My Music Staff

It covers every single part of running a successful teaching practice. It takes care of my scheduling, it streamlines weekly practice assignments, it has a practice log for students, it lists repertoire completed and ongoing with performance dates, it keeps my accounting in order, it makes my income tax return easy, it gives out student tax receipts, it lists student names and addresses so families can contact each other if they need to exchange lessons, it handles lesson cancellation and make-up lesson registration without my having to be involved, it makes emailing notices a piece of cake, and......... I could go on and on. It even has features that I hadn't thought of to make my life as a piano teacher easier and also better organized. Unlike any other online service I've ever used, whenever there's a question or problem, the support staff answer and solve it within 2 or 3 days. They have even redesigned parts of the program when I've raised a problem. The staff at My Music Staff are dedicated to providing us with the best program possible, and review and update features on an ongoing basis. Without My Music Staff, I couldn't possible have taken on the high number of hours of teaching I now enjoy. Time spent on administration is now minimal, and I can spend my time doing what I really love - teaching!

Very small little things that I haven't even bothered to message in. One is that the assignment notes are linked to the name of the event, so when for example Lucy comes for an extra lesson, which is ID'd as an extra lesson, the practice notes will transfer from Lucy's last extra lesson, not from her last regular lesson. Similar thing happens when the student comes for a make up lesson - the notes that come up are from their last make up lesson, which might have been six months ago. I have to go in to the last regular lesson, copy, then back to the make up lesson and paste. Then do the same thing again to transfer the notes from the make up lesson to the NEXT regular lesson. The second thing that comes to mind is that students cannot enter their repertoire themselves, unless it's already on the studio list of repertoire. But I can see that it's probably been changed this way to rule out mistakes the student might make (spelling, opus number, length of piece etc.) I can't think of anything else. Oh yes - I don't really like having to go to Facebook if I have a question. I preferred getting an answer from the support staff, rather than multiple suggestions as to how I might.......... from other users.

I love the fact that my studio found this software. I have been given the responsibility of being the studio manager for a piano studio in California. I love the calendar feature where you can filter different teachers, studios or student lists. My organization runs three studios, one in California and two on the East coast. I love the ability of emailing straight from the application. It allows me to keep in touch with all students, parents and teachers at any time.

Sometimes, the technology does get hard sometimes and the scheduling portion can have glitches and put scheduling in the wrong place. Sometimes I have trouble organizing with the app. There are issues with scheduling conflicts at the studio when the times don’t overlap. That could stand to have some updating.

I like the amount of customisation. The calendar Sync. The website functionality and the Families & Invoicing section.

It is not user friendly for the public. It is far too complicated for my business. For example if someone wants to sign up for a course they have to go through Student Portals. Log In. Emails. Setting it up. Saving it to the Homepage. Then they cant pay immediately they have to wait for an invoice and then log in again and finally enter their bank details. I am im discussions of discontinuing with this software. While it has great benefits for Admin it really is too complicated for the public and inviting new customers in. Therefore it is not for us in the long term.

Easy to set up and use, inexpensive, packed with features, does everything I need to keep my small piano studio running smoothly! I don't use all of the features, but what I do use is fantastic.

Sometimes the space to enter lesson notes freezes up or glitches out. Aside from that, I haven't found anything glaring.