# Creating an application for running a school



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 1, 2016)

Okay, let me start by admitting that I'm probably doing more work than I need to.

When I opened my current program about 18 months ago, I kept what little records were needed in Excel. Over time, I kept adding more worksheets to track more info (uniform costs, order I'd placed, student attendance, payments, testing/promotion, individual student records of what they'd been taught, etc.). I finally looked at it early this year and decided I needed some software. I looked at what was available and it seemed to fall into two categories:

Inexpensive, and didn't do much of what I needed.
Expensive, and might (couldn't tell) do most of what I needed.
I used to build applications in MS Access, and have been teaching database classes lately, so I decided to tackle this one, myself. After much planning and even more procrastination, I actually started building the application this week. I have most of the data structure in place, and have been testing that structure by entering the non-student data (lists of techniques, sets, ranks, locations, etc.).

I'll be happy to share my results with anyone on MT who thinks it might be helpful, or who is simply geeky enough to be interested. I might even be talked into doing some minor customization to make it better fit your needs, as someday I might actually decide to polish it enough to offer it to other schools.

While I'm building this out, I'd like to hear from other instructors about what you'd like in software for your program:

What are the "must have" features and functions?
What are some features that would be cool, though you could live without them?
If you've used any software already, what parts of that software did you really think were done right?
And what parts really bugged you?


----------



## Bill Mattocks (Dec 1, 2016)

Emergency contact information.  Allergies and other medical alert issues. Email list for mass contacts, possibly social media information for those who wish to partake.  Promotion dates.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 1, 2016)

Bill Mattocks said:


> Emergency contact information.  Allergies and other medical alert issues. Email list for mass contacts, possibly social media information for those who wish to partake.  Promotion dates.


See, this is why I ask these things, Bill. It literally never occurred to me to include any medical information. Thanks!


----------



## Monkey Turned Wolf (Dec 1, 2016)

I don't know how relevant this would be to you, as iirc most of your students are there for specific purposes, _but _possibly find a way to include students motivations to train. That's something that could be determined pretty easily during the first lesson, and as students quit/join the general classes reasons for training may change (I am assuming most instructors tailor what they teach around helping students achieve what they came to achieve, or are willing to inform them early on if that isn't the case).


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 1, 2016)

kempodisciple said:


> I don't know how relevant this would be to you, as iirc most of your students are there for specific purposes, _but _possibly find a way to include students motivations to train. That's something that could be determined pretty easily during the first lesson, and as students quit/join the general classes reasons for training may change (I am assuming most instructors tailor what they teach around helping students achieve what they came to achieve, or are willing to inform them early on if that isn't the case).


I've included a "focus notes" field in the student records to store things like this. I'll be interested in seeing how I use it. In my experience working with system upgrades, new fields are often the result of what's stored in notes fields like that.


----------



## Kickboxer101 (Dec 1, 2016)

Maybe a performance tracker. E.g after each test note down how they did like if one guy blasted through everything and looked amazing or one guy scrapped through so you know what things to work on with them and don't forget. Or just note taking after each class so you can track their improvement before a test to see how better they are so to see if they're ready to test


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 1, 2016)

Kickboxer101 said:


> Maybe a performance tracker. E.g after each test note down how they did like if one guy blasted through everything and looked amazing or one guy scrapped through so you know what things to work on with them and don't forget. Or just note taking after each class so you can track their improvement before a test to see how better they are so to see if they're ready to test


The test notes I've built in (both for entire tests, and for segments of tests when the test is longer). I've been debating about keeping just random notes in a separate table to allow instructors to add whatever they feel they need at any point. In fact, if I do that, I wouldn't need as big a field for the "focus notes".


----------



## ShortBridge (Dec 1, 2016)

Curious if you have any experience with PHP. There's an idea that I've had for a while that I just haven't gotten around to it.

My PHP is pretty sketchy and it would be near necessity.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 1, 2016)

ShortBridge said:


> Curious if you have any experience with PHP. There's an idea that I've had for a while that I just haven't gotten around to it.
> 
> My PHP is pretty sketchy and it would be near necessity.


