For families
Families can see what they owe.
Families sign in to see their invoices, lessons, balance and repairs, and they can pay from the invoice without going through the front desk.
Fewer calls to the front desk.
“What do we owe this month?” is the most common question a studio front desk answers, and one of the least useful uses of anyone’s time.
The answer isn’t hard. It lives somewhere a family can’t reach, so the only way to it is a person, and that person is usually mid-lesson, mid-repair or halfway through a billing run.
The portal is the same data with the family let in: their invoices and the ledger behind the balance, their lessons and attendance, their make-up credits and when each expires, and any instrument currently on the bench.
Nothing is recalculated or summarized for them. They see the documents the studio sees, so the numbers can’t disagree.
It tells you the cost before you commit.
A family sees the consequence of an action before they confirm it.
A parent canceling Thursday’s lesson is shown, on that screen, whether they are inside the notice period, whether it earns a make-up credit, and what it will cost if it doesn’t. Then they decide.
That turns a policy a studio has into one it can enforce. The fee isn’t sprung on someone at the counter. They chose it with the number in front of them, and families argue with that far less. We wrote up how to word the policy behind it.
The rest works the same way. A reschedule offers the times a teacher has declared, not every hour in the week. An expiring make-up credit shows its date instead of lapsing without notice.
Studio news.
Most studio software has no way to tell families anything, so the studio falls back on a group email and hopes.
Studio news lives in the portal, next to the balance and the schedule, which are the two things a family opens it for anyway. A notice is a draft until it is published. It goes to the audiences you choose, not to everyone, it can be pinned, and it carries an expiration date so a recital that happened in March stops being news in June.
Emailing it as well is a checkbox. A studio that has to email every announcement eventually stops making them, because nobody wants to be the studio that emails four times a week.
What a family sees.
The portal was rebuilt this month so that it no longer looks like the staff console.
What a family can do.
See the balance without calling
What is owed, what is paid, and what a credit has already taken off. It is the most common call a front desk takes, and the portal answers it before it is made.
Invoices they can read
Every invoice and its lines, the ledger behind the balance, and a statement. These are the same documents the studio sees, not a summary of them.
Pay from the invoice
A card charged against the invoice through Stripe, or a card saved for next time. Card numbers go to Stripe directly and never reach the studio.
Lessons and make-up credits
Upcoming lessons, what was attended, and every make-up credit with its expiration date, so an expiration is never a surprise at the counter.
Repairs, if there are any
A family that left an instrument can see where it is without calling to ask whether it is ready.
A message to the teacher
A question goes to the right person instead of a general inbox, and it is kept on the account with everything else about that family.
Cancel, and see the cost first
Before a family confirms, the portal says what the cancellation does: whether it is inside the notice period, whether it earns a make-up credit, and what it will be charged. Nobody finds out about a fee afterward.
Ask to move a lesson
A reschedule shows the slots the teacher has said they will teach, and arrives as a request that staff accept or decline. Nothing moves on the schedule by itself.
Sign the agreement and Auto-Pay
The family signs the studio’s terms and an Auto-Pay authorization in the portal, and the version they agreed to is kept. Auto-Pay is optional. Signing is the family’s choice, not a condition of enrolling.
Practice and lesson notes
Practice logged between lessons, and the teacher’s note about a lesson that already happened, so a parent who wasn’t in the room knows how it went.
Studio news
A recital date, a closure, a new teacher. A notice is written as a draft, published when it is ready, sent to the audiences it concerns, pinned if it matters, and given an expiration date so last spring’s notice isn’t still on the board. Emailing it as well is optional.
Enrollment by invitation
A studio invites a family by email. The family fills in students, contacts and consents, and none of it becomes a record until someone approves it. Until then it is only what a stranger typed.
A metronome and a tuner
The iPhone and iPad app has both, next to where practice is logged. The metronome clicks on the audio clock, so the beat on screen and the click in the ear stay together. The tuner names the note and shows how many cents sharp or flat it is. It listens only while it is open, on the phone, and records nothing.
Locked behind Face ID
After the app has been closed or left idle, it asks for Face ID, Touch ID or the device passcode before it shows the account again. The signed-in session stays in the Keychain, and the lock only decides whether the app shows it. If the sensor is broken, the passcode works, so nobody is locked out of their own account.
Families choose what they hear
Lesson reminders, schedule changes, lesson notes, studio news, invoices, statements, receipts, payment reminders, formal notices and repairs are separate categories, each with its own channels. A family that wants a reminder before a lesson and nothing else can have just that.
Texting, with consent recorded
A studio shouldn’t be able to start texting a family just by typing a number. A consent request is its own record with its own status, so who agreed to be texted, and when, is on file.
A link or a password
Families can sign in with a link sent to the address the studio already holds, or set a password. Neither is forced on a family that finds the other awkward.
Common questions.
- Do families need an account before they can use it?
- Staff give access to each contact and can take it away. Sign-in is a link sent to the address the studio already holds, from the studio’s own mailbox, not from a third party the family has never heard of.
- Is there an app?
- In testing. A native iPhone and iPad app for families is written and running. It reads this same portal and covers sign-in, the balance, invoices and payment, lessons and booking, agreements and Auto-Pay, plus a metronome and tuner for practice. It isn’t on the App Store yet, so today the answer is the portal, which is a website that works on a phone. We plan to include the app in every plan. A staff app is planned but not started.
- Does the app record audio?
- No. The tuner uses the microphone only while it is open, to work out which note is being played, and the analysis happens on the phone. Nothing is recorded, saved or sent anywhere. If you refuse the microphone permission, the tuner can’t listen and everything else still works.
- Can a family see another family’s information?
- No. A contact reaches only the billing accounts they are attached to, and what they can do on each one is controlled by a set of permissions, not a single on-off switch.
- What can staff see about what a family did?
- Portal visits are recorded. Staff with the right permission can view the portal as a customer sees it, read-only, which is how you answer “it isn’t showing me anything” without asking for a password.
- Does a student see the same thing as a parent?
- Not necessarily. The system knows which students are minors, and what a portal user sees depends on the permissions on that contact.
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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