Customers Who Don't Need Materials

For your own custom curricula, and (very rarely) for Kindermusik curricula you sometimes have students who don't need materials (enroll very late in session for example). You can certainly just  modify the charges to $0, but the materials package will still be counted on your "Materials Needed" report.

The best way to handle this is to add a new materials package to the units/curricula you use. Add it in curriculum setup before you create the classes. You can call it "Other" or "None Required", but it will be shown on the public website as a materials option, so you may want to be careful how you describe it. I have put something like "Please contact us if you have unique needs for materials".

Once this is in place, when you have a student who does not get any of the standard packages, you can just "modify" the default materials in their AR page and select this package in the drop down selector, making appropriate notes or pricing changes at the same time. This will take them out of the counts used in your materials report (and show them under "Other").

Remember, for Kindermusik Curricula you are bound by your licensing agreement, so one of the standard materials packages is almost always required...

Gerry

ABC on YourVirtuoso

We are often asked about ABC Music & Me, and how to handle it in YV. There are many ways to approach it, and I would encourage comments on this blog with any of your creative ideas.
First of all, why can it be a problem? Here are a few important differences from the other KI curricula for which YV is currently optimised. They all stem from the fact that ABC is structured in 4 week units:

1. Signing up continuing students every month can be a burden
2. There is no set session start and end if you run an ongoing program where students join and drop at will
3. Long sessions with multiple months show the entire cost, and may cause "sticker shock"
4. Classes at Daycares are usually restricted to children attending the daycare

We have some plans to change the way sessions and pricing are handled to make this much simpler, but these will not be available until after YourVirtuoso 2.0, so here is one option we came up with to handle a daycare ABC program with rolling monthly enrollment:

1. Set up a new session for the classes starting when your program starts and ending at some logical point in the distant future such as the end of the school year. DO NOT ACTIVATE this session so that will not appear on your website.
2. Set up the ABC classes in this session picking all the units that you will teach over this extended period. If you charge $50 per month, split as $15 materials and $35 tuition, set the materials packages to $15 incl tax (if you do it in the curriculum, you wont have to do it for each class you add), and set the tuition to be $35 * the number of units you will teach over this period (e.g if your session was 9 months long, set the tuition to $315). Set up a pricing plan to take $50 deposit and spread the balance over the session in monthly payments. Test enroll someone to check that it sets the monthly fees to $50, and adjust dates to make it work if not. You can activate these classes (not the session).
3. In your currently active session (eg Fall 07) set up an ABC class for the unit you are about to start with the appropriate start and end dates etc. Price it at $35, materials $15. Activate it and it will appear online for parents to register in. Market to/through the daycare asking parents to sign up online for this class and store their credit cards, and let them know they will stay enrolled until they advise you they want to drop.
4. When the enrollment period for this months class is over, mark it completed, remove the students from this class (creating a credit) and add them to the ongoing class. Make a payment to apply their $50 credit to the first (deposit) on the ongoing class.
5. You now have these students all set for the rest of the year. If they drop out, modify their tuition (was $315) to what they actually took, and modify the materials that they will not be getting to $0 (ideally set up a dummy "no materials" package for this curriculum so your materials report counts them correctly)
6. For new students, add a class(es) in your current session every month for the current unit, and set the class size to be the spaces you have left. At the end of the enrollment period, move them to the ongoing class as before, but adjust tuition and materials to reflect their late start in the session.

As I said, we are working on simplifying this process! In the mean time do you have a better way of handling it anyone?

Gerry

Online Survey Instructions

After Michael encouraged us all to survey our "Defectors" (did not re-enroll) I thought it would be worth stepping through this process, explaining how to do it using YV.

The Surveymonkey piece is not related to YV, but for completeness, I have documented the whole process:

• Sign up for free basic surveymonkey account at www.Surveymonkey.com

• Create new survey
• edit first page and put description like:

"We noticed that you did not re-enroll for classes at Kindermusik... this Fall, and would appreciate just a few moments of your time to help us understand why.
The full 7 years of Kindermusik curricula, followed by instrument study, are a wonderful gift we would love to help you give your child, so your feedback is of particular interest to us in improving our offerings.

Thanks,

Miss ...."

• Add question:
  

Type: Rating Scale
Text: How Satisfied were you with your Kindermusik experience at KinderVillage?
Row Choices:
Curriculum
Teacher
Schedule
Price

Columns: 10 Ratings
1 Disappointed
5 Neutral
10 Thrilled

• Add A Question:
  

Type: Single Textbox
Text: What was the Primary reason you decided not to re-enroll?
Require an answer
Set Size to 30 characters

• Add A Question:
  

Type: Comment/Essay Box
Text: Please Provide More Detail on satisfactions and/or disappointments:

• Add A Question:
  

Type: Rating Scale
Text: Based on your experience at KinderVillage, how likely would you be to enthusiastically recommend KinderVillage to a friend?
Row Choice:
How likely would you be to enthusiastically recommend KinderVillage to a friend?