My PHP is probably worse than yours. I'd be interested in hearing the idea, though, as I occasionally have access to some PHP-proficient folks.


----------



## ShortBridge (Dec 1, 2016)

That's too bad, I could use a partner in crime. Years ago, I build a Joomla site to run a company. It occurred to me that a school could have a public website and pages that were accessible with various permissions. All students could have access to some sections, closed door students more sections and you could keep your notes in places that only you or you and whoever helps you have access to.

You could also have things like calendars and financial records, plus shared email boxes for people inquiring about the club. As people progressed, you could just grant more permissions. My club tends to banter quite a bit in email, all of that could be in discussion threads like this one, so that people joining later could see previous discussions.

The backend of all of these things is MySQL, so you've got a fully functional relational db for whatever you are doing in Access, but in my experience, it's a lot more stable. 

It was tough for me to get setup because my PHP is pretty bad and while I'm good with HTML/CSS it breaks it up in ways that I have trouble following it. Once it was working though, it was amazing and any of my partners could manage it without ever looking at code. Drupal and Wordpress would he similar options. I think that Drupal is more powerful, but requires more PHP prowess and Wordpress is less functional, but requires less PHP.

On my list, but what I really need is a co-conspirator.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 2, 2016)

ShortBridge said:


> That's too bad, I could use a partner in crime. Years ago, I build a Joomla site to run a company. It occurred to me that a school could have a public website and pages that were accessible with various permissions. All students could have access to some sections, closed door students more sections and you could keep your notes in places that only you or you and whoever helps you have access to.
> 
> You could also have things like calendars and financial records, plus shared email boxes for people inquiring about the club. As people progressed, you could just grant more permissions. My club tends to banter quite a bit in email, all of that could be in discussion threads like this one, so that people joining later could see previous discussions.
> 
> ...



Couldn't most of that be accomplished with a good membership plugin? If it was worth it, it could even be set up as a paid membership, letting students pay their school fees right there. Of course, a custom plugin for MA schools would make execution easier. 

That said, let me reach out to some folks I know. If any are competent in PHP and have some time for a project, I'll try to hook you up. 


Gerry Seymour
Shojin-Ryu, Nihon Goshin Aikido


----------



## Andrew Green (Dec 2, 2016)

gpseymour said:


> Okay, let me start by admitting that I'm probably doing more work than I need to.



I don't think it's more work, if it fits your needs and makes you do less work in the long run.  I do have my doubts about Access as being a platform though, it's a little limiting and doesn't scale very well.

There are a lot of options out there though (Rainmaker, Zen Planner, Mind Body, Perfect Mind, MyVolo, etc.) that are designed specifically for martial arts schools, all of which I think will give you more capabilities then something done in Access.

That said, no software is perfect, and after trying a bunch and finding there where things I really wanted that no one offered I did our own software as well.



> While I'm building this out, I'd like to hear from other instructors about what you'd like in software for your program:
> 
> What are the "must have" features and functions?
> What are some features that would be cool, though you could live without them?
> ...



- Attendance, ideally something people can check themselves in for.
- POS needs to be there
- Automated billing needs to be there, or some other solution working in parallel
- Email marketing.  Send emails to a schedule when a email is entered, automated email on Birthdays, if someone misses a week, is behind on payments, etc.
- Tracking promotions and rank requirements
- Basic reporting - How many leads, new members, retention stats, gross sales, active member counts, attendance stats, etc.

I'd say those are the absolute must haves for a school software.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 2, 2016)

Andrew Green said:


> I don't think it's more work, if it fits your needs and makes you do less work in the long run.  I do have my doubts about Access as being a platform though, it's a little limiting and doesn't scale very well.



