June and July Lesson Information

 Hi everyone!

Summer lessons are off to a great start!  It's so great to see so many students face-to-face, at last!  It's been so much fun, and the students really seem to enjoy it.  I can't wait for school to start and to see everyone again!

This month's invoice is coming to you at the end of the month, just as we discussed here on our May post.  Billing after the fact is not normal, and it means that it's really important that you pay the amount due as soon as possible.  If you do need more time, please let me know.

We will bill at the end of July again, and then in August, we will bill at the end for August and for September in advance at either the exact same time, or one right after the other.  We will be figuring that out between now and then, but I wanted to give you a heads up on that now.  Hopefully it won't be too confusing.

This month's invoice is organized differently than what we have been using before.  Hopefully it's easier to understand.  But we had to reduce the font size a bit to get all of the columns in the table to fit on the emailed invoices, so hopefully that won't cause any unexpected formatting issues.  Please let us know if you have any issues reading it.

I do have a few new students starting lessons this summer, so if that is you, here are a couple of my previous posts with important and helpful information about lessons:

• https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/10/welcome-new-flute-students.html
• https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/04/how-to-pay-for-lessons-in-remote.html

I look forward to seeing all of you in July.  If you are traveling, I wish you safe travels, and a Happy 4th of July!

May Reminders and the Plan for Summer Lessons

Here we are!  The final month of the school year!  I don't know about you, but I'm really looking forward to summer.  Hot weather, travel, and time for family!

As I mentioned on last month's post, I will be teaching this week and next as normally as STAAR testing will allow.  I am not planning on teaching any lessons the last two weeks of the month, but I will be available for those who want lessons those weeks.  If that's your child, and I haven't already set that up with you, just send me a message and we'll get them set up.

As promised, we (Paul, my husband who takes care of the billing, and I) have made some decisions and plans to help us avoid some of the issues we ran into last summer.  Hopefully this will work out for everyone.  Our experience has led us to see that we have two groups of summer-lesson-takers, which are:

1. Irregular Schedulers - those who take lessons sporadically, lets me know when it's convenient or when they're in town, and will make time for it when they have the chance - and...
2. Regular Schedulers - those who take lessons on a regular basis, almost every week or two, perhaps on the same day of the week each time

So before I go any further, let me say that either of these or somewhere in between are fine with me.  If we can get 10 lessons in for your child this summer - that's great, and I'll be here for them.  If your family is out-of-town and has lots of other activities planned, and you only get one lesson in all summer - I'll be here for them and will be glad to see them!  I do have a couple trips of my own planned, so we'll have to work around those, but I'm sure we can work out something for everyone.

Depending upon which category you fall into, we are going to handle the payments differently, though the invoicing will be pretty much the same.

End-of-Month Invoicing for Everyone

Instead of billing ahead like we do during the school year, we will send an invoice at the end of each month to everyone that will show the dates of any lessons and any amounts owed. It will essentially be the same as the invoice you have been receiving, but you will get after the lessons.  We will do this for June, July and August, but will then return to billing in advance in September.

Irregular Schedulers Payments

If we're not able to plan lessons ahead for several weeks, and we're just going to meet up when it works for both of us, then we ask that you pay for your child's lessons at the time the lessons are given.  I will send you a message either right before or right after your child's lesson letting you know the amount due for that lesson, and we would like to see that payment made the same day if at all possible.  The hope here is that we don't forget about the lesson or the payment between then and whenever the next lesson may be...or not.  =)

Regular Schedulers Payments

If we have a plan for lessons, and know with a fair amount of certainly which weeks, if not the exact day, your child will receive lessons, you may pay us once for all lessons for that month.  The difference for you is that we will not bill you until the end of the month.  You can pay for those lessons at any time before the end of the month, but we will expect payment in full for any lessons received at the time we send out the invoice, and before your child's next lesson.  This allows some flexibility in case of any interruptions, and keeps me from trying to guess what those interruptions may be at the beginning of the month.

I hope that all makes sense.  If you have any questions, or see any flaws with our plan, please feel free to reach out.

