April Statements, billing changes coming in May, looking forward to summer lessons

Good evening!

I hope everyone had a great holiday break!  Now we are in the thick of contest season, state assessments, and the race to the end of school!

As we have mentioned before, we are always working on making our lesson billing as easy for you to understand and easy for us to process as possible.  If you've had lessons with me for some time, you know that there have been many iterations of the invoices since we started our new system a couple years ago.  But, it seems that we keep falling short of making it work in all situations, and we know what the real culprit is: billing in advance.  It's the policy of all of the school districts where I teach that lesson teachers are supposed to bill in advance, and I understand the reasoning of the requirement - it protects the lesson teachers and the district.  I'll refrain form explaining all that here as it is a long story, but I have always tried to do that as requested.  The problem for us, myself and Paul - my husband who helps me with the billing, is that for billing in advance to make sense to all of you, the wonderful parents of my wonderful students whom I love very much, who pay for those lessons, we would have to be able to send out those invoices exactly on the first of every month so that those who pay a little later have every payment accounted for on that invoice.  But, as I'm sure all of you can relate, that just doesn't work out for us most months.  Hopefully, in future iterations of our billing system, this will become more automated, and maybe then we'll make it work, but for now we know that it doesn't.

So, as we approach summer, we will go to a "billing after" system, similar to we did last summer, hopefully better, with the intent of keeping that system in place going forward after that. Here's how we are thinking it will work for now.  This is subject to change, so we will make a new post here with details as things develop.

• This April invoice will be the last "bill in advance" invoice
• We will not send an invoice for May until after the first of June; June's invoice won't come until July, etc.
• The next invoice will still state the number of expected lessons for the coming month, but the amount due will only be calculated based on the number of lessons your child has actually had
• You can still pay in advance and we recommend that you do that.  If you want to do that, and have paid for the previous month's bill before the end of that month, refer to the expected number of lessons on the previous invoice, or just send me an email or a text around the time you're ready to pay, and I'll let you know how many lessons I expect your child to receive that month.  However, I probably will not be able to let you know about any past due balances or credits you may have (that's Paul's department,) so, as I said, it only works if you've paid the previous month in full.
• If you don't choose to pay before the end of the month, we will expect payment in full at the time we send the invoice.  Yes, we will still make payment arrangements like before, but since we are billing after the time when you would have normally made that payment, the expectation will be that you pay in full when you receive the invoice.
• This is still a work in progress, so we may make changes as we go.

We are still in testing season with the bulk of the STAAR tests happening the first week of May.  I will be out of town part of May 2, and all of May 3 and 4, which is during those testing days.  I will be in touch to reschedule lessons where I can, but I won't be able to work everyone in that week.  At some point on or after May 17, I will stop lessons for the rest of the semester, and I will start my summer lesson schedule in June.  I will have more details about that in May.

Good luck to everyone with the various contests and testing!

March Invoice - Upcoming State Assessments

I hope everyone had a great Spring Break!  It was nice having our son back from college for a few days, but as the dates for the break did not line up across the various districts I teach in, I ended up working most of the days anyway.  Oh well.  I did have some lighter days and and a couple of days off, so it wasn't too bad.

State assessment testing begins April 5, including various high school end-of-course exams and STAAR tests, and these will continue off and on through the first few weeks of May.  Different school campuses have different rules for allowing lesson teachers on campus to teach students who are not testing that day.  I will be checking on that with all the schools I teach at, and if it is possible to teach your child on one of those days, I may try to schedule a lesson.  I will be in touch with each of you individually if that is the case.

Also, April 15 and/or April 18 are school holidays for some districts.  I may move some lessons around to accommodate those days as well.  Like always, I will do what I can to make sure every student gets a lessons every week if it is at all possible.

I don't know about you, but we sure are enjoying the weather.  Here's to warmer temperatures and longer days!

February Invoice, Looking Towards March

 Good Evening!

What a February it has been!  Icy weather, snow days, TMEA, and Presidents' Day Holidays, at least for some of you.  And more icy weather in the forecast!  I don't know about you, but I'm hoping it misses up this time.

