I agree with this proposal and have considered ending my service with SH because at the present time my active student load is much lower than the student count you charge me for. Since I have students that will come back and leave again it is less work for me to just leave them in the system, but it hardly seems fair to be charged for them when they aren't coming.

To keep people from taking advantage you can Make it impossible to schedule a former student without making them active, and have the software remove all future scheduled appointments in the calendar when the student is marked former. have the software automatically enter a new bill at SH for the student as soon as they become active again. Add an event log to software and have it automatically alert you when there is a mass migration to former. Make it part part of your policy that anyone caught cheating would lose access to their calendar feeds, admin login and all of their account logins until the matter is settled. Most of us that are using the software would play by the rules!

Hi, I am looking to joining Studio Helper. This is a major factor for all Music Schools and I would like to know how far away you are from fixing this issue before I sign up. If you lose all accounts also that is terrible.
Thanks

This should be handled the same as Music Teachers Helper - you are the same company right? MTH only charges for active students. As a growing music school, I have students that come and go. There will be a point when I will have to leave your service because you charge for students who are no longer with me but I don't want to delete their records. Currently, you are charging for more "inactive" students than active students and this isn't acceptable. I think this should be a top priority for you to fix. I know its possible because you do with with MTH

We are considering your app for our studio. However there is no way we will pay for students that we did not schedule on a month. Some students need to take time off for vacations at different times of the year. Who wants to delete students that they'd have to put up again? If you are worried about abuse then have your system detect when a student is booked for the month and charge based on that. There would be no option for studios to move " all students to Former before the billing cycle", and therefore not affect you cycle.

This would be a helpful change. Our Studio wants to be able to market to former students on the mailing list feature, and often will carry a waiting list for many of our programs. Having to pay for people on the waiting list is really a problem. The solution to dealing with a studio trying to do fraud, is to a. run a trend report and see if the numbers show an inconsistent trend before and after a billing cycle. Another solution is to is to make former students a "closed account",Make Former Student accounts Read only- and they could re register if they become active again. This would mean that there was access to their previous records, but that they would have re register to become active. It only takes a minute to fill our a form. but no studio is going to make everyone inactive if they know that they have to re register everyone they deactivate. Make Waiting list students inable to carry a balance or carry charges, until they become active students. these measures would create the solutions to the pitfalls without changing the pricing structure

Any idea how soon this might happen? Once again, I was billed for 269 students, when I now have less than 40 that are showing up as active. And, yes, I believe parents (and maybe teachers) are being included in that figure, as I actually have half that number. I'd switch to the system for one teacher (Music Teacher's Friend, or something like that), but I really can't until January 1st.

Perhaps there's a way to set it up to where deleting a student doesn't delete the financial records. That's the critical thing for me. I can't delete anyone, because I lose their financial records. So, I'm paying for well over 200 students. But, due to some significant changes in how we are doing things, I really only have 67 students that I am managing.

I think that inactive students & leads should not be have a cost to have in our system. I actually have been using studio helper less frequent due to me. Because it is not a one stop place. We need a studio management system to be one stop place, because we are so busy. I also agree that it is important to keep inactive students in the system for record keeping and because they may return as a customer. Your help with this would make your service more appealing. Thank you so much.

Parents and staff members are not counted toward the 20 cent fee. Only students. If you seem to be charged more, please check to make sure you don't have any duplicate students, or contact our support team.

I agree completely! Also our studio is being billed for all individuals entered into the system...active parents as well as the active students!! anyone else noticing this problem?

The lesson studio I work for is considering switching to Studio Helper, however, this is one sticky issue for us. We have over 500 students and like to leave students in our database for up to a year in case they return or sign up for other classes. And because of that, we'll have about 300-400 inactive students which would result in an extra $60-$80/month. I know that we can export former students into a spreadsheet but that just adds an extra step that we're hoping to reduce with Studio Helper. We already enter items onto multiple spreadsheets, email software, and online forms. So paying for this new service and adding a step is a harder sell for me to make to the boss! :)

i completely agree with this. i actually might have to start looking for other options if we continue being charged for inactive students. i am paying for students in our account without making money out of them. it doesn't make much sense. deleting them is screwing up all the financials in the system. and sometimes we delete a student then they return later, so then i have to add them all over again and there is no history of them in the system. the bigger we get the more of a problem this becomes. PLEASE take care of this before september!! meanwhile, i am going to look for other options.

The situation with my studio is that we have students who take off for the summer. However, to have to completely delete them and then re-enroll them in the fall would be more of a hassle when we can simply take them off the calendar to show that they are not taking for the summer. I think not charging for inactive students is very fair and allows teachers to just add them back on the calendar when the students come back after summer.

This is a great idea! Please make it happen!