Private teachers!! How do you keep your books??

[Dean]

Hello all. I have decided to stop teaching at my local music store for a variety of reasons. I have room in my home, and have started teaching here.


My students' parents, for the most part, find it more convenient to pay me a month in advance. I agree.

But, I was wondering if any of you use a particular planner (or better yet, a planner SOFTWARE) to keep your books--you know, so you can record when your students came, when they missed, the balance left in their lesson payments, etc...

I have been using Outlook, but so far I havent liked the interface too well--was looking for a better solution...

Thanks!

[TonyTuba]

http://www.palm.com/us/software/desktop/

the palm desktop software is easy. I use it with colors and everything. I dont have a plam PDA anymore, it is broken....dont need it anyways.

t

[CJ Krause]

yup

[MaryAnn]

Back when I did this, it was before computers. I had to pay $400 for a basic used answering machine. It was huge and had two cassette tapes in it.

I did the month-at-a-time pay ahead, with a 24 hour cancel policy. However, there was a caveat that if they had "excessive" cancellations I would assume they were not serious about learning the instrument and would replace them in the schedule. I would explain that I was doing this to make a living, and if they cancelled three out of four times, I needed someone who would come regularly. I rarely had to cancel myself but applied the same 24 hour policy as for them; usually they had at least a week's notice.

I used a week-at-a-glance 9X12 appt planner for everything; it worked fine and all the data was in the same place. I agree with Bloke that computers and electronic gizmos can barf and kill your entries and then you are up a creek. I suppose if your house burns down and destroys your appt planner you are up a creek too, but it's a much bigger creek.

MA, who also prefers manual windows and door locks in the car, but who doesn't have them now. Can't even get in the hatch with the key, have to hit the stupid fob button 2X in a row.

[MartyNeilan]

I used an Excel spreadheet, one per year for three years. I saved it in two different places on the computer (in case I screwed it up) AND emailed a copy of it regularly to a Yahoo email account, in case my mirrored harddrive system somehow crashed and the data was unrecoverable. I also burned a CD of all important documents every few months. I also use a separate Excel spreadsheet for gigs including driving distances, names, and addresses.

Marty "who currently has no private students and not one low brass player in his whole K-12 school system but a bunch of string players who think they deserve 100's for doing schlock" Neilan