedule for a new semester, it's time consuming to add each lesson in one by one. Being able to type everything in on a spreadsheet and upload it would be great. I find it confusing the way the lesson rates and duration and categories work together. Perhaps this could be simplified somehow--I have to remember which screens to go in to change the students time and category. It gets more confusing when you have siblings at different rates, or when you are discounting lessons for other reasons.

An extremely high value product

Kommentare: My Music Staff has become indispensible and almost makes life a breeze. Accounts, invoicing and lesson management, notes and plenty more are brilliant. If they can upgrade some and smooth a couple of other areas I'd gladly pay more.

Vorteile:

After trying a number of other systems which felt like a real pain, I must say I can't find a system anywhere near as good for even double the price. There's a learning curve but it's really nothing like many others out there. TOP PROS: - Invoice for a period for all students in one hit and then email in one more. - Calendar view is powerful: attendance, great filtering by student/teacher/and many more - Setting up lessons is a breeze with conflicts detected automatically (although I wish it picked it up conflicts before pressing save, saving me a click-and-loading cycle) - Love the ability to clone days, run indefinite recurring group lessons with blocked out dates - Account management is brilliant too with a running list of billables and balance at any particular date - Sign up form is embeddable - SMS support mostly great - Notifiations to clients are great

Nachteile:

SMS INTEGRATION IS PATCHY - Fantastic for e.g. deleting a day. Except to send SMS messages needs to be activated in each profile manually which is slow - can't be turned on by default either - If the student doesn't have SMS turned on they don't get sent - Deleting lessons obscures the account: there is no longer record of that lesson even if it was previously included on an upfront invoice. - Marking a teacher absent is ideal EXCEPT there is no option to SMS all students without activating the feature in each individual profile first. NO SECOND FORM Other than the signup form - you need another service to handle this LEAD MANAGEMENT - No real (even simple) LMS, need another system. hello double handling data - Can classify as "lead" but then they can't book an open lesson. They need to be "Active" to do that, which is confusing because then they're "current students" which they aren't. It would be nice if leads could be added to lessons, then be automatically converted (semi-workaround via Student view sorting) INVOICES - need more templates & automation for outstanding, reminder before due, overdue, overdue 7/14 days - XERO integration please! NO STOCK MANAGEMENT - No stocking books to smooth the process. To sell, a manual entry for every book sold is required. No prefill or stock - I've stopped selling books because of this ATTENDANCE - For group lessons needs optimising too many features has bloated the process & created too many loading panes

Hope Bleakman Review- Can’t live without My Music Staff!

Kommentare: Again, the website feature has helped me secure a lot of free trials after I created a book your free trial page. Seems small but families have responded really well to it and with a little playing around it was really easy to make and turn the ‘contact us’ page into a book a free trial!

Vorteile:

It’s though to pin point, but I think my favourite is the website feature, I absolutely love I have this under one roof and how I get a notification new families have signed up and they’re already in the system. Once you get to learn the website feature you really can make it your own, im actually proud of the website I’ve been able to build through My Music Staff!

Nachteile:

It would be great if when parents are signing up their child that they have the option to select what classes they’re enrolling in and the system automatically puts them into those correct classes on the calendar. - Another great featre is if there were more ways to pay online other than PayPal, if parents could click pay now and enter their card details and funds get deposited into the business account that would be a life changer- or if somehow my music staff was partnered with after pay for families to pay their invoices in instalments… I know a few families would opt for that option!- ultimately helping small business get paid on time and not having to chase invoices! I’m in Sydney Australia and I know my families wouldn’t opt for PayPal unfortunately. Also an app would be perfect!

My assistant for my studio

Kommentare: My experience has been great! I can't attest to the customer service as I've never had to use it! But that says something, doesn't it?

Vorteile:

I really like how this software program allows me to stay organized and gives me a very professional look with my clients. From invoices to curriculum to client information to the dreaded year end taxes, I am able to keep detailed information and have it right at my finger tips when needed. My personal studio has 40 students with 26 different families to account to and communicate with. I use My Music Staff to set up a structured personal invoice system for each family, keep track of all lessons (attended or unattended), list all curriculum items each student is working on plus all festival and competition participation and results, any loaned music books I've given each student, and keep detailed notes on how each student is progressing. My Music Staff allows me to keep all my expenses (music books, office supplies, mileage, etc) in an organized, detailed system so April is no longer a huge headache for me! I also keep my waiting list of families looking to get into lessons so I no longer have the problem of the lost email or phone number when I get an opening in my studio.There are more possibilities with the program (website link, clients being able to link in) that I have not pursued yet but am looking forward to in the future. I have had a lot of comments from my clients about how impressed they are with how organized my studio is. I appreciate that this program allows me to come across as the professional I aim to be and hope to be perceived in my community.