And thanks so much for bearing with us while we work out our system!  Billing was always a struggle for me, so having my husband help out has been wonderful.  But we know that building a system that works for us has led to some bumps in the road.  Hopefully having all that extra energy and focus for me to help your child has been worth it!

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

Lesson info for April, May, and looking forward to summer

 I hope everyone had a restful Spring Break!

As we enter the last couple of months of the school year, there are a few things we need to keep in mind, and some things to look forward to. 

STAAR testing and the related schedule interruptions are already upon us and will continue pretty much right through the end of school.  I do my best to keep track of the testing schedule, but as this last week's STAAR test showed, even the best plans can suffer unexpected difficulties.  I will do my best to try and work in as many of your child's lessons around their testing schedule, but it would be especially helpful if you could also give me a heads up when you know their test will interfere with their lesson, just to make sure I didn't miss it.

In May, I am planning on keeping my full schedule through the first two weeks, and then backing off the last two weeks as my youngest is graduating and I will be spending time preparing for those activities.  If you do want your child to have a lesson or two those weeks, just let me know.  I will work that out with you individually as we set up our schedules.

Now is also the time to think about lessons for the summer.  As I have done for the past few years, I will be available at least a few days a week for lessons throughout June and July.  The scheduling is very flexible as everyone takes vacations and the such, so they can be scheduled whenever it works out for both of us.  Of course, that flexibility in scheduling causes some difficulties when we do the billing, so we are working on a different billing plan for the summer to make that a little simpler than what we tried to do last summer.  Once we figure that out, we'll post it here.

And as we look towards those nice, hot, summer days, I can't help but to reflect on the year that has past.  Yes, there have been some tremendous challenges for all of us, but I am always amazed at the resilience of all my students, and how much progress each of them has made despite the less-than-ideal circumstances.

So, as always, thanks you parents for letting me share my love of flute and music with your child.  I look forward to seeing them soon!

March Invoice Information - New Venmo username, ZELLE IS HERE!!!!

 I hope everyone is enjoying their Spring Break, for those of you who have it this week, or are looking forward to it, for those who have it next week.

For those of you who have requested to send payments via, Zelle, we now have that option for you.  Just send it to the email address on your invoice.  We have already run a few test payments through it, and it has worked fine.  It took us a while to find a local bank in Denton that accepted Zelle and also didn't require us to keep a large balance on our account.  We have a long history at our regular bank, as well as many open accounts, so we were not interested in moving everything over to a new bank just for Zelle.  But since we don't have to tie up a lot of money with this new bank, we felt it would be worth it.

For those who prefer Venmo, I have changed my username for those payments.  I don't know how that may affect those of you who have been using Venmo to pay me previously, so please let me know if you encounter any problems.  The reason for this change is that we have had a few instances where payments were sent to the wrong person.  The less common spelling of my first name probably had something to do with that, so I went with something unique and also familiar to mitigate those issues going forward.

Looking forward to April, I do not expect any disruptions to my lesson schedule other than school holidays at this time.

If you are a new student and haven't already done so, please see the following helpful blog posts with information about lessons and payments:

• https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/10/welcome-new-flute-students.html
• https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/04/how-to-pay-for-lessons-in-remote.html

If you are traveling, I hope that you have a safe journey.  And I hope everyone has a safe and restful break.

I look forward to seeing everyone next week!

February Invoice, March Lessons, Welcome New Students, ZELLE IS COMING SOON, Venmo changes coming next month

 Wow, what a crazy week with the weather!!!!  I hope this finds everyone warm and safe.

Once again, life conspired against us to delay our invoice for this month.  We were working on it going into last weekend, but then the weather was getting crazy, and the forecast looked bad, so we held off so we could account for all of the missed lessons due to the school closings, blackouts, and spotty internet, which we had all-of-the-above here at the Hudson house.  I know some of you faired better or worse, but I hope everything has returned to normal for everyone.  Thankfully we didn't have any damage, and all of our utilities are back up and running at this point.