So, just going with the trend, it looks like we're just in a pattern of billing mid-month.  It not the way we like to do it, and I apologize for any inconvenience it may cause any of you.  Hopefully schedules, both from the school and in my personal life, will settle down and become a little more predictable soon.

Looking forward to March, different districts have different dates for Spring Break.  Usually I would try to work it out so that I would have a whole week off in between the two, but it doesn't look like I will be able to do that this time.  As we get closer, if I think I can make it work, I'll be in touch with any schedule changes.  For now, though, I'm just planning on keeping everyone at their regular times.

And, I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to some warmer weather, and Daylight Saving Time with later sunsets.  Bike rides anyone?

January Invoice Information

Paul, Lynne's husband here, helping with the billing...

I promise, we're trying to get caught up!

Since we were extremely late with the December invoices, and now were late into January, we are aware that there may be some confusion about this month's invoice.  As you know, we usually bill ahead for lessons at the beginning of the month, and that didn't happen last month. And, because of the way we track the payments, any payments you made for December that have been received this month wouldn't normally show on this invoice.  I understand that can be concerning, since it means even though you paid for December after you received the invoice, it appears that you have a past due balance.

So with that concern in mind, we are adding a line to this invoice to list any payments we have received this month up to now, 8:30 PM, January 20th.  Unfortunately this will still not be credited to your balance, but there will be a note there to subtract those amounts from your balance.  If you have been with Lynne for lessons for a while, you know that our database and billing system is an evolving process.  I hope that someday it will be all automated and will update your accounts in real time.  For now, please forgive me while we adapt and learn.

So please remember - 

• Subtract any payments listed as received in January from your total due
• All payments received in January will credit the balance due on the February invoice like normal

Also, if you are new to Lynne's studio, or if you have any questions about how lessons, invoices, or payments work, al least on a normal month, here are a couple of past blog posts that you might find helpful.

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

Updated - December Lesson Invoice Information

Update 1/4/22

I hope everyone had a great holiday!  Many apologies for not getting the December invoice out last month.  We were all set up to get them done around the 10th, but then family started arriving for the holidays, preparations went into high gear, and the invoices just slipped to the bottom of the to-do list.  I think we cooked more food, baked more treats, and made more trips to the airport in the last three weeks than we have in the last 3 years!  It was great having our two sons home after our first semester of being empty-nesters, as well as seeing our other family members who stopped by or passed through.  I hope your time with your family was as full of love and joy as ours!

Now on to business...

The invoice you are receiving today is the regular December invoice, and payments that we received in December will not be on it as usual.  We will be sending out the January invoice as soon as we can, but there are a number of bumps in the schedule this month I have to work around, and I'm trying to work in a few more students from my waiting list, so we are shooting to have those out by the 15th.  If you would like to wait and pay for both December and January at that time, that will be fine.

I look forward to seeing all of my students soon!

November Lesson Information

 Good Evening!

I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween.  Like many of you, I'm sure, now we look forward to the Thanksgiving Holiday and time with family.  And with that in mind, I do have some travel plans over the next couple weeks, and I will be contacting those students who are affected by those plans.  Where possible, I may reschedule, but as my schedule is almost completely full, there will necessarily be some cancellations.  I will also be taking the entire week of Thanksgiving, November 22-26, off.

Congratulations to all my middle school students who made their All-Region bands, and good luck to those trying out for All-District and High School All-Region over the next few weeks.

And, as always, thanks to all of you parents for allowing me to share of music and flute with your child.

October Lesson Info

Hello parents and students, and a special welcome to all of the new students that started lessons this month!  I don't know about you, but I'm really looking forward to October.  Cooler weather, football games, marching contests, middle-school all-region auditions, concerts, and, of course, Halloween!

We do have a schedule interruption with the fall break affecting all schools, though slightly different schedules depending upon the district, starting this Friday and continuing through next week.  I will do what I can to reschedule lessons around those days off, but with all of the schools affected, that will be very limited.  For certain, I will not be teaching any lessons on October 11, and I'll be in touch where I might be able to move things around on the other days.

I know I have posted these links several times over the last few months.  But as I am still adding new students, I know that they are helpful to them.  So for those of you who are new, please see the following posts with 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 hope all of you are having a good fall semester, and I look forward to seeing all of my students this week!