Lessons and a bench
A teaching business that also fixes things.
Most software for this starts at the till. This starts at the family account, and the repair bench hangs off it with its own billing schedule.
Two lines, one customer, two due dates.
The Marlows take lessons on Tuesdays and Thursdays. In September they also brought in a Martin for a fret dress.
In most setups that family exists twice: once in the lesson scheduler and once on a repair ticket, with a notebook by the bench as the only thing joining them. Nobody can answer “what does this family owe us?” without adding up two systems and hoping.
Here it is one billing account. Lessons add up through the month and are invoiced on your terms. The repair is invoiced when it is collected and is payable then, because the instrument is the only leverage in that transaction. That gives two invoices, one balance and one history.
Everything else follows from that: the notes, the credits, the statement and the question of who to chase.
What it doesn’t do.
We say it here rather than on a call, because much of what a music shop needs isn’t in this.
There is no point of sale. There is no till, no card reader at the counter for a set of strings, no barcode scanning, no serialized inventory and no rentals. Those are real parts of running a music retailer, and there is software that does them well.Music Shop 360 and AIM by Tri-Tech are both built for that, with lessons and repairs as modules next to the retail floor.
B♭ Studio comes at it from the other end. It is a billing and operations system for a business whose center of gravity is teaching, and which also runs a bench. It is strongest on the money side:
- A monthly billing run you preview in full and then commit, including every account it skipped and why.
- Credits and discounts with limits by role, where whoever requested one can’t be the one who approves it.
- Teacher pay derived from attendance, at the rate that applied on the day taught, paid out through Stripe as contractors.
- An audit trail the database won’t let anyone edit, and seventy-six permissions you can change yourself.
If your day is mostly ringing up sales, that list isn’t what you need. If your day is mostly lessons, families, invoices and a bench in the back, it is.
Common questions.
- Is this a point-of-sale system?
- No. There is no till, no barcode scanner, no inventory and no rentals. If you need to ring up strings and picks and track serialized stock, you want a music retail POS. Music Shop 360 and AIM by Tri-Tech both cover that. B♭ Studio is for the teaching and repair side of the business, where the questions are who owes what and who taught which lesson.
- Can it handle instrument rentals?
- Not today. Rentals and retail stock aren’t built. If rentals are a significant part of your income, it isn’t the right fit yet.
- Do a family’s lessons and repairs share one account?
- Yes, and the whole system is built around it. A family that takes lessons and brings a guitar in for a fret dress is one billing account, with one balance, one set of notes and one history. There are two invoices, because the two lines are due at different times.
- Why not put the repair on the monthly lesson invoice?
- Because you can’t hand back an instrument against an invoice that isn’t due for three weeks. The repair is invoiced and payable at pickup, and releasing the instrument is its own permission that won’t fire against an unpaid invoice. The lesson invoice keeps its terms.
- What about a walk-in who has never taken a lesson?
- A repair creates or attaches a billing account, so a one-off customer still lands somewhere you can look them up next year.
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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