Columns: 10 Ratings
1 Not at all likely
4 Somewhat unlikely
7 Somewhat likely
10 Extremely likely

• Add A Question:
  

Type: Comment/Essay Box
Text: Is there one thing that KinderVillage could have done to keep you and your child as customers?

• Preview your survey and carefully proof read it.
  
• go to "Collect Responses"
  
• Use the default "Create a link for email..."
  
• Name the link: e.g. "Re-Enrollment Survey"
  
• Select and copy the webpage link ( )
  

• Now Login to YourVirtuoso
  

Marketing
Mailings

• Add a Mailing: Type email; name and schedule it
  

Pick the recipients:
1 Select by enrollment - Families with child enrolled in Spring 07
2 Select by enrollment - Families with child NOT enrolled in Fall 07

• Click "Next" and create mailing content
  
• Type in the body of your email, position the cursor where you want the link to the survey to be and click the <> tool to get to html mode and paste the link from surveymonkey (on a Mac, just paste it, no need for <>)
  
• Click OK and check to see that the text and link are correct.
  

If all is OK, Save the mailing and you are all set. Just wait a day or two and go back to surveymonkey to analyze the results.

You can obviously create other surveys, and use different mailing selectors to pick who to invite...

Enjoy,

Gerry

Family Login Problems

There are a few problems that come up with families that cannot access their accounts. It is worth understanding these, as there are some simple ways to avoid many of them.

First off, YV uses the email address as the unique identifier for a family account. Names are not unique, and email works well, as it provides a secure way to validate an account. 

Here are a couple of possible problems:

1. Family tries to create an account but gets an error because the email is "in use". This is usually when you have already entered them as an admin. If you gave them a password, they can retrieve it with the forgotten password link (note that it takes a little while, and spam filters sometimes interfere, so if they are on the phone, you may want to go to their account and just give them a new temporary password.) 
2. If you did not give them a password (but did enter their email), they will be asked to contact you when they try to enroll, and you will need to give them one. The best policy is just to give a random password whenever you put an email in for a family.
3. Neither you nor the family can enter their email because it is "in use".  First, double check your families list. Maybe the other parent created an account under a different name etc. The definitive way to check is to use the "advanced search" link on the families list page and search for the email. If the email is not being used in your system, the family may have signed up with another educator who uses YourVirtuoso. We are going to remove this restriction so that a family can have multiple accounts with different educators, but for now there are two solutions: 1) Have the family use a different email address, or 2) If you know the other educator, and they no longer serve that family, ask them to archive the family.

A final note. These login issues sometimes result in duplicate families. There is an easy way, and a correct way, to handle this (as always). The easy way is to ensure the old account has $0 balance and archive it. This is fine moving forward, but you lose access to the family class history.

The right way is to recreate the duplicate family enrollment(s) under the old family; remove the duplicate family enrollment(s); make an adjustment to the duplicate family to get it to $0 balance and archive it; make the opposite adjustment to the old family and apply any credit to scheduled payments. This should take care of it. You may want to ask them which email address they prefer to use, and advise them what you have done of course, so they can log in to the old account which will now have all their history intact (except payment details which will by covered by the adjustment you made)

My Bio has too many characters

The bio in YourVirtuoso is displayed in a pop-up window for your customers, and really needs to be fairly brief to look good. There is unlimited space to put an extended bio on the "Our Studio" page which you can edit using Content/Inline Editor and then navigating to the "About Kindermusik" page and the "Our Studio" page.

Why aren’t my classes showing up on the website?

This is common mistake. All you have to do is make sure that your sessions and classes are activated. After you enter in all your class info, it will take you back to the main page, and the link beside your class reads “initiated”. Click on that link to activate your class. The same applies to Sessions.

(TIP: If you want classes that you can enroll students in, but which will not appear on your website, you can put them in a special session and activate the class but not the session)

Where do I go to find prospective customers?

Under “Marketing”, click on the “prospective customers” link and you will be able to view all your prospects.

Where do I go to see my deposits and payments?

If you go to “setup”, “my info”, then click on “my deposits and payments” and click on the “details” link you will be able to view your status of deposits and payments.

How do I know when someone registers?

You will receive an email when someone registers if you have that feature turned on. You do have a choice to turn it on or off under “notifications” in “my info”.

It would be nice to have a registration document AND normal online registration for the same class...

