Money
Preview the month before you bill it.
The billing run shows every account, every line and every skip with its reason. Nothing is issued until you say so.
Preview, then commit.
A monthly run is built from active billing profiles and shown in full before a single invoice exists.
Most billing mistakes aren’t arithmetic. They’re an account that should have been on hold, a student who left in August, or a rate that changed on the first and was applied from the fifteenth. A preview shows all of those. A batch of ninety finished invoices hides them.
So a run has two steps. Build it and read it, including the accounts it left out and why. Then commit. Every run is kept, so “what did we bill in March?” has an answer that doesn’t depend on someone’s memory.
Invoices carry a billing mode. Lessons add up and are issued on a cycle, with terms. Repairs are issued and due when the instrument is picked up.
Approvals with limits by role.
Credits, discounts, prorations and late-fee waivers all go through the same queue.
Each tier has a limit. A request above it moves up to the next tier, until it reaches one that can cover it. That stops a large credit being split into small ones by someone who is only allowed to authorize small ones.
Requesting a credit and approving one are separate permissions. So the owner can hold the only unlimited approval and still let the front desk take twenty dollars off a bill without a phone call.
Late payments move through stages.
An account that owes money sits on a ladder of stages that you define.
You set the stages: how many days past the oldest unpaid invoice each one starts at, what it is called, and what the family is told it means, in your words. An episode opens when an account first falls behind and closes when it comes current. A closed episode never reopens. The next time is a new episode, so the history reads as separate events and not as one permanent mark against a family.
Every stage has a minimum balance. Below the amount you set, the stage does nothing. Suspending a child’s lessons over four dollars would cost you a family and earn you four dollars. The minimum stops an automated rule doing something nobody in your studio would do.
A nightly review moves accounts along the ladder and records what it did. It never goes beyond the stage an account has reached.
Payment arrangements.
A family that calls about a late payment and a family that stopped answering shouldn’t be treated the same.
A payment arrangement records what a family promised and what that promise earned them. How much it earns depends on when they agreed to it.
Agreed before the due date, it earns the most. There is no late fee while the arrangement is kept, Auto-Pay and its discount stay, and it costs the account nothing. A studio wants families to call before a payment is late, so that shouldn’t be rationed. Agreed inside the grace window, it keeps Auto-Pay and forgives the late fee, but it uses up the account’s good faith, which is available once every six months. Agreed after the grace window, it is still worth recording, but it carries no automatic protection.
What was promised is frozen when it is agreed. A setting changed next month doesn’t rewrite what someone was told on the phone. The same rule applies to an Auto-Pay disclosure. The name on an arrangement has to be someone the studio already holds on the account.
Receivables and late payments.
More on billing.
Tax per line, rounded per line
Tax isn’t worked out on the subtotal and spread back across the lines. Doing it per line keeps an invoice reconciling, instead of leaving it a cent out most months with nobody able to say why.
Proration that counts the day
A student who starts on the 12th is billed from the 12th, inclusive. The preview shows “19 of 30 days” next to the line, so a parent can check the arithmetic.
Payment reminders in stages
A courtesy note before the due date, one on the date, escalating notices after, a final notice and a late-fee warning. Each stage is sent at most once, so a job that runs twice doesn’t send the same email twice.
Credits with a limit by role
The front desk can clear a small credit. A larger one goes to a manager, and a larger one still to the owner. Requesting and approving are separate permissions, so whoever asked can’t be the one who approves.
Auto-Pay and stored cards
Families enroll a card against a billing profile and are charged when the invoice is issued. Cards are captured through a link that opens Stripe directly, so no card number reaches the studio.
A ledger that can’t double-count
Charges and credits sit on the account before any invoice exists. An entry counts as owed only until a draft invoice picks it up as a line. After that, the line is the debt and the entry is its history. Counting both would double every amount picked up.
Refunds with the same limits
A refund within the requester’s own limit is recorded as that, so the record never says someone else approved it. A declined or failed refund releases the money again, because nothing left the bank.
Every payment attempt is logged
A payment is only recorded once the card is accepted. During an outage, when every attempt is refused, the screens would have nothing to show. Attempts are logged separately, so the record isn’t empty in the hour you most need it.
Nothing is taxed until you say so
Each catalog item is marked taxable or exempt, separately from which rate would apply. A category alone never makes something taxable. Otherwise one stray word in a field ends with a studio taxing two lessons and not the method book next to them.
Twelve ways to sell a lesson
One time, one session, per hour, drop-in, trial, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, quarterly, semester, annual and package. The billing cadence belongs to what you sold. The whole studio doesn’t have to run on one.
Moving an account between people
For a separation, a guardian change, or an adult student taking over their own billing. Both people consent, the balance is frozen at the request and must be cleared before it finalizes, and staff close it out. It is a recorded process, not a phone call and a hand-edited record.
Referrals that don’t change later
One referral per new student, for whoever they named first. The waived fee is recorded when the referral is created, so changing the setting next year can’t restate what someone was already promised.
Statements by email or mail
A branded statement with a detachable remittance stub, emailed as a PDF or queued for printing and mailing through Lob. Mailing has a manual release step, so nothing goes to the printer by accident.
Not open to new studios yet.
B♭ Studio runs a working music studio today. If you run one too, join the waitlist and we’ll be in touch when there is something to show you.
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