I'm not sure what limitations you're thinking of. Access can handle millions of records (far more than any school would ever need), and the tasks are all fairly routine database tasks. It wouldn't work for a multi-school business, and I'm not sure I'd ever try to scale to that. If I did, I'd move the back end to SQL Server, or maybe move it all to a web-based platform. The biggest limitation with Access is the limited ability to work from multiple locations. There are some ways around that, and once I've gotten this working in the first version, I'll be looking into those options for future work.



> There are a lot of options out there though (Rainmaker, Zen Planner, Mind Body, Perfect Mind, MyVolo, etc.) that are designed specifically for martial arts schools, all of which I think will give you more capabilities then something done in Access.



The ones I've looked at didn't handle the structure I needed for tracking student passage through the curriculum (being able to track what techniques have been taught, etc.) nor handle the fee process (most assume a standard fee for all students, minus possible discounts). Most were centered around the business process, rather than the teaching process. I want to reverse that, so it's easier for instructors to deal with the business. With Access, I can fully customize, including adding my own custom properties, maintenance code, etc. The data structure is a beast, but that's usually true of any moderately-complex database.



> That said, no software is perfect, and after trying a bunch and finding there where things I really wanted that no one offered I did our own software as well.


True enough, and I'll probably end up leaving out some of what I wanted, at least in the short run, even with Access. Only so much time in the day.



> - Attendance, ideally something people can check themselves in for.
> - POS needs to be there
> - Automated billing needs to be there, or some other solution working in parallel
> - Email marketing.  Send emails to a schedule when a email is entered, automated email on Birthdays, if someone misses a week, is behind on payments, etc.
> ...



You've had the same thought as me on attendance. I don't have a good place to set up self-check right now, but I definitely want the capability.
POS is something I'm thinking about. I'm sure I could work with a payment gateway via an API, but I'm wondering if it's worth it. I currently use Square Register, and will probably look into their API to see if it's possible to set up a feed between the Access DB and Register. That seems the easiest answer. Once I've done that, I can probably repeat for PayPal and PayAnywhere, assuming all three have API's that allow everything I'd need. At some point, I'd need to look at other processors because those three are really only a good fit for small schools (because of their fee structure).
Hadn't thought of the email pieces. That's easy enough - good idea!
Promotions, requirements, and testing turned out to be more complex than I'd thought, but I've built that in. I still need to work out the logic for alerts when a student has met all requirements, or has received all necessary curriculum for the next level.
Much of the tracking/reporting will probably end up in a later version. My program is too small for me to need much structure around that (max I could even have is about 20 students), but that would definitely be more important to a larger program.


----------



## Andrew Green (Dec 2, 2016)

gpseymour said:


> I'm not sure what limitations you're thinking of.



Scalability is one, maybe you intend to keep small and if so that's not a issue.

More importantly for me would be web access.  If the goal is a instructor based app then I would say tablet access and use would be priority.  I'd also think the ability for students to access pieces from home would be a huge benefit.  For us we run the floor off a iPad, we can mark curriculum requirements, pull up a list with photos of who is signed in class at the moment and all the students can access their profile from home, which gives them all their receipts, they can see their attendance records, promotion requirements, what they still need to work on and has links to videos of those things.  They get a list of upcoming links and can register for them online through the app.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 2, 2016)

Andrew Green said:


> Scalability is one, maybe you intend to keep small and if so that's not a issue.
> 
> More importantly for me would be web access.  If the goal is a instructor based app then I would say tablet access and use would be priority.  I'd also think the ability for students to access pieces from home would be a huge benefit.  For us we run the floor off a iPad, we can mark curriculum requirements, pull up a list with photos of who is signed in class at the moment and all the students can access their profile from home, which gives them all their receipts, they can see their attendance records, promotion requirements, what they still need to work on and has links to videos of those things.  They get a list of upcoming links and can register for them online through the app.


Ah, I see where you're thinking. What I'm thinking about wouldn't have a student interface, except for the self-check-in for attendance and perhaps a payment interface. Since I'm hoping to run an interface to a payment gateway, the receipts would all come out of that (most offer an e-mail option). I'm working on a member section of the website that would provide all the rest (except their current progress, I prefer students to have to track that, themselves). This is meant to be the instructor's management software, not the whole working of the school. I would assume that some of the more expensive options out there (which I didn't bother to look at, because of their price) would provide all that you describe, but aren't really cost-effective for smaller programs.