This is not really possible. However, if you want to get adventurous, there is a work-around, but not for the faint of heart!...
Set up a class with the registration document you want. Before leaving the page where you set the registration option, right click (Mac ctrl click) on the link to it that appears below the text box and "Copy link" or "Copy Shortcut". Then pick the registration with message option and put your message text in along with the following html reference to the document

....... <a target="_blank" href="paste the link you copied here"> registration document </a> .......

If the pasted link shows as https://, change it to http:// (no s). The words "registration document" will become a link that opens up the document you set up earlier. HTML is very picky, so be sure to test it out after you have saved the class info. Good Luck!
Gerry

Text I format in the editor seems to revert to plain text on the website

Sometimes the page style sheet takes precedence over the formatting you choose in the editor when setting up curricula etc. If you really want to force it to be bold, the following html tag can be entered in html mode (click on the <> icon)
<b style=font-weight:bold> bold text </b>
Gerry

I want to print different sizes and styles of labels from YV

You can print lots of different labels if you know how to print labels from MS Word using a merge file. 

First use YV to create a report - pick the Family Directory (if you want parent name, address, phone) or Class/Mailing Label (if you want child name, address) or Class Name Tag (if you want child, class info). Use filters to select, for example, only Fall 07 Imagine That students. Then instead of printing, click on "CSV" which creates a CSV text file for you. 

Now in MS Word, you can use the label printing features (depends on version) to import this CSV file, select the style of label you want, and lay out the fields  exactly how you want them. Once it has been set up, you can just re-use it with different files for each class or semester etc.

If you have not created MS Word mail merge labels before, I am sure [fairly sure ;-) ] that the MS Word help documentation will make it easy for you...

Note for Kindermusik Young Child teachers: I have actually used this method to export a list of YC students for each unit (Class Name Labels) and created a template to print the appropriate information directly onto the labels that come in the materials packages - Now there's a time saver if you have a large YC enrollment!

I want to use graphics from a website like the KI Teacher's lounge in a mailing

As long as a graphic is reasonably sized, and available on the web for you to link to, you can include it in a mailing or a template using an HTML image tag. 

Go to the image or pdf file you want to include and right click (Mac CTRL Click) it to COPY a LINK to it.

In the YourVirtuoso Content editor for the mailing or template, paste this link inside an IMG tag like this:

<IMG src="paste the link here">

You should end up with something like:

<IMG src="http://www.kindermusik.com/new/images/7_2007_enotes_Images/DemoDaysPostcard.pdf">

If you put align="center" between the IMG and the src= it will center the image in your email. You can try right and left too if you want. After that it's up to you and your HTML reference book! 

One more thing, Kindermusik may not keep these images on the website forever, so it is up to you to check from time to time to be sure they still work. At least the YourVirtuoso editor gives you a preview, so you will see when you create the email if it is working...

Can I have a Signature at the bottom of all my marketing emails?

Try this...

Go to marketing/Templates and Add a New template called "Signature". Enter all the nice text and formatting you want at the bottom of your emails, and save it.

Whenever you create content for a new mailing, start by selecting this template and clicking on "Use a template to send" next to it. Then you can "Edit mailing content" as usual and add the body of your email and edit the signature if needed.

Can I personalize my Mailings?

Sure! There is a secret feature known only to those who read the "How To" documents (Hint ☺).

When you create your email content, use the following "variables" and they will be substituted for the particular family data as the emails are created:

• $(firstName) - Customer’s first name
  
• $(lastName) - Customer’s last name
  
• $(balance) - Total family account balance
  
• $(due) - Total of currently due payments (Current+30+60+90)

So you might start your email with "Dear $(firstName), I was just checking the balance on your account and noticed that there was $(due) due......"

In this case, of course you would want to select only the families that have payments due to avoid those unprofessional "Your balance of $0.00 is due immediately" emails.

Enjoy...

How do I put Demo Days on my home page?

The Demo Days logo is on the KI website, so you can use the Content/inline editor to edit the green box on your home page and put this snippet of HTML code at the beginning:

<img src="http://www.kindermusik.com/new/images/7_2007_enotes_Images/Demo_Days_No_Date.jpg" align="left" >

You can then put a little text to tell them to click on Events if you have the dates there etc.

How are Automatic Discounts Applied?

For all the details, refer to the "How to Use Discounts" document, but here are the basics:

1. Set up a Discount Policy and mark it for Auto Apply
   
2. Apply the discount policy to Curricula so it becomes the default (This makes your life easier, and ensures that the right discount information is shown when a parent views curriculum details on your website)
3. Apply the discount policy to Classes (if it was not the default when the class was created)

When you, or a parent, enrolls a student the discounts in the policy will be applied as appropriate. 