Nachteile:

I get frustrated with some of the backtracking I have to do to personalize the calendar and the invoices. But, I don't see how that would be avoided as my studio is unique and each year is different. I do appreciate that I can personalize each student and each year.

You Need This in Your Life!

Kommentare: Customer support is very helpful!

Vorteile:

I don't generate invoices until I have my schedule set. Once I have my schedule for the month/semester/etc figured out, I create invoices and send them to parents. I love that this program makes it easy to create and send invoices based on the schedule. What used to take me HOURS now takes minutes. I also like how it tracks payments, adjustments, etc in the program so that even parents can see. No more angry parents claiming they paid when they simply forgot; they can see everything. My studio size doubled because I am so much more organized with everything. I also love that students can see notes that I've taken, assignments, download music, etc. I also send out mass messages for my upcoming concerts which is posted on the group studio page. ALSO I love that it automatically sends reminder texts and emails. I rarely have students forget to come to their lessons anymore (and when they do, I just remind them of my cancellation policy, so I never lose any dollars). I love this program. Just amazing. I will never use anything else.

Nachteile:

I wish there was an phone app that would allow me to work offline. I frequently work in practice rooms that block out cell phone signal, so I can't load students' notes when I teach. Also, It took forever to figure out how to navigate through the site at first. Lastly, I wish I could figure out how to automatically send my students their lesson schedule for the month (not essential since it is listed in the invoice, but I would like to have the kids get a list of lesson times in the email).

If You Have a Music Studio, You Need This!

Kommentare: If you run a music studio of any type, you need this software. There are far too many details with scheduling and book keeping for you to do it by yourself. This software has helped me keep track of any and all students at any one time. It has helped me automate many lessons and recital schedules among other things. It helps all teachers at our studio keep attendance records up to date for all students. This is just a bit about what you can do with My Music Staff.

Vorteile:

I love the fact that my studio found this software. I have been given the responsibility of being the studio manager for a piano studio in California. I love the calendar feature where you can filter different teachers, studios or student lists. My organization runs three studios, one in California and two on the East coast. I love the ability of emailing straight from the application. It allows me to keep in touch with all students, parents and teachers at any time.

Nachteile:

Sometimes, the technology does get hard sometimes and the scheduling portion can have glitches and put scheduling in the wrong place. Sometimes I have trouble organizing with the app. There are issues with scheduling conflicts at the studio when the times don’t overlap. That could stand to have some updating.

MMS is a solid product which covers most of the bases

Kommentare: MMS has made scheduling quite efficient. It is fairly easy to navigate once you get used to it. We have been using it for a long time and I know there are features I haven't even gotten to yet. I don't think we've worked with the support team much as we've been able to figure things out. I would be very interested in taking a live class if it were offered just to appreciate the full potential of the software.

Vorteile:

I especially like the attendance notes. It informs our students (parents) what is to be expected at the next lesson. This is especially good for parents who are not particularly musical, to remind the child specifics of the practice material. I also like the auto reminder sent for next day classes. This gives the student an opportunity to cancel class in time to qualify for a make up class. And, if a class had been verbally cancelled, but the teacher did not log it as such, (s)he is reminded that the class has been cancelled.

Nachteile:

I wish there was an entry to list the specific instrument being taught at each class. We can list the instrument in the student information section, but it'd be more convenient if it were right there on the calendar. Many instructors teach multiple disciplines and knowing which is being taught at a given class would make it easier for us to book the right room and/or the right substitute.

Very good software for music school management

Kommentare: It is the best out there unless who want to pay tens of thousands for personalised Salesforce set up.

Vorteile:

There are some very great features in My Music Staff such as the ease of payment from the client. I also like the calendar layout and functionality.

Nachteile:

Having to jump from one category to the other and back can take along time over the web. It would be easier if all of a clients information including payments, bookings, contact history, etc where all available on one screen. Also, monitoring non-payers can be a bit of a headache and be time consuming.

Best User Experience and Interface of All Lesson Management Systems We've Tried

Kommentare: Overall, the price and functionality are right with MMS. I'm happy with my choice and out of all of the software as a services I use in my business, this is the one I'm least likely to switch out of.

Vorteile:

Integrating MMS was incredibly easy. There are a few small features they could add to make it even easier but overall it went quickly enough. I love the transparent (and inexpensive) per teacher pricing. Uptime is fantastic; I don't think I've ever experienced the site being down.