And you're right, creating anything robust with a web interface via Access is problematic. They've added some functionality in that area, but I haven't looked into it, and can't see why I would. There are better platforms for handling that type of program.

The iPad thing is actually something I'm looking at. There are iPad apps that will allow you to interface with Access forms, and some have pretty good reviews. I assume I'd have to make a second set of those forms to customize them to that interface, but I'm hoping for something there. That said, a Windows tablet (or even a convertible laptop, like the Dell I have) would be another option, and might suit me just as well. The iPad had the advantage of being what people would more likely want AND it can use the Square Register (or PayPal Here or PayAnywhere) app.

Thanks for the well-considered input, Andrew! I think much better when I have people challenging my approach and ideas, and presenting ideas and alternatives.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Dec 2, 2016)

ShortBridge said:


> That's too bad, I could use a partner in crime. Years ago, I build a Joomla site to run a company. It occurred to me that a school could have a public website and pages that were accessible with various permissions. All students could have access to some sections, closed door students more sections and you could keep your notes in places that only you or you and whoever helps you have access to.
> 
> You could also have things like calendars and financial records, plus shared email boxes for people inquiring about the club. As people progressed, you could just grant more permissions. My club tends to banter quite a bit in email, all of that could be in discussion threads like this one, so that people joining later could see previous discussions.
> 
> ...


Joomla works better these days than the earlier days and the extensions for Joomla are much better and more details.  Many of the vendors of the extension will customize the extension for free or for a small fee if the extension doesn't handle a required task.   When I design websites for businesses I prefer Joomla simply because it's the better compromise between user friendliness of WordPress and functionality of Drupal.  The extensions for Joomla are more business oriented than the plugins for WordPress so 95% of the time there will be an extension that fits multiple requirements such as what the OP mentioned.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Dec 2, 2016)

Andrew Green said:


> Basic reporting - How many leads, new members, retention stats, gross sales, active member counts, attendance stats, etc.


For this I have found that the best reporting that you'll get is one in which you can export into Excel and create a Pivot Table from.  Everything else is just going to be limited on how the data is viewed.  



Andrew Green said:


> There are a lot of options out there though (Rainmaker, Zen Planner, Mind Body, Perfect Mind, MyVolo, etc.)


 I would express caution about using services like this.  These services aren't bad, they are just expensive and you never own the service.  So in that light make sure that the cost of the service can be supported by the membership registration.  I would go even as far as to say, that if you don't have 20 regular members then software like that isn't going to get a big return.  I own my membership software so there's no monthly cost to keep it.  I try to keep as much money from leaving the business as possible.



gpseymour said:


> Most were centered around the business process, rather than the teaching process.


This is going to be the case for most software. A Learning Management System may be able to manage this process for you as it is already built with the purpose of managing what is learn and what is taught.  The only thing you would need to do is change the subject matter from education to martial arts.   

Here are some examples of learning management systems and what they are able to do.  it may help you with not reinventing the wheel until necessary and may be useful as a blueprint to help you with your Access database.
LearnPress - WordPress LMS Plugin — WordPress Plugins

Joomla Learning Management System LMS eLearning
https://www.king-products.net/
The compromise that you'll have to make, which is a good one, is to come to a point where you will design something that does a few things really well and not try to design something that does everything.   The "one size fits all unicorn" has impaled many people





Then it'll throw you down the rabbit hole, where this guy will make your Project a living nightmare.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 2, 2016)

JowGaWolf said:


> For this I have found that the best reporting that you'll get is one in which you can export into Excel and create a Pivot Table from.  Everything else is just going to be limited on how the data is viewed.


Nothing beats a good pivot table.



