Music Teacher's Helper

Friday, 19 November 2010 16:08 |

Written by Music Motivation® |

Music Teacher's Helper

visit the Music Teacher's Helper website to learn more - click on the image above

Ordinarily, I don't rave about too many websites (although I am asked to support and promote several great websites for musicians and music businesses). Music Teacher's Helper, however, is a wonderful resource in a league of it's own. I can honestly promote Music Teacher's Helper without any bias because I do not have an account with them for a teaching studio website. I personally am spending more and more of my time creating books, cds, dvds, and other resources for music teachers - but when it comes to helping music teachers manage their websites and organize their teaching studios - Music Teacher's Helper takes the cake.

Brandon Pearce, the founder and creator of Music Teacher's Helper, has done a marvelous job of creating a tool that saves teachers time, money, energy, and resources while allowing the music teachers to focus on growing their teaching studios as they see fit (Music Teacher's Helper can help music studios of all sizes and at every stage).

From the Music Teachers Website it says "As (Brandon's) 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."

I personally know and admire Brandon and am impressed with all he is doing. He has created a valuable resource for music teachers. He created this resource to help him be more productive in his own teaching and as a result has had an enormous impact on music teachers throughout the world.

The Music Teacher's Helper website is designed to help teachers organize their studios to be more effective in their teaching and to save teachers time, and money by streamlining and automating most of the time-consuming tasks that take music teachers away from teaching music. This reduces stress, worry, and frustration on the part of the teacher (things are much nicer when you're not stressing and worrying about things you don't want to stress and worry about in the first place).

To see more about the Music Teacher's Helper, click on the image below.

Look at the features below and discover for yourself how much Music Teacher's Helper can do for you and your studio

Your own professional studio website

This is what is said on the website about these studio websites: "These days, every business can benefit from having a web presence. This includes your teaching studio. Music Teacher's Helper makes it easy (and free) to have your own studio website. Your students will love it, and so will you!"

On a personal note, these websites are high in quality and content. They allow music teachers the ability to create professional websites to better teach music students, store down-loadable pdfs, policies, press kits, media related articles, contact info, photos, videos, and an array of helpful tools that empower music teachers to not only offer more to their music students, but to become more effective and profitable as music educators. Learn how to better market your studio and your teaching philosophies.

Professionally Designed Themes

This is what is said on the Music Teacher's Helper website about tracking income and expenses (ordinarily a severe head-ache for most music teachers):

"The Music Teacher's Helper is the easiest way to keep track of your studio finances. You'll always know how much your students owe you - and so will your students! You'll save time with automatic invoicing. Oh, and forget data entry - if your students pay you on-line, that's automatic, too."

Track Income and Expenses

: Record check payments manually, or automate the data entry with on-line credit card payments.

"Music Teacher's Helper makes it easy to see each payment you receive, and every expense you have in your studio. Whether you're charging students for lessons, books, or recital fees, Music Teacher's Helper can track it all. You can either input the information manually, or set it once and forget it.

"When you buy sheet music, a new instrument, or other purchases for your studio, you can keep track of it for potential tax deductions. Setup recurring transactions for things like rent or subscriptions."

Automatic Invoicing

"We have created a revolutionary invoicing system, that automatically pulls from your calendar and other parts of the program to determine how much your students owe. Tell it how you want to charge your students, and it will generate an accurate invoice for you automatically.

Create invoices for all your students at once, each with their own unique charges. Or setup an automatic invoicing schedule so the invoices will actually create themselves every month (or however often you specify)! Customize invoices with your own logo.

Music Teacher's Helper can even create and e-mail the invoices directly to your students while you're sleeping."

Accept Credit Card Payments

"If you're tired of collecting checks every month and constantly running to the bank to make deposits, you might want to consider allowing your students to pay you by credit card. All that's required is a Paypal Business or Premier account, which is free to set up.

If you use this option, invoices you send from Music Teacher's Helper will have a link for your students to pay via Paypal. They can also log into your studio website and make the payment from there. Some teachers like to setup recurring payments, too, so that students never miss a payment again.

If you choose to link your Paypal account to Music Teacher's Helper through Paypal's IPN service, any payments made by your students through Paypal will automatically be entered into Music Teacher's Helper as well, so you won't have to do any of the data entry! You'll get an e-mail notifying you when you receive a payment, and that it's been entered into the system.

As with all credit card merchants, Paypal will take a small percentage of each payment, usually between 2-3% (View Paypal's transaction fees) – a small price to pay for the convenience and the time you'll save. Some teachers choose to increase rates slightly to compensate for the fees, and students are generally more than happy to pay a few extra bucks for the convenience."

Financial Reports

"It's a snap to see how much you're earning and spending with Music Teacher's Helper. This makes tax time a breeze, and helps make sure you don't have any money slipping through the cracks. Here are some of the financial reports you'll enjoy."

Income & Expense Report - see a breakdown of where your money is coming from and where it's going.
Earnings Report - see your studio growth over a period of time.
Students Owing Report - see how much each student owes you right now.
Mileage Report - see how many miles/kilometers you've traveled during a period.
Student Account Summary - see all lesson and billing history for a student or family.

The Music Teachers Helper's website helps you organize and be more efficient in each of these areas

Other Billing Features

Billing

Track Income and Expenses

Automatic Invoicing

Accept Credit Card Payments

Financial Reports

Other Billing Features

Lessons

Live Calendar

Automatic Lesson Reminders

Track Lesson Progress

Lending Library

Other Lessons Features

Website

Professionally Designed Themes

File Upload Area

Mass E-mail Your Students

Studio Announcements

Other Website Features

Music Teacher's Helper helps you Save time and money with an automated studio

(Pianos in a Row - Photo taken by Jerald M. Simon)

"Whether you teach piano or percussion, violin or voice, Music Teacher's Helper will save you time and money by automating and organizing your studio. Check out what it can do below, or sign up for a free trial and see for yourself!"

I'm honored to know Brandon and see what he has done to better help the musical world. The music community can be better prepared to teach with the resources it needs to improve the quality of the education our music students need. What a delight it is to see so many music teachers grow and learn. As we all continue to improve and do our part, we will be instruments in blessing the lives of many. Music has a wonderful effect on people. We have an enormous responsibility to do the best we can as music educators. I want to thank everyone who is teaching and doing their part. We are all musicians in the symphony of life. Keep playing. Don't stop doing what you are doing. It is making a difference and you can inspire and elevate so many people with your love of music. Keep it up!

Selections and Quotations taken from the Music Teacher's Helper Website (http://www.musicteachershelper.com)

Article written by Jerald M. Simon

Last Updated (Friday, 19 November 2010 22:25)