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How do you charge your students - per lesson or per month? Why did you choose that method?

I have been charging per lesson, sending out monthly invoices, since I began teaching. But with so many students, it is really bogging me down each month at invoice time! So, I am considering charging by month. It would be so much easier! All I would have to keep track of is book costs.

BUT - how do you determine your monthly fee? Some months have 4 lessons, others have 5. Also, some months have holidays, some do not. Do you just take the total number of weeks in the year, multiply by your rate, then divide by 12 months? For some reason, it seems like I'm going to lose out on some money using the month method; I don't know why! Help! I am thinking of changing my method in January.

Here's what I do:

My teaching year runs from September thru June (summer is a different story). I make sure and take out the weeks I won't be teaching (1 week for Thanksgiving, 2 for Christmas, 1 for Spring Break, and 1 extra week that I can take off whenever I want). That usually leaves me with about 37 lessons. I multiply that by how much I want to charge per lesson to get a grand total, then divide that total by 10 months, coming up with an equal fee each month.

This eliminates the need for sending out invoices and is SO much easier on my bookkeeping. You will get those parents who ask why December's tuition is the same when they're only getting two lessons, so be prepared to explain it to them frequently for the first year or so.

I would never charge tuition any other way.

That's the way most teachers seem to do it, though I wouldn't divide by 12, but by 11, or maybe even 10, depending on how long your summer break is. I found, when I was doing it this way, that you really have to spell it out very clearly though, and you may still have people who don't seem to get it...

Student here, I've always given my teachers a check the day of the lesson, pay as you go, unless there's a block of lessons (group lessons) then I've paid in advance.

Maybe it's because that's how I like to be paid in my own business. I hate sending invoices, and I like to be paid at time of service.

None of the teachers I've studied with has said anything. Is it unusual to pay this way? Perhaps it's a regional thing.

There was just one that gave me a discount for a month in advance, and I ended up quitting after 2 lessons...he wouldn't issue a refund, but he was so bad I wouldn't go back anyway.

I think that's pretty unusual. I live in California and I don't know any teachers who want to be paid by the lesson on the day of the lesson. They wouldn't know from week to week how to plan, who would be showing up for lessons. They also wouldn't be able to know how much money to really expect to pay bills and expenses.

I think most dance, gymnastics, art, and karate lessons are the same way. They charge in advance for the month, with payment being due at the first lesson.

Another student here. Just wanted to suggest you are careful about giving proper information when you change payment system. It's best to send a written note about the changes in advance so everyone knows what the policy is.

I take lessons at a music school. The teacher is great, but the administration is terrible. This month suddenly I recieved two invoices, for September and October. They had switched from paying for the lessons you had in the previous month, to paying for lessons in advance for the coming month. I am perfectly fine with this, and can see the advantages to the music school, but I was annoyed by the fact that they had not sent me any information of the changes beforehand or even any note to explain why there was two invoices.

The problem for me is that I have to produce the money for an additional monthly fee as if by magic. Additionally I have no written record to look at if I want to recall the policy.

(I don't even bother to contact the mucic school about this, just asked my teacher to tell the owner that it would have been better for the students to inform about it in advance.)

i don't think that it's unusual. i've always done it this way too--both as a teacher and student.

as a teacher, i'd feel a little weird about making it mandatory that students pay for the month in advance--but that's just me.

So, this crummy "music school" problem happens in Sweden, too.

I would suggest that, in the UK, pay-on-the-day is the most common, not just for music, but for all forms of personal tuition. Some teachers do pay-per-school-term for kids, on the basis that many parents (and that includes teachers who are parents) will have other commitments during school breaks. But even then it tends to be expressed as a specific number of lessons, rather than a period of time.

Partly, I think, this arrangement stems from the hourly rates negotiated by musician's unions. As a student/parent, you know to expect to pay a certain amount per hour, because you can check the going rate with the union. But partly it's just the convention.

I can well imagine that pay-on-the-day is a real drag for teachers who rely mainly on teaching for their income, and whose students (or their parents) would be poor attenders if they hadn't paid in advance. I don't know how things are in the US and elsewhere, but my experience is that in the UK most music teachers have forms of income in addition to their teaching -- they do performances, session recording, school work, etc. So the slightly erratic income from teaching is less of a hazard than it would be if teaching was their only income. In addition, from looking at the posts on this forum, it seems to me that the relationship between student and teacher in the US tends to be a rather long-term one. In the UK, there's a lot more mixing of students and teachers. Whether that's the cause of the pay-as-you-go convention or the consequence, I don't know.