> I would express caution about using services like this.  These services aren't bad, they are just expensive and you never own the service.  So in that light make sure that the cost of the service can be supported by the membership registration.  I would go even as far as to say, that if you don't have 20 regular members then software like that isn't going to get a big return.  I own my membership software so there's no monthly cost to keep it.  I try to keep as much money from leaving the business as possible.


This is one of the concerns for a smaller program. If someone is running 3 schools, those SAS programs are probably a good answer, so long as they have the ability to download the data should they ever decide to change platforms.



> This is going to be the case for most software. A Learning Management System may be able to manage this process for you as it is already built with the purpose of managing what is learn and what is taught.  The only thing you would need to do is change the subject matter from education to martial arts.
> 
> 
> Here are some examples of learning management systems and what they are able to do.  it may help you with not reinventing the wheel until necessary and may be useful as a blueprint to help you with your Access database.
> ...


That's an interesting thought, JGW. Off the top of my head, I can see how that might handle qualification/certification, attendance, and much else. It would certainly get closer to what I'd want than any of the low-end MA software I've looked at. I wonder if any of them could reasonably handle the organization of smaller details, like tracking individual techniques by student (something I've found helps when planning a class). That ability is what drove me away from some of the more promising mid-range offerings. Well, that and the fact that I couldn't easily assign individuals different fee levels and change them globally. I'll have to see what's available with a trial period or really low cost. I'm thinking I might actually have something available from my hosting service, too.



> The compromise that you'll have to make, which is a good one, is to come to a point where you will design something that does a few things really well and not try to design something that does everything.   The "one size fits all unicorn" has impaled many people
> 
> 
> 
> ...



I'm nearly certain some of what I'm planning will be left for later (which may become never - like the payment gateway), but in building this first cut, I'll figure out what I really need the flow to look like. My "need to have" list includes some things I don't think I'll find in one place (individual pricing with global control, attendance tracking, promotion/testing tracking, tracking progress at the technique level). If I ditch some of the other pieces along the way, so be it. Those are the parts I'm focusing on in the first version. Once I have that much, I can start using it and decide if I really need the other parts, and can also test out tablet-based data entry solutions.

In the end, if I can make something that's adaptable enough to serve other small programs, I'll offer it out there to them. If not, I'll at least have had the fun of building something in Access again.


----------



## ShortBridge (Dec 2, 2016)

Nice to see your response, Jow Ga.

If you can get Joomla stood up, configured, and extended then you're in great shape, but this is where the PHP comes in. Literally anything is possible with MySQL and PHP from there, but you either need to have or aquire those skills or you need help from someone who has them.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Dec 2, 2016)

gpseymour said:


> so long as they have the ability to download the data should they ever decide to change platforms.


So true.  This is where many of those companies give people the "gotcha" moment.   3 years with a company and the customer wants to go to a cheaper service or a better service with another company only to find out that they can't download the data in a format that can be used in another system.



gpseymour said:


> I wonder if any of them could reasonably handle the organization of smaller details, like tracking individual techniques by student (something I've found helps when planning a class). That ability is what drove me away from some of the more promising mid-range offerings.


  If the LMS has a "path to certification" where a student has to pass one course (group of skill sets, techniques, belt).  My guess is that it should be possible to track the individual techniques by students.  It may look something like
Lesson #1(Chapter 1):

technique 1 (test or satisfactory approval)
technique 2 (must past technique 1 test before technique 2 is available, or not)
technique 3 
Once the techniques are done to your liking then they can get access to Lesson #2.   The other option would be to have Lesson 1 without any technique requirements, but the techniques won't be marked as complete until the student is able to to it.  That way they student can still move forward with the understanding that there are some previous techniques that need to be addressed.  This would allow students to learn techniques at a different pace, some techniques I do better than others.  For me some basic techniques are more difficult than some advance techniques.  Sometimes I can do a technique better on my non-dominant side better than I can do on my dominant side.



gpseymour said:


> Well, that and the fact that I couldn't easily assign individuals different fee levels and change them globally. I'll have to see what's available with a trial period or really low cost. I'm thinking I might actually have something available from my hosting service, too.


