My Music Staff

MMS is my Business Assistant

Vorteile:

Scheduling with family portal; auto-invoicing and autopay; automated reminders; options for to host with MMS or embed MMS features on your website.

Nachteile:

I’ve grown with MMS // I started using it almost right from their beginning. I was looking for something to help manage my growing student list and have stuck with them through some growing pains as they’ve vastly updated over the last 2yr (was on the beta testing team!).

My Music Staff is like having a staff!

Kommentare: It's a good studio management tool. My parents don't take advantage of the features that are available to then, but, that's okay. Mine is a small studio.

Vorteile:

The schedule is easy to set up and manage. Tracking attendance and sending lesson notes is straightforward and easy. Communicating with families is also easy. Invoicing is straightforward, but doesn't allow me to set up a percentage per student for the ach fees I have to charge for those students whose lessons are paid for under a state education program.

Nachteile:

Bank fees for those students who pay online are easy. Other fees, especially those that are percentages of the invoice are not accommodated, subsequently, I literally have to manual create invoices for 85% of my students every month.

Looks great on the website, doesn't it?

Kommentare: I was SO excited to find this service. But I've been SO disappointed in them, and can't wait to transfer everything to a new service later this year.

Vorteile:

MMS promises to handle all of your music studio needs, from scheduling to billing to communications, and indeed, it has modules for all of those plus repertory records, lending library management, downloadable/playable resources, and even mileage. So if you want software that LOOKS like it does everything, you've found it!

Nachteile:

None of these modules seem actually to have been tested by actual music teachers. Scheduling is ridiculously complicated, especially when students want to cancel or reschedule. Billing leads to a minimum of five confused emails from parents each month because of MMS's bizarre policies regarding past-due payments and account balances. Emails cannot be sent to students and parents simultaneously—they're automatically BCC'ed, leading to confusing message threads and miscommunications. Even the lesson notes and blog features are poorly handled—they don't auto-save, so an accidental tab closure can lead to the loss of an entire lesson's worth of notes, and formatting is bizarrely non-standard. (Don't even think about cutting and pasting.)

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: 17hats

Warum My Music Staff gewählt wurde: Looking for an "all-in-one" solution

Zuvor genutzte Software: FreshBooks und Acuity Scheduling

Gründe für den Wechsel zu My Music Staff: Liked the user interface better.

Amazing software, could use a few updates to bring it into the 2020's

Kommentare: Overall I am happy with MMS, specially the invoicing and scheduling features. Customer support is top notch as well and this alone keeps me as a customer.

Vorteile:

I have been using MMS since 2020 when my whole studio went online. Their customer support is fantastic and their team is always available to talk over the phone. Emails are responded to quickly and they always have a solution for my issues.My favorite feature is the auto-invoicing and auto-payment. The website has saved me countless hours of invoice logging, tracking down payments, and scheduling since I can automate everything.I schedule all my lessons through MMS and It's nice that my students can launch their Zoom lesson right from the portal.

Nachteile:

I really want to make MMS my ultimate hub for my students to access all their materials and video lessons, as well as send me videos and track their practice. However, I think this is where MMS is really lacking. The last couple of updates have been great but the system still feels like it is stuck in the early 2000's. I'm fairly techy so I haven't had a problem figuring out how to navigate MMS, but students and parents who are not techy at all really struggle, so these features end up being neglected by them. I really struggle to get any of my studio members to use the practice log and send me videos of their practice because it's just not intuitive or easy to access. The Online Resources is an improvement, but even then the filing system is really clunky. I would love to especially see an update of how files are delivered to students. Right now you can email students to notify them that a video or file has been added to their Online Resources. However, when they click the file link in their email they are taken to their home page and not directly to the file I have shared with them.

In Betracht gezogene Alternativen: Fons

Gründe für den Wechsel zu My Music Staff: The price was the best and it works just as well as some of the more expensive options out there.

Highly recommend!

Kommentare: Overall, I am so glad we made this shift to MMS, we have been able to focus on interacting with our employees more about teaching music and less about the business of it. It has freed our time up to work on growing our business.

Vorteile:

We have cut our time spent tracking attendance and therefore invoicing by 75% It’s really easy to use and customer service has been impeccable. They are quick to respond and helpful when they do. Plus there is a Facebook group available for community - other users of MMS where often answers are found with a quick search in the group

Nachteile:

I do wish there was an app currently available, but the website functions great on my mobile device in the meantime.