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Please note that this blog relates to the original versions of YourVirtuoso, and may not correspond to the latest version (YourVirtuoso 3).
Current support documentation is provided at our new support site

Subscription Monthly Payments on YourVirtuoso

Subscription Model (updated 8/28/12)

The subscription model for enrolling and charging customers has the following characteristics that differentiate it from classic semester based enrollment and billing:

• Classes run for a full School year (typically Sept. to May)
• Payment is primarily on a monthly basis (a deposit is also possible)
• Enrollment can happen at any time (but is concentrated in the months leading up to Fall start of classes)

Your Pricing Decisions

YourVirtuoso can be set up to handle subscription model through a payment plan which defines monthly payments. Here are the business decisions you need to make before actually getting into YourVirtuoso to set it up:

1. Pick your session dates and prices based on your costs and business needs. For example:
1. If your tuition for 32 weeks needs to be about $480, and materials about $100, your total price for the year will be $580
2. Using this as a guide, decide how you want customers to pay.
1. If you start in September and finish in May, YourVirtuoso will schedule 9 payments. 
2. If you want to charge a deposit deduct this from the total for the year, and then divide the total by 9. If no deposit just divide by 9 - In our example $64.44
3. Set your price by picking the monthly price that works for you. Lets say $65, which means the actual total cost of the class will need to be 9*65 = $585

YourVirtuoso Setup

Here are the steps you need to follow:

1. Create a new pricing plan: (If using the new KM curricula a subscription plan is already set up - Skip this step)
1. Go to Setup/Pricing Plans and Add a Plan. Call it What you want, maybe “Subscription Pricing”
2. In our example there is no registration fee or deposit, so just click on “Set Payment Schedule”
3. Select “Payments divided up equally over Session”. This lets you have payments always at the start of the month by picking “Per MONTH” and “Payments due at START”. Note that YourVirtuoso will decide later how many payments there are, but as long as your class starts in September and continues through May there will be 9
4. Save the Pricing Plan
2. Apply the plan to the curricula you want to use it with: (If using the new KM curricula  - Skip this step)
1. Go to Setup/Curricula and edit each of the curricula involved.
2. In each curriculum, edit the curriculum details and pick your new pricing plan
3. Note that the plan can be applied to any curriculum that is following the 9 month, monthly payment model, even if the amounts are different for example for Young Child.
4. Check the materials for the curriculum and make sure they are priced at $0 (All fees will be collected as simple monthly "tuition" charge)
5. If you had already set up classes for the session, they will have picked up your old pricing plan, so you would need to select each of these classes and change the selection using the “Plan Details” link.
3. If you have not done so already, set up your new session with a start date in September and end date in May
4. Create your classes as usual, with the following differences:
1. Select ALL the units you will teach for the year (Cmd or Ctrl click to pick the extra units). For the new curricula, there is just one unit, as units/themes and materials are managed on the my.kindermusdik website)
2. Set the start date in Sept and the end date in May
3. Set Tuition cost using the new option of "per month". Select per month and enter $65 in our example
5. Activate your session and classes and try enrolling a student from the class enrollment page to check that the price and payment schedule match what you decided - then cancel.
6. Finally, make sure you are set up for automatic payments. Under Setup/MyInfo you will see “Preferences” where you can turn on auto payments and “Notifications” where you can choose to send reminder emails and copy yourself if you wish.

Transfers

When a student transfers before classes start, It is exactly the same as it is with semester based pricing. Normally there is nothing more to do than select the student on the class enrollment page and click transfer. The exception is when they are changing curriculum or if there were discounts applied to the original enrollment.

For this reason, YourVirtuoso will show you, just before you commit the transfer, the charges that are being removed, the new ones that are being added, and the payments that are being scheduled. Take note here of any differences so you can make the necessary AR adjustments. 

Mid Year Enrollees (Prorating)

YourVirtuoso will prorate automatically based on the current month. It does not have the information needed to decide if the current month has 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 classes left, and if the first payment needs to be different. Whenever you enroll someone, or are notified that they have enrolled online, after the class start date, you will want to check their account (AR) and see if the tuition matches your studio's prorate policy. Generally you just modify the tuition to the prorated amount, and choose to take that off the first available payment.

Variations

Deposits: If you are really concerned about buying materials for students who have not actually paid for them yet, as is the case before the classes start, you can easily add a deposit to your plan. In the example we had above, lets say you wanted a $50 deposit. You would take the $50 off your target total price of $580, leaving $530 and divide that by 9 to get the monthly payment of $58.88. To make round numbers you could choose $60 per month plus $50 deposit. You would use that $60 when setting up the class tuition, set the materials package price to $50, and modify your pricing plan to have a deposit of "materials fees". NOTE: This can make prorating a bit more complex, so think it through before you make it more difficult to manage.

Materials: If you need to track materials for sales tax purposes. I suggest you stay with the simple model above (including setting materials price as $0), and then just use the "Materials Required" report to identify what materials were sold during that month/quarter and calculate sales tax from that using whatever materials price you and your accountant think is reasonable (and legal) in your area.

A note to YourVirtuoso users about the new KI locator

The new KI class locator still works with YourVirtuoso, but with a few differences you should be aware of:

1) Your customer stays on the KI website, and browses your own (YV) website in a window that overlays the KI site, but which does not have full browser capabilities. When they are done they will be back on the KI site, not on yours.

2) This window does not show them that they are on a secure connection. They are secure, but the KI site they see in the background is not, which could create some confusion or concern.