Nachteile:

MMS is great but not quite mature. I appreciate the really solid uptime but the site can be very slow. As an administrator, I am used to the system and I can generally make it do what I want. My teachers sometimes complain about it (navigating to the contact information for the parents of a child student can be a pain, and has to be explained to them because it's not obvious) but overall they enjoy having student and schedule info at their fingertips. None of them make use of the notes, repertoire, library, etc. so these features don't do much for us though they seem like solid features

Saved My Studio

Kommentare: My business runs very smoothly and professionally with the use of My Music Staff, I have the control that I need of the studio while giving my instructors the freedom to teach the way they find most effective with the students. Parents enjoy the reminders, automatic invoicing and electronic payment options. My website drives in lots of business and it is created using the templates on My Music Staff. Without this program my studio would never have grown to this point nor would it continue to grow as it is today. I will always recommend and share my love of this program.

Vorteile:

As I began taking on more students a couple of years ago and I started to struggle with scheduling and and billing, we started looking around and found My Music Staff, it saved my studio. We are now at 32 students and we have 3 instructors, without the ease of My Music Staff I would never be able to schedule and bill families appropriately or keep track of payroll. I love the ease of looking up addresses, families inputting their own information and being able to keep track of assignments within the program. The reminder emails and texts are awesome for busy families and the automatic billing feature is amazing so that I don't have to calculate and send out invoices to families.

Nachteile:

Nothing really, some of the setting are buried a little bit, but everything is very logical.

Easy, Intuitive App for Private Music Teachers

Kommentare: My Music Staff is dependable, responsive and fair.

Vorteile:

This app is very easy to use. You can sign up and then begin setting your studio up immediately. I teach out of my home and typically have 25-35 students each year. I was able to add all of my student and family accounts and set-up my schedule very quickly. The best thing about this package is what it has done for my invoicing process. It has cut down 75% of my work time for processing invoicing, payments, communication to families and reporting. As an added bonus, it has built in functionality for tracking practice time, gives a place to record studio news, lets you build and host a website, and stores online documents for use and retrieval by students. My studio families love having access through the portal so that they can always see their balance, make payments, and read notes about their student's progress. My older students use the student portal too.

Nachteile:

One of my studio parents also does administrative work for me. She has two separate accounts, her admin account to do business and her personal account for her children's lessons. It would be nice if there was a way to compact that into one account for her.

Piano Teacher

Kommentare: I love using My Music Staff for my music education company. I cannot imagine being successful at my job without it.

Vorteile:

As a piano teacher, My Music Staff saves me countless hours. I used to try to stay organized by myself! I didn't send reminders for weekly appointments and as a result, I often had no-shows. I also didn't have a great system of tracking payments. Now, My Music Staff keeps track of my calendar, clients and their information, invoices, payments, late fees, and annual tax information. At the end of the year, I can simply click a button and see how much money I have earned. It also tells me how much money I have spent on piano books and fees. It sends reminders through email, text or both to my clients. I can also keep a running database for all of my students and have a list of former students. It is essential for any kind of music teacher!

Nachteile:

I don't love paying $12.95 per month for this software. It is worth it so I have been a customer for years. At first, it was difficult to set up the automatic invoices and autopay for interested clients. I did need to contact their customer service and they were extremely helpful.

Best shift for my company!

Kommentare: Love the invoices section. I still feel the need to double check all the automatic invoices made before sending them out, but they allow me to get paid regularly with the correct amount whereas before, I relied on parents to remember to pay me and for what amount.

Vorteile:

Before, I was planning everything through Google Calendar which was fine with a small studio. As I grew, I needed to juggle more students and this was a shift necessary to look more professional. I felt so organized once moving to MMS. I love there is a login system for the parents to use, whenever they do use it, which makes me seem professional. My most used features are student management, calendar, attendance, and invoicing.

Nachteile:

A direct way for parents to register for specific events. I don't like needing to direct them to login, go to calendar, find the event, then click to register. Seems too much work for them and they'll never do it.

Much More Than I Expected!

Kommentare: Part of my music teaching is done in a school that requires a rotating timetable so the students skip a different class each week for their music lesson. For years I tried communicating these times to students and parents in many ways, none of which seemed effective as there was a great deal of confusion and absenteeism. I searched frequently for some kind of notification system such as the one my dentist uses, but they were all very prohibitively expensive. One day, toward the end of 2014, one my searches turned up My Music Staff, which could send automated email event reminders for a low monthly fee. After using it for a while, I found unexpected features such as keeping track of attendance, make-up credits, lesson notes, providing downloads for students, an online student/parent portal, a sign-up widget, as well as integrated billing to be indispensable for the way I’m now able to run my studio.

Vorteile:

What I like most about My Music Staff is the Lesson Notes function as it enables seamless continuity from lesson to lesson with each student, which, to me, is most the most important aspect of teaching.

Nachteile:

As each feature in My Music Staff is likeable in its own way, the only reason why I like the Expense Tracker the least is because I use different accounting software and, therefore, have no need for it.