Note: If you set up your pricing as one inclusive price (no specific materials price) your total price will be considered tuition, and will be discounted as tuition, so you may want to consider that when setting % discount levels.

Adding Pictures Videos and Links to my Emails or Website

Warning! This is not fully supported, and it is your responsibility to check the results of your additions in the inline editor before you accept the changes and publish them to your website.

Email marketing and Content management in YourVirtuoso uses an editor which will allow you to include images, links and Html codes which enables linking to pictures and videos on websites like Flickr or YouTube or the KI website. You need to find the content you want, or upload your own content to one of these sites before it can be used in YourVirtuoso.

On Flickr, upload and select one of your photos. Pick a size, probably the "small" version, and Flickr shows a box with "HTML to copy and paste in your webpage". Copy this HTML. Then go to YourVirtuoso Content Management/Inline Editor or to Marketing/Mailings and once you have the editor open, use the picture tool (mountains with sun over them) which lets you paste the url of the image.

For videos on YouTube, it is the same process (but it works with anyone's video's, not just your own uploads). Copy the Html which is labeled "Embed" next to the video you want and paste it in YourVirtuoso as described above, but using the "<>" html tool to see the code for the text box you are editing, and pick the right place.

For links, copy the address (URL) for the link you want, and in the inline editor, select the text you want to have as your link, and click on the link tool (globe with chain links). Paste the link address with the http:// at the start in the link pop up window.

Once you are done editing, check it looks OK in the inline editor view of your website, and go to Content/ApplyChanges to accept or discard your changes.

Why do pictures in the mailing I uploaded not show up?

The display of pictures depends on how the file is created. A correctly generated html email includes pictures by referencing a location on the internet where the picture is located. When the reader views the file, their browser or email program fetches the picture from the internet and displays it on the page.

If you create a file on your PC or Mac using MS Word for example and save it as html, the html file you create references images that are on your computer's hard drive somewhere. They show fine when you look at the file on your computer, but when someone else (or the YourVirtuoso server) tries to find the pictures, they cannot get to your hard drive to load them. 

If these are pictures that are on a website somewhere, and you know a little about html, you can modify your document to reference them and make it work.

We are looking for a quick and simple solution, but as always, easy solutions take a lot of work!

I will post some ideas on including pictures and videos in emails and on your website shortly for experienced (or fearless) users!

How can I manage priority registrations from existing customers

Priority registrations usually means taking registrations and deposits from current customers before you have opened the class for online registration. Two solutions come to mind:

1. Set up your classes in a new session. Do NOT activate the session, but go ahead and activate the classes. At this point, you can enter the priority registrations and payments, but nobody can enroll online. Once the priority period is done, activate the session and everyone can enroll online in the remaining openings. Or...
   
2. If your classes are not configured yet, take deposit payments using "Take a payment" when you receive it, and once you have your classes active, enroll the student and immediately "Take a payment" again, but use "Available Credit" as the method to apply the deposit to payments. Any auto payments or notifications will then be correct
   

My Classes page is too busy when I have Summer and Fall classes open for registration?

I think the best way to manage the way the classes appear on your website is by using curriculum groups (Under Setup/Curricula). 

You could create a group for regular (spring/fall) classes and a group for summer classes. By naming them and describing them you should be able to make navigation of your particular choice of curricula simple for the parents.

You can also segregate Kindermusik classes from Piano classes using this method.

Why Can't I Refund to a Customer's Credit Card?

Update! It is now possible to refund to cards with a couple of restrictions...

As all licensees share a merchant (credit card) account, refunds are immediately taken from the shared, holding bank account. For this reason, you can only refund up to the amount you have received in card payments since your last settlement was processed (Sunday early mornings). In addition, we can only refund all or part of a specific customers credit card payments in the last 60 days - a fraud prevention measure imposed by the card company. 

For example if a customer paid $100 3 weeks ago by card, as long as you have $100 in payments since last Sunday, you can refund them up to $100. 

It is good to get in the habit of doing refunds on a Friday afternoon if you encounter limitations, as this is the weekday when your refundable balance will be greatest.

Gerry

Welcome to my YourVirtuoso Blog

After a year of helping Casey at Kindermusik International answer some pretty interesting and challenging questions about the use of YourVirtuoso, I decided many of the answers deserved to be shared with our user community (you). 

Some of the answers are already in the "How To" documents, or help pages, but I am as guilty as the next person of not reading all the documents, so if this helps you get the answers you need I think it is worthwhile.

This blog is not intended to replace your existing support resources, so it won't cover everything, and comments may not get (timely) responses, but if you have requests for specific topics, I will be delighted to try and get to them if they seem of general interest.

Enjoy,

Gerry