A good membership plugin will allow you to do this.  My guess is that you'll end up with Access doing somethings and a plugin will do something different.  I can see where Access will be good for dealing with dealing with some of the membership aspects, but then be a nightmare for payment gateways, because at that point, it becomes a security of data issue especially if they are paying with credit cards.  I do both offline and online payments.  Offline security = me not getting mugged on the way to may car.  Online security = PayPal can deal with that.  This way if something goes bad with the online transaction, then PayPal has to deal with the legal issues related to that transaction.



gpseymour said:


> if I can make something that's adaptable enough to serve other small programs, I'll offer it out there to them.


I'll give you some insight on this from a perspective of working with registrations in that past for government organizations.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Dec 2, 2016)

ShortBridge said:


> Nice to see your response, Jow Ga.
> 
> If you can get Joomla stood up, configured, and extended then you're in great shape, but this is where the PHP comes in. Literally anything is possible with MySQL and PHP from there, but you either need to have or aquire those skills or you need help from someone who has them.


  I guess it comes really easy to me since I'm always working with Joomla.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 2, 2016)

ShortBridge said:


> Nice to see your response, Jow Ga.
> 
> If you can get Joomla stood up, configured, and extended then you're in great shape, but this is where the PHP comes in. Literally anything is possible with MySQL and PHP from there, but you either need to have or aquire those skills or you need help from someone who has them.


Yep. I suspect investigating a future version of this might get me digging into PHP. There are other tools I could use, but PHP/MySQL is right there.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 2, 2016)

JowGaWolf said:


> So true. This is where many of those companies give people the "gotcha" moment. 3 years with a company and the customer wants to go to a cheaper service or a better service with another company only to find out that they can't download the data in a format that can be used in another system.


Yes, this is something I even find I have to help clients watch for in contracts with large hosted-solution companies.



JowGaWolf said:


> If the LMS has a "path to certification" where a student has to pass one course (group of skill sets, techniques, belt). My guess is that it should be possible to track the individual techniques by students. It may look something like
> Lesson #1(Chapter 1):
> 
> technique 1 (test or satisfactory approval)
> ...


That would probably work. If nothing else, I need to look at how that flows in some LMS to see what works well. The whole LMS option, oddly, didn't occur to me, even when I was searching for database examples.



JowGaWolf said:


> A good membership plugin will allow you to do this. My guess is that you'll end up with Access doing somethings and a plugin will do something different. I can see where Access will be good for dealing with dealing with some of the membership aspects, but then be a nightmare for payment gateways, because at that point, it becomes a security of data issue especially if they are paying with credit cards. I do both offline and online payments. Offline security = me not getting mugged on the way to may car. Online security = PayPal can deal with that. This way if something goes bad with the online transaction, then PayPal has to deal with the legal issues related to that transaction.


That's why I'm looking for an interface with one of the gateways. I'd let them (in my case, Square) handle the credit cards and payments, but I'd like to be able to feed the amounts into them from Access if I can work that out. You're right, if I go the route of having folks handle the payments via a membership plugin, I can avoid all this, but I lose some flexibility. Right now, I have students who travel a lot for business. They have two payment options: monthly or weekly. I let them decide each payment period which they want to do, based upon their expected attendance. I don't think I've seen a membership plugin with that kind of flexibility, but I can build that (and the tracking functionality to still know who's paid up) in Access fairly easily. It's not something I'd originally planned to do, but it was a good fix since literally all of my first 6 students needed that flexibility, or they'd have just skipped an entire month at a time (which often results in a student vanishing).



JowGaWolf said:


> I'll give you some insight on this from a perspective of working with registrations in that past for government organizations.


Thanks for that PM. Good thoughts.


