As many teachers are considering what it may look like to run their studio (temporarily) online, one topic that may be necessary and quite urgent is making the move to online payments.
If you’re still taking checks from parents and worried about making the switch, rest assured, while it may take a little leg work setting everyone up, your future self won’t regret it.
Taking online payments will save you time manually depositing checks, but the payment portal I want to share with you today will save you money compared to 90% of the other online payment services.
(P.S. That number was arbitrary. Basically, the fees are cheaper than anything else I’ve found out there.)
Coinhop has been my payment portal of choice for several years now. I hope the reasons why I love it will help you as you’re considering online payment options for your studio.
Please note that Piano Pantry is enrolled in the Referral Program with Coinhop, which simply means that if you sign-up, I will get a small commission without it costing you any extra.
Making the Switch
When I started my studio in 2011, online payments were becoming popular, but I wasn’t ready to get on the bandwagon. Even though I was a Millennial and young professional, I wasn’t willing to forego the 2.0-3.0% fees involved as I was just starting my business.
Then I read this article on The Free IMT website…Why I Switched To Automatic Payments…Finally!
Kyle easily convinced me in his post that it was time to move to automatic payments and introduced me to a website/app called Coinhop. (At the time, it was called Skeddle.)
What Makes Coinhop So Great
Unlike PayPal, Stripe, or other online payment services, whose fees are around 2.5% (plus a transaction fee), Coinhop only charges 1% plus $0.30 per transaction.
(Some portals even make the sender – not the receiver – pay the extra fee, and I wasn’t interested in passing the expense for convenience onto my families.)
Coinhop keeps it simple. It has both a mobile app and a web-based client, so you can access it on your desktop.
Here’s the process:
- You create an account and connect the bank account you want your money deposited into.
- Add clients’ names by email or mobile and set their monthly fee and how often it should be taken out (monthly, weekly, or every 2 weeks).
- Coinhop has pre-written instructions for you to email or text your client directly from the app (which you can edit to your liking).
- Clients receive the invitation email/text with instructions to download the app and connect their bank accounts.
- Coinhop will verify their account by depositing a few cents into their account.
- Coinhop will let you know once their account has been verified. You’re all ready to go!
- Payments are extracted from all of your client’s accounts on the first day of the month. You will get an email notification.
- Within ten days max, you receive one payment from Coinhop (minus the small fee).
- If at any time you need to pause their billing (such as if they don’t take lessons in the Summer), you can “pause” their billing and then hit “resume” at any time without having to go through the connection process again.
The interface is very user-friendly and self-explanatory. I’ve had almost no problems at all with their setup.
I have encountered small issues once or twice when students’ bank accounts weren’t connecting properly. It wasn’t even an issue, though, because of Coinhop’s excellent customer service. They promptly communicated with me directly, and it was resolved quickly.
Tuition Payments – A Few More Details
All my students who pay monthly are set up for automatic payments through Coinhop.
Since I’m sharing details on how I manage tuition, I wanted to go ahead and give you (as Paul Harvey would say) “the rest of the story.”
Coinhop isn’t all I use.
In the olden days, when I was taking check payments only, I used an Excel spreadsheet like a check register and simply recorded all the payments.
Not only did I keep a master check register page, but each family had an individual spreadsheet tab in that same file, and I would record their fees.
I’ve always been dead set on presenting my business in as professional of a way as I can. One day it suddenly felt like it was time to step up the professionalism of my tuition payments.
It pushed me over the edge when a couple of families asked for receipts, and I had to figure out how to make one manually in a professional-looking way.
Enter My Music Staff.
My Music Staff
This program had been on my radar for a couple of years, so when it was time to make the move, I knew where I wanted to take my business.
In my studio, families can choose to pay their tuition either:
- By the year (one payment for the school year term)
- By the semester (two payments for the school year term)
- By the month (10 payments from August-May for the school year term fee)
(Summer lessons are optional, so the fee for June/July is separate and made in one payment.)
While My Music Staff allows you to connect to online payment systems like Stripe and PayPal, I was still not excited about paying those rates.
So…
I pay the $12.95 per month (plus a small international fee because they’re from Canada) for My Music Staff simply to manage my studio, including student and family details, create professional invoices and receipts, and take new student leads using their waiting list form widget on my website. (I’ll write about that again, but for now, read it from Nicola Canton here.)
If they pay by the year or semester, they can pay by check (I don’t mind this because it happens all at once and only twice a year.), and they get a professional receipt emailed to them.
If they pay by the month, they must set up via Coinhop.
Done.
Easy.
Make the move.
You can do it!
Are you ready to do this? Sign up to get started with Coinhop now!
What are the options if the amount differs for a month, like for participating in Student Achievement Testing or for books? I know teachers handle these expenses differently.
You can edit what will come out the next month if you need to include additional fees one month, but then you will need to go back in again that fee processes and change it back to the regularly recurring payment.
So are you inputting payments directly into MyMusicStaff? Or are you still using a spreadsheet to track student accounts?
I only use My Music Staff for invoicing and tracking payments for those that are paying annually or by semester (the latter of which I no longer offer as an option). If they pay by the month, I don’t even track it in my music staff. I don’t need to track it there for tax purposes because we use Quicken to track all of our income for tax reporting.