Pay per day is not unusual... But paying by check is something I really really don't like and never accepted it!

Unless you mean some kind of check which you don't have to take to the bank and cash out or something, in which case I apologize.

Paying monthly has each advantages, certainly and it covers very simply the idea of "Awww... my kid lost a lesson, we won't pay you for that". You get paid a set amount per month, which is calculated by the anual fee divided by the months and that's all! Can't see anyone complaining with this.

Just make sure it's in writting to avoid misunderstandings and complications.

I don't think it has much to do with where you live and teach. If you are a self employed piano teacher you can choose to arrange your fees any way you like. It's more likely going to depend on who you teach and the amount you teach.

I teach piano full time and it is my main source of income. All my students have a regular weekly lesson. So for me it's much better to charge a fixed monthly fee and it makes it a lot easier on my budget and admin. If I had only a few students and their lessons were less frequent then pay as you go would be an option.

None of my clients seem to mind paying monthly. Most of them get paid monthly and expect to pay their bills monthly. They know that the piano lessons will cost the same amount every month and will be due at the start of the month so it's easy for them too. It's all explained very carefully in my policy and I make clear the cost of one individual lesson so there is no mystery.

Here in Australia paying by the school term (typically 10 weeks, 4 terms per year) is also common. That's in fact what I do at present. It is accepted well here - we don't have such a long summer break as the US does (only about 6 weeks), and a term's fees is not such a huge slug as a semester.

I set an annual tuition. Tuition for the year is $X, and parents choose a payment plan. They can pay in full, by semester or in monthly installments (you must call them installments). For that tuition the student gets 40 lessons. I give out a calendar marking out the weeks I am unavailable. This totally eliminates the make-up lesson problem for me and I have a stable income month-to-month, including the summer!

If the student doesn't use all 40, they are out those lessons. No refund, no make-up. If they go over the 40, bill them for the overage. So far, so good.

I explain this all at the interview (a real necessity).

It would be great to be able to do that. It's probably a cultural thing, but I can't imagine anybody in the UK being prepared to pay an annual sum for music tuition (or much else), unless there was a big financial incentive, however that sum was broken down into chunks. It generally needs a discount to get people to commit a month ahead, and the idea of committing a year ahead... no. Not around here. But if works for you, then well done

That's how people usually pay for things like gym membership. No reason why piano tuition couldn't work in the same way.

I had only one family this year that chose to pay in full for the year, 3 that pay by semester and the rest are paying in monthly installments.

In any case, setting the annual tuition and choosing a payment plan focuses them on committing to the year.

Chris is right; they do it in a fair amount of other circumstances and many of them appreciate the regularity of the payments (a stable rather than fluctuating bill) or the opportunity to write one less check (in the case of those paying up front).

Well, yes -- but where I am the gyms offer discounts for extended terms. In fact, the last one I went to offered a monthly all-you-can-train-for-£20 plan, which I thought was marvellous because then I trained every day.

I wonder if a similar scheme would work for piano lessons? I'm happy to make up a bed in the spare room for my teacher

I tell my students that they are welcome to come and practice on my pianos anytime I am at home and not teaching. No takers so far!

Seriously, the fixed monthly payment is as good for the student as it is for the teacher. It's like when utility companies fix your monthly bill so it doesn't fluctuate between summer and winter. You always know how much to pay and when to pay it.

Except you can go to the gym whenever you want during that month. You can't turn up for a piano lesson at any point. I would personally expect to pay a consistent amount for any time received- particularly if that time would vary from month to month. To be honest, I do find this system very odd. I'm surprised that students would respond well to such a system- unless it's clearly outlined how many lessons would actually be received over the course of the year. Systems of paying for blocks of lessons (and then counting them off) make sense, but this sounds really rather confusing as a system. What happens if you're ill one week? This must be an absolutely nightmare to put into a contract. I don't think many people in Britain would be willing to enter into such an odd agreement.

Sure -- but this works because over the long term, I do actually pay for the electricity, water, telephone, etc., that I actually use. And if I change service providers, I can expect to get refunded any money I have paid and not had a corresponding service for.

Actually, that was for a long time not the case with water supplies in the UK -- most people paid per month regardless of what they used. But increasingly even water is supplied on a pay-as-you-go, metered basis.

And my electricity and water utilities don't get sick or take time off for funerals, or whatever. If you charge for music tuition for fixed periods of time, how do you deal with your own unplanned unavailability? Or do you have somebody to stand in for you?