I will be out of town and unavailable for lessons on March 11th through the 14th.  Depending upon your school's spring break dates, you may choose to miss that week.  I will be available for lessons throughout, except the dates I just mentioned, however, if you want to have lessons during your spring break.  I will work that out with each one of you as I set up schedules for March.

I have had yet another wave of new students sign up over the last several weeks.  For those of you who are new, please see the following blog posts about lessons and payments:

• https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/10/welcome-new-flute-students.html
• https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/04/how-to-pay-for-lessons-in-remote.html

With these additions to my schedule, I'm pretty much 100% full, and will likely be starting a waiting list for any new students.  This also means that, while I do my best to maintain some flexibility in my schedule for missed lessons, there are now very few spots I can move students if they just forget or miss lessons with little or no notice.  As always, the key is to communicate.  Let me know as far in advance as possible if you will miss a lesson.  That will give me the best chance on finding an alternate time.

As I mentioned last month, we are adding Zelle to our payment options.  We opened an account at a local bank that accepts Zelle just yesterday, and will be setting it up to accept Zelle in the next few days.  We will send the Zelle payment information out to everyone as soon as we have it set up and working.

For those of you who use Venmo, I will be changing my username when we send out the March invoice.  I have had a few students at this point who inadvertently sent the payment to the wrong person.  I have realized that the uncommon spelling of my first name, and the similarity to another username is causing the issue.  Please continue to use the current username until then.  I'm not certain how changing the Venmo username will affect those of you who are already sending those payments to me, so I will be sending out notices before that actually heppens.

January Invoice - looking forward to February - Zelle????!!!!!

Welcome back!

I hope everyone had a great holiday break, and had plenty of time for family and rest!

Ok, so I admit, we're not doing so great on getting the invoices out in a timely fashion.  It seems like life conspires against Paul and I getting together to go over the billing.  This month, as I have shared with a few of you, my husband's sister passed away after a long battle with cancer.  He wants you to know that he appreciates the words of support that have been offered.  While it wasn't unexpected, the end came suddenly, so he and his entire family have been dealing with that for the past couple of weeks.

Since this month's invoice is so late, and we will try to send out the February invoices here in the next two weeks, we will understand and it will be ok with us if you decide to wait until you receive the February invoice to pay your balance.

As usual, any payments that we received after December 31 are not included on this invoice.  We have tried to include payments like that on the invoices before, and it always ends up creating problems with our accounting.  Also, since it is the end of the calendar year, it keeps our tax records neat and tidy.  If you have made a payment and you need confirmation that we received it, just send us a note, and we will get back to you about it.

Just a scheduling heads up: I will not be teaching any lessons on February 5.

Also, we are looking at being able to accept Zelle payments.  It is still not available at our current bank, but as we have had many requests for it, we are considering opening an account at a local bank that does accept it.  Stay tuned for more information.

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone in lessons.

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

December Invoice and the Holidays

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday!  We had a great time her at the Hudson house with our two sons home, and our oldest's roommate who was stranded here away from home in Montana.  We had a lot of food, but with three big strapping young men at the table, we didn't have the usual mountain of leftovers, and I think that was a good thing.

For lessons this month, I expect to teach my regular schedule through December 16, and only a few lessons on the 17th and 18th.  If I plan on teaching you those days, I will let you know personally.  I will resume lessons on January 4th.

I apologize that we are late with the December invoice.  I have added several new students over the last couple of months, and that always means my schedule is in flux, and that means I can't give accurate information to Paul for the billing, and that delays everything.  Add to that the normal busy-ness of life and we have had a hard time finding time to sit down and get it done.  Hopefully as my schedule is at almost 100% capacity at this point we will be able to do the invoices closer to the first of the month going forward.

If you are a new student, please see these posts for general information about lesson invocies and payments:

https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/10/welcome-new-flute-students.html

https://www.hudsonmusicstudio.com/2020/04/how-to-pay-for-lessons-in-remote.html

I look forward to seeing all of my students over the next week and I hope everyone has a great holiday break!