Note: As you can tell, this week I’ve been playing catch-up with a few apps I’ve been wanting to share! Hope you don’t mind all of the reviews/giveaways this week. 🙂
Bobclass ($19.99) — iPad only.
I’m so excited to share my review of this studio management app with you today! Let me begin by sharing Bobclass’ description:
“Bobclass is an all-in-one productivity app for instructors, tutors, trainers, coaches and other independent professionals. It offers appointment scheduling, client tracking, progress monitoring and payment tracking from your iPad so you can get rid of separate agendas, clipboards and spreadsheets. With a fast & friendly user interface and a fully functional offline database you can do your client administration in the gym, class room, studio or park.”
I think Bobclass it is an outstanding studio management option for independent music teachers. Here’s how it works:
First, visit the settings to set-up your basic information for you and your teaching.
Then, start entering your students’ information. The contact information will automatically sync with your Google Contacts or you iPad’s Address Book, which is so convenient when you need to email or call a student.
Next, schedule some sessions with your students. You can use the “repeated events” feature to set-up ongoing weekly lessons.
Soon, your schedule will look something like this. Please note: The calendar does NOT currently sync with iOS’s native iCal. If you wish to continue using iCal for your personal schedule while also using Bobclass for your teaching schedule, you can work around this issue setting specific start and end work hours for each day in your personal calendar, and then consulting Bobclass for the specific scheduling within those work hours.
When you teach each lesson, you can enter “progress notes” or assignments within the app. Each note even allows you to add photos or video! At the end of the lesson, you can email the notes to the student — with the photos and videos attached!
You’ll notice that there is always a “Payments” tab that allows you to keep a record each time you receive a payment from a student.
Each day, you can see an overview of your daily schedule.
I hope you can tell from the screenshots how impressive the graphics are, and how intuitive the navigation feels. The more time I spent with the app, the more impressed I became. The developers have thought of everything, it seems, and they are very committed to future updates and new features.
Bobclass is a great studio management option for independent music teachers — especially for traveling piano teachers who might not have access to the internet on-the-go. Although the app is not [currently] designed to help with bookkeeping (other than having an at-a-glance record of payments received from each student), Bobclass does a great job managing the rest of the many aspects of studio management!
Check out Bobclass in the iTunes store here or visit Bobclass.com to learn more.
Bobclass has kindly offered a promo code for GIVEAWAY! For a chance to win a free download of Bobclass, please leave a comment on this blog post stating your favorite feature that Bobclass offers. The winner will be randomly chosen and emailed the code on Friday, December 26, 2014.
I think Santa will bring an iPad to me next week. This would be the very first App I put on it. Bobclass has very clean pages, and I like how I can have all my studio information all in one place. I look forward to using this.
I currently have different apps to organise the many aspects of my new home studio. I love that this app allows me to have everything in the one place. Pick me! 🙂
I’m delighted to see all the music management aspects of Bobclass in one place! Not only does it keep basic client info at your fingertips, but being able to keep track of lesson notes,video clips, and assignments AND communicate them to students or parents is a wonderful feature!
Great! I love the feature that allows you to send photos and notes to the student/parents! Gets the point across much better than just scribbling in their notebook (if that gets checked!) hehe
This looks great!
I love this! The ability to have everything in one place is very appealing. I also like the video feature. Love your blog!
This app looks like a very useful and indepth way of keeping track of a music studio. I particularly like the payments tab. That’s something I’m always forgetting to do and putting it off to the last minute. Then, I find myself later with a massive backlog and too much catchup work to do.
Thanks for this great review of all the features!
I am definitely intrigued. I’m wondering if this could replace music teachers helper. I could not tell if there is an invoicing capability. Also, I wish we could try it out for, say, a week before purchasing.
Deborah, there is no invoicing at the moment, but I’m pretty sure the developers are working on adding more bookkeeping-related features in future updates!
My favorite feature is being able to email the notes/video/etc. to the students!
this looks like a great app!
Who doesn’t want to be organized!!! This looks so clean and awesome! Enter me please.
would love to try this app!
Love the progress notes! Looks like a great app. Thanks for the review.
Ooohhhh…..lovely and useful app for my tiny studio here in Malaysia. This will be a great app to keep tab on everything.
I love the convenience of everything on my iPad and the ability to correspond with parents is awesome!
I like the payments feature! Right now I lose track of business management aspects like billing, and just being able to clearly mark when I am paid would help so much.
WOW! This looks awesome! I’m definitely going to take this out for a spin! I love the “notes” capability and truly anything that consolidates apps for me is a WINNER! Thanks for the review!
I am getting ready to decide on an app to manage my studio. I like the way each of these pages look. They seem very easy to navigate. I especially like being able to keep notes in a weekly format. No more separate notes! Thanks for the review. I am definitely going to look into this.
This looks like a fabulous app! I love the concept of being able to attach lesson notes, videos, and pictures to the lesson event–and then email it to parents as well! Very efficient. This app is definitely going in my wish list!
This looks great! I really love the overall aesthetics of Bobclass along with the sophisticated functionality. It would be super helpful on a day to day basis for piano teachers who are still fairly new to keeping track of student payments and lesson plans like myself!
I love the layout! Very clean and easy to find what you need!
This app sounds very promising. Thank-you for bringing it to my attention.
Man! Now I’m confused! I’ve been wanting to try out Moosic Studio but this app seems to be just as organized and well laid out. I’m wondering if you might be able to do a future post comparing the two.
The feature I like the most (that doesn’t appear to be in Moosic Studio) is the ability to see your past notes from that student in the “today” view. I absolutely love that as it can give a quick clear refresher as to what is currently being covered with that particular student.
I’d love to get this app and try it out! Thanks for sharing with us!
Visually easy to read, and when you are organising everything you need, you can see it at a glance. Nice work. Would be great for my little studio in Sydney Australia!! Merry Christmas to everyone.
Looks intriguing. I too am looking for something to replace mth, which is just not intuitive for me. I’d love to give this a try
Looks awesome! All the features I would need for my studio. Thanks for the review and contest offer.
Everything all in one place: lesson notes, photos, videos, follow up for next lessons. review of past lessons and cataloging the progress, payment records. This app is a real hit on so many levels. I am “in” for giving it a go.
I love the calendar! I currently use Microsoft Office for a nice calendar, but have been looking for some time for something that’s cheaper.
I am new to the teaching business, and I have been looking for something like this. It looks like it all flows well unlike other apps.
I travel and the bag is getting heavy with all I need to carry. The student listings and payment option would be wonderful!
I like the way all this information is available in such an organized format. I have another app for organizing but have not felt really satisfied with it. Still looking!!
Looks like a very interesting app.