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.

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.