Configurable
Your studio already has rules. The software should follow them.
A hundred and fifty settings across twenty-five areas. Any one can be overridden for a single family, with no workaround.
Your rules, as settings.
Every studio has a notice period, a make-up rule, a late fee and a view on Auto-Pay. The question is whether the software already agrees with you.
When it doesn’t, you get workarounds: a spreadsheet beside the system, a family whose terms live in someone’s head, and a rule everyone applies a little differently depending on who answered the phone.
Training doesn’t fix that. It happens when the software makes the decisions and the studio has to cope.
So here the rules are data, not code. They are read at the moment a decision is made, such as when a lesson is canceled, an invoice is issued or a reminder is due, so a change applies to the next one. There is no release to wait for and no support ticket.
A change can have a date on it.
Most terms promise notice before a policy changes. Software rarely helps you keep that promise.
A setting can be changed now, or scheduled for the day it starts applying. You write the reason in your own words, and the value it is changing from is recorded when you schedule it.
That last detail matters later. “What did we change it from?” gets asked after the change has happened, when the old value is gone unless someone wrote it down. Here it is written down automatically.
A pending change is visible before it takes effect. The announcement that tells families about it is a separate step that someone decides to send, not an email fired off the moment a number is edited.
Where studio news is written.
A notice is a draft until someone publishes it. It goes to the audiences you pick, and it carries the date it stops being news.
The settings screen itself.
Twenty-five areas, a hundred and fifty decisions.
These are the rules your terms and conditions already describe.
- Cancellation & make-ups
- Attendance
- Lessons
- Lesson reminders
- Student support needs
- Invoicing
- Invoice review
- Pending items
- Payment reminders
- Late payment & delinquency
- Auto-Pay
- Discounts & referrals
- Pricing
- Termination
- Disputes
- Terms & agreements
- Repair evidence
- Repair estimates & parts
- Uncollected instruments
- Lien & disposal
- Teacher payroll
- Printed mail
- Travel to lessons
- Security
- Automation
Each one is a studio default that a single family can be excepted from, because the family that has been with you eleven years is usually the one on different terms.
Auto-Pay is optional.
Some systems only work if every family is on automatic payment. That suits the software, and it doesn’t suit a studio.
Here it is a setting, literally “Offer Auto-Pay”, and you decide whether it exists at your studio at all. If you offer it, you also set:
- the discount a family gets for enrolling, if any
- how much notice is needed to come off it
- how many days a failed payment has to be fixed before it escalates
- whether enrolling requires signed consent, captured and kept
A family that never enrolls isn’t a problem to manage. They’re a family with an invoice, which is how studios have always worked.
For everyone who uses it.
For the front desk
Everyone applies the same rule. A cancellation inside the notice period is handled the same at 9am Monday and 6pm Friday, because the notice period is a number in a settings screen and not something people remember differently.
For the studio owner
Your terms are entered once and enforced everywhere. You change them without a support ticket or a release. There are a hundred and fifty settings, and any one can be overridden for a single family.
For families
Auto-Pay if they want the discount, an invoice if they don’t. Billing by the semester if that is what they agreed to. A portal to check the balance instead of calling. Nobody is forced onto a payment method to stay a customer.
News.
A studio is a community as well as a billing relationship.
Announcements are drafted, scheduled and published to a chosen audience, which can be families, staff or both. They go out from your own studio mailbox, not from a service your families have never heard of. Use them for recital dates, a closure, a new teacher or a change to the terms.
It is easy to overlook until the week you need to tell two hundred families the building is shut.
Common questions.
- Do we have to use Auto-Pay?
- No, and neither do your families. Auto-Pay is a setting called “Offer Auto-Pay”, and you decide whether it exists at your studio at all. If you offer it, you set the discount, the notice required to cancel it, how many days a failed payment has to be fixed, and whether enrolling requires signed consent. A family that never enrolls is a normal family with a normal invoice.
- Can one family bill differently from everyone else?
- Yes. Rate, rate type, billing frequency, late fee policy and default discount all live on the family’s billing profile and not on the studio, and any policy can be overridden for that profile alone. The long-standing family on legacy terms doesn’t need a spreadsheet kept beside the system.
- Can we send news to families and staff?
- Yes. Announcements are drafted, scheduled and published to a chosen audience, then emailed by the same hourly job that runs everything else, from your own studio mailbox.
- Does changing a policy need a developer?
- No. Policies are stored as data and read at the moment a decision is made, so a change takes effect on the next lesson, invoice or reminder. Nothing is compiled in, and no deployment is involved.
- Will it integrate with the other apps we use?
- Not yet, and that is a limit on how flexible it is. There is no public API, no outgoing webhooks and no Zapier app, so B♭ Studio doesn’t connect to arbitrary third-party tools. It connects directly to Stripe, Microsoft 365 and Lob because those are built in. If your workflow depends on pushing data into something else, say so when you join the list.
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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