----------



## JowGaWolf (Dec 2, 2016)

gpseymour said:


> They have two payment options: monthly or weekly. I let them decide each payment period which they want to do, based upon their expected attendance. I don't think I've seen a membership plugin with that kind of flexibility, but I can build that (and the tracking functionality to still know who's paid up) in Access fairly easily. It's not something I'd originally planned to do, but it was a good fix since literally all of my first 6 students needed that flexibility, or they'd have just skipped an entire month at a time (which often results in a student vanishing).


My web site uses a membership subscription extension that does this.  I can determine the length of the membership.  I can make it weekly or monthly. I don't know about WordPress, but I would think that there would be a membership subscription plugin that would do something similar.   I think if you just search for membership then you won't find what you need.  Try member subscription to see if that will yield better results in your WP search.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 3, 2016)

JowGaWolf said:


> My web site uses a membership subscription extension that does this.  I can determine the length of the membership.  I can make it weekly or monthly. I don't know about WordPress, but I would think that there would be a membership subscription plugin that would do something similar.   I think if you just search for membership then you won't find what you need.  Try member subscription to see if that will yield better results in your WP search.


Does it let them select weekly or monthly at each payment interval?


----------



## JowGaWolf (Dec 3, 2016)

gpseymour said:


> Does it let them select weekly or monthly at each payment interval?


yes.  I can set it up where a student is paying weekly but now wants to pay monthly.  The monthly option would be considered as an upgraded membership plan.  If the student wants to return to the weekly payment plan after a month then they will be given the option to do so as a renewal option. With the extension the owner decides what memberships look like.  There is no predefined length of time.

From what I can tell, most of the membership plugins are based on online memberships which doesn't translate well into offline memberships needs of small groups like Martial Arts schools and certain clubs type organizations.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 3, 2016)

JowGaWolf said:


> yes.  I can set it up where a student is paying weekly but now wants to pay monthly.  The monthly option would be considered as an upgraded membership plan.  If the student wants to return to the weekly payment plan after a month then they will be given the option to do so as a renewal option. With the extension the owner decides what memberships look like.  There is no predefined length of time.
> 
> From what I can tell, most of the membership plugins are based on online memberships which doesn't translate well into offline memberships needs of small groups like Martial Arts schools and certain clubs type organizations.


Ah, I see that I wasn't clear on how those payment changes work. Let's say a student is traveling for the first two weeks in January. He would pay for December as a monthly payment, and then not pay again until he comes in mid-January. At that point, if he is going to have to travel again the first week of February, he'll probably opt to pay for two weeks on the weekly plan, then when he comes back the second week in February, he might resume the Monthly plan. It's those periods in between that seem problematic with a renewal setup. I suppose some of the plugins might allow for manual renewal (rather than automatic), so they could just not renew until they are coming back to class. I'll need to dabble a bit.


----------



## Andrew Green (Dec 3, 2016)

gpseymour said:


> Ah, I see that I wasn't clear on how those payment changes work. Let's say a student is traveling for the first two weeks in January. He would pay for December as a monthly payment, and then not pay again until he comes in mid-January. At that point, if he is going to have to travel again the first week of February, he'll probably opt to pay for two weeks on the weekly plan, then when he comes back the second week in February, he might resume the Monthly plan. It's those periods in between that seem problematic with a renewal setup. I suppose some of the plugins might allow for manual renewal (rather than automatic), so they could just not renew until they are coming back to class. I'll need to dabble a bit.



I don't think any software is likely to be set up quite like that, as to be honest it's a bad idea for a membership based business to work like that.  

The closest you would find that gets a similar sort of result would be offering monthly rates and "punch card" rates, where someone buys a 10 or 20 class pass at a time.

To do what you do here would I believe be a legal no-no.  If they re prepaying for a service there should be a "contract" that says what they are paying for, regardless of whether it is a week or a year, there should be something in writing saying how much for what service.  I suspect that would mean paper work every time they pay the way you are handling fees.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 3, 2016)

Andrew Green said:


> I don't think any software is likely to be set up quite like that, as to be honest it's a bad idea for a membership based business to work like that.
> 
> The closest you would find that gets a similar sort of result would be offering monthly rates and "punch card" rates, where someone buys a 10 or 20 class pass at a time.
> 
> To do what you do here would I believe be a legal no-no.  If they re prepaying for a service there should be a "contract" that says what they are paying for, regardless of whether it is a week or a year, there should be something in writing saying how much for what service.  I suspect that would mean paper work every time they pay the way you are handling fees.


