How do you prorate tuition for piano students who do not conveniently start lessons at the beginning of the year? Many teachers participating in the live and recorded Best Stress-free Business Practices for Your Studio workshops ask this important question. These teachers have begun using the more efficient yearly tuition plan in which the yearly tuition is divided into equal monthly payments. Perhaps you are like them and are concerned that new students would either be paying too much or not enough if they start mid-year.
How to Prorate Tuition
So here’s the process by which you can prorate tuition for piano students starting at any time during the year.
- Determine how many lessons they have missed thus far. This means, how many lessons/weeks have you been available to teach up to the point they are starting?
For example, if my teaching year is divided into 38 weeks, and my term starts in September, and the student will begin in November, that particular piano student may have missed a total of 7 lessons depending on my calendar. - Determine your “per lesson” price and multiply this by the number of missed lessons. Now, I would never talk about a per lesson price with any piano family because this encourages them to forget the scores of hours that you spend outside the lesson for their child. See and download the “Where Does My Tuition Go?” brochure which you should be giving to all families every year! But,when it comes down to it, there really is a per lesson price that is useful in this context. For our example, let’s say that it is $35 and they have missed 7 lessons, bringing the total to $245 of tuition that they will NOT owe for lessons they have NOT received because they were NOT your student. (I say it like that because it’s different than someone who IS your student just not coming to lessons.)
- Now subtract that amount from your yearly tuition amount. For example, if your tuition for the year is $1332, then subtract $1332-$245 = $1087. This is the amount that they will owe for the year.
- Since you probably want their tuition check to look like the same amount as everyone else in your studio (so don’t have to keep track of who owes what), then just make up the difference in that first month of tuition and make the rest of the months $111 per month just like everyone else.So in this case, since there are 10 months of lessons left and you always charge $111 per month, that would equal $1110 for this family. But we know that they really only owe $1087, so subtract these and you’ll find out how much less they owe their FIRST month $1110-$1087=$23. Therefore, their first month’s payment will be $88.
- You can check this math in the following way:
$999 – $111 x 9 months of tuition (that’s the number of months they’ll be paying this amount)
$88 – Their first month’s tuition
========
$1087 – Total
Of course, this formula assumes that you are not charging for lessons by the week! Be sure that you are collecting tuition as piano lessons are much more than the time spent with you!
An Alternative and Easier Way to Prorate Tuition for Piano Students
If that seems to complicated, there’s definitely an easier but less exact way! You can just tell parents to start paying the monthly amount the month that they start lessons. This will mean that you are either losing or making a little more money. But if the other way is complicated, then prorate tuition for piano students this easy way!
Communicating to Parents How You Prorate Tuition
When telling parent about their first month’s tuition, do not overcomplicate things! Just tell them that you are prorating the lessons and that given the number of weeks of teaching that are left, they owe $88 in November and then an even $111 in all the following months.
Remember to make it easy for the paying party! Don’t try to explain how you came to this number unless they ask. They just want to know what they owe you, and if it seems unreasonable, they will certainly ask why. Trying to explain how you prorate tuition can be confusing for no good reason.
I hope this helps those of you who have wondered about this! There are other good ways of handling this situation. Do you have an alternative way that you use?
I have been using this sytem for years now and it works great!
This is exactly how I do it. The first time I did this, I left out the step of ‘equalizing’ the first month’s payment, so I ended up with different amounts each month for all three of my mid-year new students. arg. Every time they wrote me a check I had to go back and look to make sure it was the correct amount. Luckily I had kept the page with my original calculations on it, and I still do that. But now I do the further step of making the first month make up any difference, and then having them pay the same monthly tuition rate as everyone else. My poor brain can’t do it any other way.
That’s exactly how I feel, Kathleen! My poor brain can’t handle it any other way. Besides, there are more important things to think about than different tuition amounts for different people!
How about if they leave earlier or during one of my shorter months? id Have to adjust their last month too..
Thanks!!
Forgive my ignorance, but I have tried repeatedly to follow these steps and figure out how to prorate my lessons for semester billing. Would it work the same to multiply the number of weeks they WILL be taking lessons in a partial month (if they have started partway through the semester) to find the first month’s tuiton and then each month after that is just the regular monthly rate? I feel like there might be some hole to this logic, but CAN NOT seem to make my numbers come out like yours! Help!
That’s definitely one way to do it, but consider that at the beginning of the year, they are probably ahead on tuition and at the end, they are behind (since it’s evenly dispersed). So as long as you are willing to accept the loss if it doesn’t come out evenly, then that’s an easy way to do it.