If you own a studio such as a gym, martial arts, dance, yoga, or some other business, you need studio software. Having it in your toolbox can help your company go from chaotic to much more organized. Like the internet and cell phones, it’s one of those things that once you start using, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.
In this introduction to dance studio software post, we’re breaking it all down. We’ll tackle the following questions:
- What Is Dance Studio Software?
- How Exactly Can It Help Me In My Business?
- What Is The Best Dance Studio Software Available? (Spoiler alert! It’s The Studio Director)
- How Much Will It Cost To Use It?
- Do I Need Anything Special For It On My Computer?
- How Fast Can I Start Using It?
What Is Dance Studio Software?
Like it sounds, dance studio software is software that helps you in running your dance studio business more efficiently. However, it’s so much more than a product made just for dance studios. It can also be used in any business model that has classes with instructors held at scheduled times, as well as events and inventory to manage. Think piano or guitar instruction, swim classes and martial arts instruction, tutoring, and more.
Good dance studio software can work with a wide variety of businesses to aid their owners with things like:
- Onboarding new clients
- Scheduling classes and instructors
- Creation of student progress reports, and distribution of those reports to students
- Recital or event management
- Inventory management
- Communication via email and SMS with students, potential clients, partners, etc…
How Exactly can it Help me in my Business?
Until you actually know the specifics of how dance studio software can aid you in your business, it’s understandable that everything said to this point is just talk. Here are just a few examples that will show you see why this is one monthly budget item you really need:
Billing
This is a necessary evil in every business. You know that you have to bill your clients, and receive their payments in order to pay your own bills, pay your employees, and hopefully have a little leftover for yourself and the growth of your business.
The process of manually filling out invoices, and sending them off is time-consuming enough. Then, when you add the countless hours of chasing the payments for those invoices, before you know it you need a full-time office manager for your accounts receivable alone.
What good software does, is handle this automatically for you. Let me repeat that, and let it really sink in – you don’t have to do anything extra. It’s all handled for you.
How nice would it be to simply add classes and instructors into a digital platform, and have everything else taken care of without you having to lift a finger? The right dance studio software allows your students to enroll in the classes you’ve added, and pay for those classes online.
You don’t have to remember who owes what or keep track of due dates either. It will even let them know if their payment information needs to be updated instantly. No more chasing faulty or delinquent accounts! No more awkward conversations telling Jenny’s parents that they need to pay for ballet for her to continue classes.
While you’re teaching a class, handling negotiations with vendors, or even sleeping at home – all the billing is being taken care of on your behalf. This alone is worth having dance studio software because it saves you from needing an office manager, or worse – having to do all the billing yourself!
Communicating with Customers and Potential Customers
To effectively communicate with your customers could also easily become another full-time job. You’re supposed to listen actively, address concerns quickly, check in regularly, follow up often, and the list goes on and on. Yes, you want to stay in touch with your customers because that shows them that you care. However, there’s no reason it should become more of a chore, than an enjoyable way to keep in touch.
That’s where good dance studio software comes in. While using it, you can create a variety of communication templates such as:
- Confirmation letters for class enrollments
- Invoices
- Progress reports
- Anniversary and birthday greetings
- Marketing campaigns
Imagine having templates like these ready to go, and fire off when needed. You can create drip campaigns for everything from onboarding new clients, to marketing materials to drum up a new business. You do the work once at the beginning, and then repeat the process with just a few clicks, saving you countless hours while still interacting on the regular with all of your clients and potential customers.
Organizing all your files Digitally, and Instantly
Going digital may be good for the planet, but this is about so much more than going green. Using a digital platform to manage your studio will save you time and money.
First, you won’t need to spend as much on printed paperwork – all of your filings can be handled digitally. No more rushing to the office supply store for ink and paper because it’s all online. Every record that your business needs is all available anywhere with an internet connection. Anything to boost your bottom line is a win, right?
Beyond the saving of money though, is the saving of all the time you used to spend looking for paperwork. For example, let’s say you need to call up how much Sally from the Tuesday tap class owes on her tuition for whatever reason. With a few clicks, you can pull up her account, and have a full record of all bills paid, amounts due, how long she has been a student, what her progress has been like, etc…
If you have a new student, you can enter their information once into the platform, and practically everything else takes care of itself. The information is categorized and named as well, so it’s now a searchable record you can pull up anytime you need it.
