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I'm wondering how much time other teachers here are spending on studio business matters outside of actual teaching time. Things like communicating with parents, researching new teaching resources, billing, etc.

Is your ratio 1:1, for example, in teaching to non-teaching duties, or more heavily weighted one way than the other?

With a full studio, I'm feeling more swamped now and less able to keep up with the behind-the-scenes work I had more time for when my studio was smaller. I would love to hear your ideas on what you've found works well in streamlining admin and such.

Maybe I just need a pep talk about giving myself permission to do less?

I find little time is spent on those things. I try not to communicate in any serious way most of the time. It would lead to more trouble. What are you saying to them? I suppose the bulk of communication is schedule changes and thanking them for money. I don't really spend much time looking into teaching resources. You set that up once for all time. I've been teaching the same thing for 26 years. And it still takes them forever to learn it all.

Are you getting them to all pay by e-transfer at the beginning of the month? Is the amount you charge the same every month on an averaged system of payment? From Sept to June is 40 lessons and there are ten months, so they pay for four lessons each month. I give a schedule of the number of lessons per month for each lesson day. Say a parent is later than the first week in paying; write them immediately. Otherwise things can get really drawn out. If they are late, ask if there is a better time in the week for them. This will get them to come on time.

Do you not enjoy all these little exchanges? You can talk to parents during the lesson time if you want fewer communication issues.

Hi Candywoman. Thanks for your reply.

To address a few of your comments:


Yes to the former. A lot of it regards schedule changes. I could cut that out by having a no make-up, no reschedule policy, I suppose, but I don't like that for a number of reasons.

Doing the swap list thing for any client willing to be on the list may be a possibility that would take the rearranging out of my hands.


I like to be somewhat familiar with new educational resources that come out by contemporary composers. It makes for a fast-paced week for me when my students are playing from a variety of sources, and it keeps me fresh as a teacher. Very few of my students, outside of my 4-year-olds, are using the exact same combination of method/supplements.

That said, one of the things I've considered is to change all my beginner-method students into one series for my own convenience. I've started a move in that direction with some of my students, hopping to the series I feel makes the most pedagogical sense, and may eventually get all my students into that method. But maybe not. (See previous paragraph.)


I am strongly considering this. It takes a fair amount of time recording payment information and endorsing checks from 26 families, most of whom pay by the month rather than for longer periods (covering multiple months with one check).


Yes. Annual rate divided by 12, regardless of the number of scheduled lessons in any given month.


I mostly do enjoy my exchanges with parents. One of the things I've found that lately feels so time-consuming, though, is that I've always picked up or ordered books and supplementary materials for students myself, then distributed the items and billed the parents. This weekend, after shopping for students who are close to finishing their current books, labeling who will receive what, adding up each student's amount and contacting those families, I am this close to adopting a "you-order-your-own-books" policy.

I have another 5-days-a-week job, too, non-music-related, besides teaching piano and don't want to spend any part of another Sunday on piano admin.

So I guess I'll ask this, to any of you who have had students/parents order the materials you want them to have for their studies:

What anecdotes / advice do you have regarding delegating the purchase of music to your clients? Do you have occasional or frequent problems with them acquiring their materials in a timely manner?

Also, if you've used swap lists to handle requests for schedule changes, how has that worked out generally?

Thanks in advance.

I didn't find it onerous to order books and supplies for students occasionally but I won't have done / needed to do it as much / as frequently as you. In general, students haven't taken unreasonable delays in ordering things themselves (or maybe the ones that did have long since left and thus I don't remember them). I could see how this chore could eat up substantial time and in the age of easy online shopping, have no issue putting this responsibility on students. If they waste time getting required materials, we would spend time working with whatever materials we do have, and if we're out of material, we may end up doing stuff that isn't in print, which may be useful or may be a waste of time, depending.

I didn't/don't do swap lists. It's just easier for students to ask me directly because I'll know if someone else is likely or not to be willing to exchange, or if I can add anyone to the beginning or end of a day's lesson schedule, or to a gap in the schedule, or to a time where the usual student will be absent. Now that I use two rented locations instead of my home studio, I have to be pretty strict about when and when not to allow rescheduling.

Thanks, mostlystrings. Just reading your first paragraph, about putting the book-buying responsibility on students, feels like a weight off my shoulders! Send the parents a list of where and what to order online, and that's it for me.

And very true about the ease of online shopping. I would imagine for parents that they would find it simpler to order online than to get to a music store and find the right materials. These days, unlike the pre-internet era, they have the online choice.

I do things similarly, though I have my students buy their basic lesson books, Snell Scale Skills books, and Dozen a Day (for the first two years, before they move into Snell). I just tell them which books to buy most of the time.

I am like you, though, in that I think it's important to give students access to a very wide range of music, across styles and eras. With this in mind, I keep a large lending library that each student pays $10/year for access to. All supplemental music my students use, more or less, is mine, and I have the option to lend it out whenever a student passes a previous song. This method probably takes less of my time than buying all those books for students would. However, it requires a different type of admin time expense: I need to keep my library organized and leveled as music comes in and goes out, and as my studio and my library have both grown, I have needed to play through everything and annotate the tables of contents, since many books contain a range of levels. Stuff like, "One of Clementi's best known sonatinas. C major. Level E4 (I just made this up; I'm not thinking of a particular piece)." That said, playing through all my music and annotating is something that's fun for me, and I do it when I feel like sitting down at the piano to play. I do the lower-level stuff on days when I'm really stressed out and just need to turn off my brain for a bit.

I also charge by the month and do not give discounts for missed lessons, and I also allow for makeup lessons if given advance notice, so texting is part of my admin time every week.

In addition, I am the festivals chair for my local chapter of NFMC, so while that isn't studio-specific, I have been spending volunteer hours on that this year.

And then there's billing and accounting, and time spent selecting and purchasing new music for my library.

That said, I probably spend 2-3 hours per week, on average, doing admin duties. I teach for about 10 hours per week, so it's maybe a 1:4 ratio of admin to teaching.

I struggle with this. I prefer to spend much more time on teaching than admin, but if I let the admin slide, then I get overwhelmed and stressed which can’t be great for the teaching. I try to stay on top of it by dedicating one morning a week fully to admin (I take care of any immediate scheduling tasks, but break the bigger stuff down week by week: 1st week of the month I do accounts reconciliation, 2nd week of the month is website/newsletter, 3rd is invoicing, 4th is materials, miscellaneous) then one hour before and after lessons is dedicated to curriculum, planning, emails, organization. I started this when my studio hit 47 students and I was having a hard time staying on top of it all. I like having a system! It really has helped.

I used to be a district auditions co-chair for our state affiliate of MTNA. The number and length of google group discussions about policies and procedures for implementation at the local level got out of hand and I resigned. It was too much for me!

Hope you're enjoying your volunteer time with NFMC, Brinestone! My volunteer chairing was fun until it wasn't.

That's a lot of students! Sounds like you have a good system that's working well for you. Thanks for sharing.