How do you collect payments in your studio?

There are many options… and even studio owners that have a good solution seem to be shopping around for a better one.

The choice can be tough… and today I’m going to help make that choice a little bit easier.

1> Calendar-Based Solutions
Examples: My Music Staff, Music Teacher’s Helper, Acuity

These solutions connect your billing and calendaring.
Pros:

• You kill two birds with one stone… solve both your calendar and billing solutions in one place
• Fees are average for the industry
• These services can send out auto-invoices

Cons:

• Mixing your billing and calendaring can get tricky sometimes
• These solutions have difficulty adjusting to “weird” spots in your schedule… like you going on vacation
• Learning-curve: Medium to difficult (I had a client that was pulling her hair out over setting up Acuity for the first time)

2> Invoicing Only
Examples: Quickbooks, PayPal, Freshbooks, a billion others
These solutions are simple, no fuss, and focused entirely on payments only. I personally use Quickbooks Online.
Pros:

• Easy to learn, fairly straightforward
• Fees are average for the industry / 3%
• Some solutions can auto-create your invoices for you
• Some solutions (Quickbooks for example) can batch send your invoices for you
• Learning curve: Easy to medium difficulty

Cons:

• Puts you at the mercy of whether your clients want to pay you… you can send someone an invoice 100 times, but they don’t have to pay it
• You would still need a separate solution for calendaring (I don’t personally mind this, I like them being separate, but some don’t)

3> Auto-Payment Solutions
Example: Coinhop
I only wrote one example here because I’ve never seen an auto-pay solution have such a low fee. I’ve personally used it for my mobile lesson program and I know the app designer.

You can sign up for Coinhop for free here

Pros:

• Payment automatically gets taken out on the first of the month
• 1% transaction fee (yes, really!)
• Your client can sign up by text or email
• Perfect for studios with flat tuition
• Learning curve: Easy (super easy interface and sign up flow for both you and your students)

Cons:

• If you have to adjust tuition, you will have to manually adjust it
• I can’t really think of any others!

4> Other App-Based Solutions or Bank Payments
Example: Venmo, Zelle, BillPay, Square, Ca$h, Facebook Payments, etc.
These are very well and widely known. I don’t think they need to be described!
Pros:

• Most people use at least one of these. They are widely trusted so it’s not difficult to get your student to sign up for them
• Average transaction fees / 3%

Cons:

• Most do not offer auto-payments or they are easy to opt out of
• Be careful that you don’t say yes to parents if they ask you to use a different app: “Oh, I don’t use Zelle, can you use Venmo?”... Before you know it you will be using a dozen different payment transfer apps and it will be a nightmare to keep track of.

5> ACH Payments (What I Use Primarily)
Example: Quickbooks Online
ACH is a direct transfer from one bank account to another. Be careful about ACH, though. There are many shady players in the space. And, only a few big players (like Quickbooks) actually offer it. However, if you use a solution like this it can save you THOUSANDS per year. And… no… Quickbooks isn’t paying me to say this!
Pros:

• It is $.50 per transaction. Period. Doesn’t matter how big the transaction is.
• See above. How can you say no to that? I dropped my yearly transactions costs from $4000 to less than $400.

Cons:

• It is difficult to do both auto-pay and ACH. To date, I have not found someone who offers auto-transfer like that… so you have to do invoices.
• I can’t think of any others.

CONCLUSION

These are the major players in the studio payments space.

What’s your favorite app or payment solution?

Did I miss one? Is there a pro or con that I’ve missed? Did I make a mistake on the details?

I would love to hear from you… I’m getting ready to write a blog post about this, and I will use what you tell me to make this one of the most comprehensive resources available on the web for music studios!

Have a great day!

Very best,
Daniel

PS> This is how you get paid… but are you making enough? Have you reached your financial goals?

Right now, I’m running pre-enrollment for the October Studio Marketing Masterclass… the training where I help studio owners rapidly increase their enrollment and rates.

If you’d like to start the training for free, just click here.