Your student can now log onto their own account, and register for classes, learn about upcoming events, and more. And, you’ll have access to everything without ever having to spend time physically filing a single piece of paperwork!
To take it a step further, let’s say for some reason you need to access your liability and insurance paperwork for lawsuit tax purposes or some other reason. Using good dance studio software, it should all be available via a simple search in seconds.
When you use the software you save time and money because you are streamlining the process on so many things.
What is the Best Dance Studio Software Available?
We feel that The Studio Director is the best dance studio software on the market today. We might seem a little biased here, but we have a good reason.
We created The Studio Director to fulfill all the needs we felt should be addressed. Where we saw things missing in the market, we added them to our own. What we ended up with was a unique platform that acts as your silent partner and 24/7 employee, helping you perform all the tasks you need to on a daily basis.
The Studio Director also offers the best support there is! In fact, it’s unlimited for our users. Why? Because we want you to be able to use the program any time you need it and have access to someone in the event you have any trouble with it.
Our exceptional support includes:
- Unlimited calls to our support staff that is always friendly, and will walk you through whatever you need
- Web-based or e-mail support anytime
- Free training to teach you everything you need to know about how to use the software
- Automatic backups of all your records nightly
- Free upgrades that are implemented in real-time anytime we update the software
- A free archive CD of your studio’s data if you need to request it for any reason
Basically, any standard support you need to help you use our software – we’ll provide it so that you can get back to running your business more efficiently.
How much will it cost to use it?
Not nearly as much as you might think! Pricing plans begin at less than $40 per month for up to 100 students, and credit card processing can be added on for just $30 per month plus merchant fees.
You can be rest assured, this pricing will cost you significantly less than the price you would pay to bring on an office manager full time when you consider their hourly salary and benefits costs. You can learn more about our flexible pricing here.
Do I need anything special for it on my computer?
Nope! All you really need is an internet connection and a web browser, honestly. The Studio Director is a web-based application hosted on a secured internet server. Therefore, all you need to do is log on to the platform via a web browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Safari, and you’ll have instant access to all the files your business needs to keep track of.
There are two huge benefits to the way we’ve set up our platform:
- Access it from anywhere with an internet connection. This makes going on vacation much less frightening to you as the business owner.
- Get instant access to any updates to the platform because you don’t have to download or upload anything
How fast can I start using it?
You can start using The Studio Director as early as today. Simply fill out the order now form, and one of our friendly support staff will contact you within minutes to get you up and running. Upon purchase, it takes just minutes to set it up and customize it for your studio’s needs.
You can configure the platform to your studio including:
- the users you add and what your users’ roles are (for security purposes)
- what you would like in your drop-down menus – you can even add your own student fields to our forms
- class tuition rates as well as payment options for recurring billing
- your studio’s rules and policies
- your studio’s branding and logos
The best part is, our staff will help you customize the dance studio software to match your business’s needs for no additional fee with your initial setup.
Our main goal is to help your studio thrive
According to Inc.com, the sad truth is, “96 percent of businesses fail within 10 years.” One of the reasons that these businesses fail, per the article, is because they don’t have control of their business and financial future. The Studio Director helps give you back some of that control.
When you use our dance studio software, you will always know your numbers. You’ll know to the penny how much it takes to keep your business’s lights on and bills paid. You will also know which classes are the most popular and have easy access to your students to get better feedback as to what they like and what they don’t. Much of the guesswork that many businesses deal with on a regular basis gets eliminated. To put it in a nutshell – everything feels a little easier in your business when you use our software.
We don’t want to see you become another devastating statistic. The Studio Director’s number one goal is to help studio owners not just survive, but thrive. We believe there is no better dance studio software out there to help you meet and exceed your business goals, streamline your systems and processes, and boost revenues all the way around.
What are you waiting for? Try The Studio Director today!
We know that in this post we have made a lot of bold claims. Big promises are only as good as the results that back them up. Rather than roll out a bunch of customer testimonials here, although we do have plenty, we think the best way to show you just how amazing our dance studio software is would be to let you try it today.
Put The Studio Director to the test. You can request a DEMO and use all the features of an example site that has been preconfigured with example studio data. We’re confident you’ll like The Studio Director so much, you’ll wish you had purchased it sooner!
