Music Teachers Blog

There are many ways to use the Music Teachers Helper billing system, and you can read about it or watch the videos describing it on the website, but I thought it might be interesting for some of you to read about how one person (i.e. myself) uses the billing system. I’m sure others use it differently and it would very interesting and helpful if you would post a comment at the end of this post to describe how you do billing. I know I’d love to hear about ways other music teachers use the system. It might give me new ideas.

I thought I’d describe for you first my standard daily use of the billing system, and then show you a special way I’ve invoiced a student, which might get you thinking about some new ways to approach it for yourself.

My routine begins with the Daily Summary Report, which shows the financial status of each student taking a lesson that day–how much they owe, or whether they’re at $0 and owe for today’s lesson, or if they have credits remaining from previous payments. This helps me remind students if they owe me today or allows me to answer their questions quickly as to when they will have to pay again for more lessons.

At the end of the day, I enter their payments under “Billing”–”Payments Received”–”Enter a Payment” , with a nice thank you note indicating what lesson dates their payment will cover, and almost always check off the box to email the receipt to the student. The only time I don’t email the receipt is if I know a student doesn’t read emails. It’s great to know that students can either check MTH for their payment history, or check their emails for a record of payments.

The receipt that I send to students reads the way I want it to–I set it up by clicking on “Home”–”Email Templates”–”Payment Notification”–Here I made a template for the emailed receipt to suit the way I’d like people to receive it. Mine reads as follows, because I like it to be a little informal:

Hi {$parentFirst},

This is a receipt to confirm that I received your payment for lessons on {$paymentDate}.

Amount: {$paymentAmount}

Payment Type: {$paymentType}

Details: {$paymentDetails}

You’re welcome to log into your account at {$teacherWebsite} to keep track of things.

Thanks–

–Ed Pearlman

To check on student accounts, when I have a question, I go to “Billing”–”Transaction Log” where I can easily see the list of students and whether they owe (in red in the Balance Due column) or if they are at $0 or have credits (in parentheses in the Credit Amount column). If anything looks fishy I can click on the row with that student’s info and a report will open up showing me that student’s complete billing history.

When do I have a billing question? A few ways problems have crept in are, for example, when I cancelled a lesson and charged the student without meaning to, or if I reconciled a lesson without noticing that the amount to be charged was $0 or was the wrong number for that particular lesson (maybe the lesson was longer or shorter that day). Another problem can creep in if I received payment for an item such as an instructional CD, but forgot to enter a charge for that item. This is a good point to remember: if you sell something or charge for something other than a lesson, you have to enter the charge so it shows up in the student’s records; this way when they pay for the item, the payment will match up with the charge or the fee. The way to enter the charge is in “Billing”–”Fees & Credits”–”Charge a Fee”. It’s interesting to note that you can select any number of students to charge the same fee to, all at the same time if you want.This can’t be done with payments, which have to apply one at a time to each student who pays you.

Another place I always check for problems is on the Home Page, over at the far right, where the second line is “Students Owing”. This will show a number if anyone is behind in payments, and clicking the number gives me a report of those who owe money.It’s a great help because sometimes I forget about them, and need to remind them; or sometimes this report reveals a mistake, such as I mentioned above (e.g. forgetting to credit a student for a legitimately cancelled lesson).

I think the invoicing system is fantastic, especially the automatic invoicing, but in my own teaching, I’ve found it to be mostly unnecessary. There is one exception, though, and this is that special use of invoicing I mentioned at the start of this post. I have one student, and there may be more down the road, who likes to email me sheet music for a few tunes and have me record them for him so he can learn them by ear. I record the tunes for him on my digital dictation machine (see my post on this), email him the recording, keep track of my time, and then invoice him. He pays immediately via PayPal.

Here’s how I do it: I enter a lesson on the calendar (if I get enough of these requests I will probably create a new category for this, with its own color) including the amount I charge for the recording. Then Igo to “Billing”–”Invoicing”–”Create Invoice” and select that student and the date range for the day of that”lesson”. I click “Preview or Print” to double check that the invoice shows the special lesson and the correct charge.Then I click at the top on “Go Back to Invoicing Creation”, check off the Email box, and click “Do It!”

What happens is that the invoice is emailed to the student with a convenient link at the bottom saying “Pay Now”. The student clicks there and simply pays the invoice via PayPal. It’s clear, easy, quick, and direct for both me and the student

Posted in Using Music Teacher's Helper |