No, they get those periodic fees in their initial Payment Policy disclosures, which is sufficient for legal purposes. There's no need to re-disclose the periodic fees every time someone re-ups, even if they choose to use a different period. And I don't really see any significant legal risk in this setup. Sure someone could make a spurious claim, and I'd refund their payment and ask them to leave.


----------



## Balrog (Dec 22, 2016)

For all the accounting/inventory/bill paying stuff, we use Quickbooks.  I can't imagine trying to run the school without it.

I use Martial Arts Navigator for the student stuff.  It's oriented towards ATA schools, but can be configured to run just about any style.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 22, 2016)

Balrog said:


> For all the accounting/inventory/bill paying stuff, we use Quickbooks.  I can't imagine trying to run the school without it.
> 
> I use Martial Arts Navigator for the student stuff.  It's oriented towards ATA schools, but can be configured to run just about any style.


Quickbooks is the accounting side. I'm working on something for the instructor's (my) daily use - especially where that instructor is farming out the accounting. If I dig into the payment side of it (last phase, if I go there), the idea will be to feed QB with entries from the application.

I'll take a look at MA Navigator. I'll be curious to see if it will handle the detailed curriculum tracking I'm looking for, as that was a major part of what sent me down this path. I track at the technique level (currently in Excel), and want to integrate that into the rest of the information (rank, attendance, etc.).


----------



## Balrog (Dec 23, 2016)

gpseymour said:


> Quickbooks is the accounting side. I'm working on something for the instructor's (my) daily use - especially where that instructor is farming out the accounting. If I dig into the payment side of it (last phase, if I go there), the idea will be to feed QB with entries from the application.
> 
> I'll take a look at MA Navigator. I'll be curious to see if it will handle the detailed curriculum tracking I'm looking for, as that was a major part of what sent me down this path. I track at the technique level (currently in Excel), and want to integrate that into the rest of the information (rank, attendance, etc.).


To be honest, MAN has gotten a little long in the tooth.  The developer has asked me to help with an upgrade, and that is in process.  But I can't put in full time on it, so it will be a while.


----------



## Xue Sheng (Dec 23, 2016)

My first thought was "use Access" and as I rad I see you are. My 2nd thought was a SQL backend... and I see you are there too.

However there is something to consider with Microsoft Access as a web application (thinking the multiple locations and students ability to log in) , unless Microsoft has fixed this issue, if greater than 30 people attempt to access your database at the same time it crashes and loses all data that is saved in Access and generally that is non-recoverable. That is where your SQL backend comes in real handy.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 23, 2016)

Xue Sheng said:


> My first thought was "use Access" and as I rad I see you are. My 2nd thought was a SQL backend... and I see you are there too.
> 
> However there is something to consider with Microsoft Access as a web application (thinking the multiple locations and students ability to log in) , unless Microsoft has fixed this issue, if greater than 30 people attempt to access your database at the same time it crashes and loses all data that is saved in Access and generally that is non-recoverable. That is where your SQL backend comes in real handy.


I'm with you on both of those. I haven't had an excuse to build on a SQL backend before (have built full applications in Access, but using native engine), so I'm looking forward to that. It would also solve the problem of security, since MS removed the (rather weak) user-level security that once existed in Access.


----------



## Gerry Seymour (Dec 23, 2016)

Balrog said:


> To be honest, MAN has gotten a little long in the tooth.  The developer has asked me to help with an upgrade, and that is in process.  But I can't put in full time on it, so it will be a while.


I'll still take a look at it. I was concerned because some wording on the site (which also needs and update ) made it sound like there would be no further updates.


----------