3) Your bio and picture are now displayed on the KI site. This is the bio and picture you may, or may not, have entered in your KI profile. This was not shown before, so you may want to go to the Teachers Lounge and check it is there and up to date.

4) On the plus side, the class duration is now shown for YV classes which was not there before.

Gerry

AMEX Merchant Fees

For the last few years we have been able to offer a competitive merchant fee of 2.65% which included accepting American Express cards. As some of you know, if you have had your own merchant account in the past, AMEX usually charges a lot more than other card types. In fact, most merchant solutions will have a wide range of fees for visa, MC, Visa Debit, World MC etc. etc. and most are a lot more expensive to process that the basic rate that is quoted.

We have so far been able to keep to a single flat rate for all card types to keep it simple and affordable for you.

Unfortunately, AMEX is putting a wrench in the works by raising their fees dramatically in October of this year. We would like to keep a simple flat rate; we would like to continue to accept AMEX; and we would like to keep it affordable, but something has to change or we will be losing money every month!

When it comes to the crunch, it is you, our customers, who will notice the impact of whatever we do, so please give us your feedback. There is a poll top right of the blog with the options we are considering, so let us know your preference.

Thanks,

Gerry & the SimplySignUp Team

Unbalanced accounts - Those red AR links

The latest YV release makes it easier to see and fix accounts with scheduled payments that do not match what the customer owes (unbalanced accounts). This can happen when you use the "Make Adjustment" button, or when a customer overpays and then enrolls again.

The family list now has a link direct to the family accounts receivable (AR) page with all their transactions, and if this link is red (AR) it means they are unbalanced.

On their AR page there is another link to the Modify Payments page where you can easily set up the scheduled payments so that they match the AR balance owed.

Adding Those Kindermusik Widgets

Thanks to Nancy Hehemann for documenting her strategy and instructions for adding the KI widgets and videos to her YourVirtuoso website. This does take a little "web savvy", as it involves the web language HTML, but it is doable if you just want to follow the instructions carefully. Here are Nancy's words of wisdom...

Check out my website: www.nancy.kindermusik.net.

First I selected a different look/feel. I was using the original/default page and I think there was not enough room in the box on the home page to add a widget, movie clip, etc. There, I have added a facebook widget "Kindermusik with Nancy - Become a Fan" and also the scrolling widget of music quotes from KI.

On "About Kindermusik" I embedded the "Can't decide whether to Enroll" video. On the "Classes" page I embedded the general "Follow Me to Kindermusik" video and then listed links to specific age group videos.

I will try to put all the steps here:

1. Copy the widget script from KM Teacher's lounge
2. In YV, Click on Content, Inline editor. Select the page/place you want to put the widget. Open the edit box by clicking on the highlighted text there
3. Click on the <> tool at the top of the editor which allows you to see and/or add html scripts.
4. Paste the script where you want it to be. Click OK and then you should see your revision/insert pop up.
5. You will then need to close the window and back in YV admin, click Content and Apply Changes.

You do the same process for embedding a video clip.

1. Go to the clip you want on youtube.
2. You will see the option of URL or Embed. There is a little symbol next to Embed. Click on that. It will give you an option to pick a border to place around the video and below that it gives you a size to select. I would select the smallest size so it doesn't take up your whole webpage. Once you have selected if you want a border and the size, click on the embed box and it will be highlighted. Right click on it and copy it.
3. In YV, Inline editor, go to the page you want to put the video. Click on the box to edit. Click on <> so you can see codes. Paste the video embedding where you want. Click OK. You should see what it will look like. Then make sure to apply changes.

Note From Gerry: This is quite complex stuff, so just remember that if you try it, and it messes your page up, you just need to go to "Apply Changes" in YV and discard what you did rather than accept it.

While you are in the inline editor, you are playing in your own private sandbox, and until you accept the changes, nobody else will see them.

Kindermusik Class Locator

In collaboration with KI, we have created the following instructions to have your class schedule, as in YourVirtuoso, show on the Kindermusik class locator. Only Kindermusik classes will be sent from YV to KI, and the current method of identifying these is by analysis of the curriculum name to recognize the standard KM names ("Our Time" for example). NOTE: If you rename KM curricula, they may not be sent. If you have a custom curriculum (eg. "Your Time") it may be confused and sent as a KM class.

1. Login to Your Virtuoso.
   
2. Go To the Setup-> My Info menu.
   
3. Click Edit for the Web Services section
   
4. Click on Enable for the Kindermusik.com web service. 
   
5. Select the option for returning Registration information to KI and click Save
   
6. The My Info page will now display each of your locations with the associated Location ID that must be entered in the Kindermusik.com system. Keep this window open, or make a note of the location id(s)
   
7. Login to Kindermusik.com and go to the Teacher’s Lounge.
   
8. Under “My Program” click on the “Profile” link.
   
9. Then click on the “Contact” tab.
   
10. Next to “Class Schedules Source” click on drop down box and choose the system you are using (YourVirtuoso).
    
11. Click on “Studios” tab.
    
12. For each of your studios enter your “YourVirtuoso Location ID”. This ID is the one from the YourVirtuoso My Info page.
    
13. If you would like the Enroll Now button displayed for each studio location on the locator you will need to enter your web address in the Enroll Now URL field.
    
14. Click “Update” and then when parents use the Kindermusik Class locator your schedule will be pulled from Your Virtuoso and displayed on the Kindermusik locator.
    
15. We recommend checking the locator immediately to make sure everything’s correct