Music Teachers Blog

Here are the updates and improvements we’ve made to Music Teacher’s Helper since December 10, 2007. These include bug fixes, new features, and usability enhancements.

• Added a Mileage Tracker so you can track how far you’ve traveled in your music business. This is great for tax purposes. You can access the Mileage Tracker from Billing -> Mileage Tracker.
• The cost of a lesson or event will now show in event details when hovering over events on the calendar (if the cost is greater than 0)
• Made lending library items become overdue the day AFTER they are due, rather than the same day. They will also be marked overdue at the appropriate time according to your time zone, now, rather than the server time. Lent items now also show in order with the longest overdue items first. (or the ones that will be due back the soonest)
• You can now delete auto invoicing schedules, rather than just deactivate them
• Added a new drop down calendar for the date picker, so it will work better with Internet Explorer 7
• Your email history now shows the content of the message you sent, not just the subject and who you sent to.
• Updated calendar repeating event updates to extend up to the end date of the new event schedule, and create any events that don’t exist but that should. Also fixed related bug that that existed for a few days which occasionally caused events to be created in the 1970’s or 1990’s by accident.
• Made book icon show a closed book if the maximum number of participants for an event has been reached, even if the participants were added by the teacher.
• Added paging to invoice history so it only shows 20 invoices as once. This will make the page load faster, especially for those who have sent hundreds or thousands of invoices. You can still search for invoices by number or name to pull it up quickly.
• Fixed a bug with the reconcile all page where it was showing the lesson cost as the amount set in the student’s profile, rather than the cost of that specific event. Now if you change the cost of an event from the calendar, it will show correctly on the reconcile all page as well.
• When reconciling a lesson for a student who is billed monthly, fixed a bug that was requiring you to enter a credit amount (even if 0) in order to submit the form. This warning no longer occurs.

Posted in Site Announcements |

About the Author

Brandon Pearce is a piano teacher, choral director, computer programmer, and entrepreneur from Murray, Utah, and is also the creator of Music Teacher's Helper.

As his teaching studio grew, he found it increasingly difficult to keep track of how much each student owed. Having recently received a B.S. in Computer Science from Weber State University, he decided to write a web-based computer program to manage billing and scheduling in his studio. Realizing that he wasn't alone in his studio management frustrations, he soon made the service available to other teachers. And they loved it! Since 2003, several additional programmers, and thousands of teachers from around the world have participated in creating the world-class studio management software you know today as Music Teacher's Helper.

Brandon currently spends his time managing and improving Music Teacher's Helper, traveling with his family, and writing hymn arrangements for piano. He is also the assistant director of the Oratorio Society of Utah, a 90+ year old choral organization that performs Handle's Messiah each year, as well as other choral masterworks.