November 4 Holiday and Billing Update

 Good evening!

I want to thank everyone for the kind words outpouring of sympathy during my mom's final days and after her passing.  It meant a lot to me, and makes me appreciate all of you even more.  I know I have the most wonderful students, and they have some wonderful parents!

My husband and I have started working updating our spreadsheet to reflect the lessons I missed while I was away.  If you paid in advance for lessons in October, please know that you will receive credit for any missed lessons on your November invoice.  Also, in the chaos that was trying to schedule lessons through August and September, we discovered an error in our spreadsheet that caused a few of you to be billed for fewer lessons than you received in the July-September timeframe.  We are currently working on a statement that will give you (and us) a full accounting of all lessons and payments since July so that you can double check it for any mistakes.  For most of you, this will not cause any changes, and we apologize for any inconvenience it may cause those whom it does affect.  We thought about just sending the detailed statement to just those few that we knew were affected, but we thought that it might be better to give everyone an opportunity to look at everything to make sure it looks right to you, and that will simplify our billing process.  As I'm sure you can relate, simple seems like a good option right now!  =)

Depending upon your school, you may have a holiday on either November 4, or November 3 and 4. My plan is to see all of my students that week, and so will be rescheduling as needed to accommodate that.  If I need to reschedule your child's lesson that week, I will be in touch.

I hope everyone has had a great weekend, and I look forward to seeing all of you this week!

And, again, thanks for everything!

Welcome New Flute Students!

Good Evening!

I so excited to start lessons with your child!  Learning flute and music can be such an exciting and fun adventure.  Thanks for letting me share this time with them!

This is my blog that I use for keeping in touch with all of you about general lesson information.  Posting all of it here makes the emails and texts you receive from me shorter and to-the-point, which if you're like me and reading everything on a phone, I hope you appreciate.  This particular post is just to introduce a few things to you so you know what to expect going forward.

First, you should know that my husband, Paul, helps me with this blog and with my billing.  So, if you email or text me with a question about your invoice, he is probably the one who will respond.  He started helping me with this a few years ago so I could focus on managing my schedule, giving your child the best possible lesson experience, and giving you the feedback you want about your child's progress.

We used try to always bill lessons for the month in advance.  Billing in advance is the common practice for lessons, and most school districts' private lesson guidelines expect that.  I understand the reasoning behind those guidelines, but over the years, I have found that billing in advance causes confusion in some circumstances, especially if we are not able to get the invoices out exactly on the first of the month, and is completely unworkable in the summer when most students don't take lessons on a regular weekly schedule.  So, for the time being, I will be billing at the end of the month.  That means I will expect full payment promptly after I send the invoice.  I am very flexible, however, in making payment arrangements with you if you prefer to pay week-to-week, on the 20th, at the end of the month, etc.  Just let me know what payment arrangements work for you, and we'll make it work.

Flexibility is one of my hallmarks when it comes to many aspects of scheduling and billing.  Over 20 years of experience teaching lessons in schools has taught me to expect the unexpected.  There are always unexpected interruptions in our schedule. It used to be fire drills and picture days, but we often have unexpected testing days and the like anymore.  Of course, we still have doctors appointments and the usual life-happens type of stuff.  So, I plan with flexibility in my schedule, and will rearrange things to make sure your child gets a lesson every week to the best of my ability.  That means, occasionally, I will switch your child's lesson day to make that all work.  I do keep track of each lesson your child takes, and then on the invoice the following month, you will see an accounting of the dates your child received lessons.  If, for some reason, your child receives more or less lessons than what you have paid for, you will see a credit or charge for that on the next invoice.

I accept various forms of payment, and I mention those on the invoices.  I have a blog post that covers all of the different payment options here: https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/04/how-to-pay-for-lessons-in-remote.html

I hope this helps you understand the billing and payments.  Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or concerns.

And, as always, thanks for letting me share my love of music and flute with your child.