My Music Staff Reviews

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.

The best features are the automatic invoicing based on the calendar, the reminder texts and emails, the registration form and how I can put it on my website through Weebly, and the student management.

There is no way for two parents to each pay half of a bill for a student. I have worked around this by making a second "student" for the second parent to pay for. I also don't like how the invoices are specific enough and will just say "balance forward" instead of what the charge was. I wish I could customize the left sidebar to take out the features I don't use.

Being able to invoice and email in groups and invoice in groups. The customer support is ace. Always quick to reply and sort out any issues.

The calendar is a bit of a pain as you have to scroll to the top of the page each time to move back or forwards.

Overall ease of use. It's well organised, has a great facility for students and parents, and keeps our studio running without error (only our own human errors!). It was a breath of fresh air when we joined several years ago and it's been great to see the product grow and develop. Couldn't be without it.

1. That it doesn't integrate with Xero2. That new students can't see current availability and book themselves in.

I needed a program which would cater specifically for a music teacher’s needs. My favourite features are the attendance report, lessons notes (which can be emailed immediately after the lesson to the student and/or their parent) the calendar which keeps me organized all term, and the professional looking invoices.

Any issues I had initially have already been improved.

It makes scheduling and keeping track of payments a breeze. Everything is all in one place and generating reports is also simple. For the most part, it does more than I had expected/hoped.

For people who prefer having support via the phone, this is not a good option. There are many times that I wish I could just dial a number to get an answer. That being said, they respond quickly via email. There is also a learning curve with this software that might be a barrier to some.

I have been using My Music Staff for a couple of months now. My favorite feature is the auto billing from the calendar. Students can change times or cancel lessons themselves which eliminates a lot of the administrative work. I love that I can email students or parents or both seamlessly. I use the online resources feature to upload audio or video customized for each student. It's easy to email notes to parents or students and also maintain private notes for myself. I also like that there is an easy check box for when students pay at the lesson. Just check the box, no need to enter a payment. I like the setting that a cancelled lesson automatically creates an open 'makeup' spot in my schedule that ask students can see and claim.

I offer tiered pricing for families. So the first student in a family is full priced, the 2nd is discounted, and the 3rd is more discounted than the 2nd. There isn't a good way to do that on this site. I can assign different prices per student, but if the 'first' child in the family cancels, but child 2 and 3 still do lessons, I have to manually adjust the price. I also don't like that the invoicing shows a balance owed all month long, although it does adjust as needed. For example, my students pay at the end of the month. But on the first of the month, it shows that they owe for the full month. They won't get an invoice until the end of the month, But if they (or I) check their account before then, I would prefer to see a current balance for lessons taken, not lessons taken and scheduled.

Hard to choose! I depend on so many facets of MyMusicStaff every day. Perhaps Scheduling is the best aspect, but Accounting is near the top. The calendar is super easy for ongoing daily lesson scheduling and is accessible to parents for canceling and rescheduling, with no attention from me required. I even schedule available make-up slots and parents make us of them.
Accounting is a huge time-saver! Every detail is there and doesn't take much time to comprehend. Ongoing lesson rates, special rates for certain families, automatic or nonautomatic billing, make-up credits--they really know what a music teacher needs!

Not much of a minus, but I'd like a little more flexibility with attendance reports. But I have worked out a way to get what I need.

I especially like the attendance notes. It informs our students (parents) what is to be expected at the next lesson. This is especially good for parents who are not particularly musical, to remind the child specifics of the practice material.

I also like the auto reminder sent for next day classes. This gives the student an opportunity to cancel class in time to qualify for a make up class. And, if a class had been verbally cancelled, but the teacher did not log it as such, (s)he is reminded that the class has been cancelled.

I wish there was an entry to list the specific instrument being taught at each class. We can list the instrument in the student information section, but it'd be more convenient if it were right there on the calendar. Many instructors teach multiple disciplines and knowing which is being taught at a given class would make it easier for us to book the right room and/or the right substitute.

Very user friendly for both parents and employees (we are a multi teacher school)
Love how responsive the MMS team is, both with constant updates to the program (and often based on client requests) to attentive support when there are issues.
Price point can't compare to some of the alternatives. I love that it is based on the number of teachers, so doesn't penalize us for getting more students (ie. being a successful business!) like a per/student rate.

It has a lot of functionality with reports that is not so intuitive. Accessing the data in ways that may be useful to a business can often mean trying lots of different reports and tweaking the settings slightly to get the right report.
We accept payments in studio via Payd and have to enter these manually into MMS. Would love some way to connect these, or to be able to accept canadian debit cards (require chip readers).

The ease of use to link with pupils.
With the ability to create lessons notes as you teach and email them for assistance with practice is a great benefit for both teacher and pupil.
The Lesson reminders.
the lesson reminder have a two fold benefit in that they reduce the number of no shows for lessons and ensure that pupils remember to let you know if they cannot attend to allow you the scope to offer other lessons to them and to fill their slot; it also gets a lot of correspondence to you in advance of the lesson so that you can have other material ready for the lesson in advance.
Invoicing.
This has proven to be a very reliable package for invoicing.
Student records.
A very easy way of keeping all notes up to date and to hand.
Library facility
I haven't had much call to use this yet but on the occasion that I have lent music out it is an invaluable way of keeping track of who has what.
Blog
This is an area that is looking to be exploited later in the year.

I have not really found any down sides to the software.

As I began taking on more students a couple of years ago and I started to struggle with scheduling and and billing, we started looking around and found My Music Staff, it saved my studio. We are now at 32 students and we have 3 instructors, without the ease of My Music Staff I would never be able to schedule and bill families appropriately or keep track of payroll. I love the ease of looking up addresses, families inputting their own information and being able to keep track of assignments within the program. The reminder emails and texts are awesome for busy families and the automatic billing feature is amazing so that I don't have to calculate and send out invoices to families.

Nothing really, some of the setting are buried a little bit, but everything is very logical.

Before, I was planning everything through Google Calendar which was fine with a small studio. As I grew, I needed to juggle more students and this was a shift necessary to look more professional. I felt so organized once moving to MMS. I love there is a login system for the parents to use, whenever they do use it, which makes me seem professional. My most used features are student management, calendar, attendance, and invoicing.

A direct way for parents to register for specific events. I don't like needing to direct them to login, go to calendar, find the event, then click to register. Seems too much work for them and they'll never do it.

What I like most about My Music Staff is the Lesson Notes function as it enables seamless continuity from lesson to lesson with each student, which, to me, is most the most important aspect of teaching.

As each feature in My Music Staff is likeable in its own way, the only reason why I like the Expense Tracker the least is because I use different accounting software and, therefore, have no need for it.