Music-School Software Budget: A Three-Year Cost Worksheet

The first software invoice is rarely the whole cost of moving a music school onto a new system. Someone has to clean the student list, check balances, train colleagues and answer the first round of parent questions. A useful budget gives those jobs a place alongside the subscription.

Start with the editable worksheet

The file is a CSV with ordinary spreadsheet formulas, two example budgets and a notes column. It has no macros or live price feed. You can open it in a desktop spreadsheet, such as Excel for Microsoft 365, or import it into Google Sheets and save your own working copy.

Download the budget worksheet · CSV ↗

Before opening: use a computer where you can edit formulas and save files. The download is free; it uses your existing spreadsheet access, with no Practis account required. Basic cell editing is enough. Its formulas and worked totals were checked independently, rather than through a test of every spreadsheet app.

1. Open or import the CSV using commas as separators. It should occupy columns A–H. Allow formulas to be interpreted, not stored as plain text. Microsoft’s CSV instructions cover Excel’s opening and import options. The file uses decimal points.
2. Check the starting totals. Cell D36 should show 9758.40 and G36 should show 43638.40. If you see an expression beginning with an equals sign, calculation has not happened yet. Resolve that before using the budget.
3. Save a normal spreadsheet copy. Keep the original example untouched. Widen column A, wrap column H and format monetary outputs to two decimal places. CSV itself does not retain that formatting.
4. Edit inputs in rows 4–24. Columns B–D describe the smaller school’s three years; E–G describe the larger one. Preserve the calculation rows unless you deliberately change the pricing model.

The example formula uses staff-based licensing. If your chosen supplier bills by student tier or gives an institutional quote, replace row 27 with that contract’s monthly calculation. For example, Jackrabbit’s billing guidance counts active and inactive student records, with specified exclusions. Teaching headcount and billable records are not interchangeable.

Two worked schools, with the assumptions visible

These are illustrative US-dollar budgets prepared on 20 September 2026, before tax. Neither is a customer case study or a quote. Both reuse suitable existing computers and internet, use self-managed migration and included standard supplier support, and have no paid overlap with an old system.

For a real licence input, the worksheet uses My Music Staff’s published US pricing: $16.95 monthly for the first account, plus $4.95 for each additional teacher or staff member. Four accounts therefore cost $31.80 a month; twelve cost $71.40. The owner is included in those headcounts. The baseline holds the price flat for 36 months, which is a planning assumption, not a renewal promise.

Payment processing is modelled separately. Each fictional student makes twelve $160 card payments annually. The illustrative rate is 2.9% + $0.30 per successful payment, using Stripe’s published US domestic-card reference. My Music Staff supports Stripe and PayPal, but your integration, country, card mix or negotiated agreement may produce a different rate. Replace this reference with the actual processor terms.

That gives annual card fees of $2,371.20 for 40 students and $11,856 for 200. If siblings pay through one household transaction, use the actual transaction count. Do not charge the fixed fee once per student when it is incurred once per payment.

Staff time is valued at an illustrative loaded cost of $25 per hour. The smaller school allows 12 hours for preparing and migrating records, 8 for initial training and 12 per year for local support. The larger school uses 40, 24 and 48 hours respectively. Both allow a modest export rehearsal in year three: 4 or 12 hours.

The timing matters as much as the amount. This is where those jobs enter the budget:

At launch

Data preparation
Opening-balance checks
Initial staff training

Count preparation even if the supplier’s import is free.

Every year

Software licences
Payment processing
Local support time

Separate included vendor support from your staff’s work.

Year three

Renewal decision
Export rehearsal
Possible exit costs

The example includes staff rehearsal time, not a quoted exit service.

The last two rows divide the three-year total; they are not additional charges. These figures exclude tax, refunds, disputes, international-card/FX surcharges, extra integrations and any paid migration or exit service. Rows 19–23 let you add those applicable amounts. Zero means excluded or assumed unnecessary in this example, not verified free for your school.

Change the assumptions that could move the decision

Lower enrolment. In the smaller school, reduce year-one students from 40 to 32 while retaining four accounts and the same staff hours. The annual resource total falls from $3,552.80 to $3,078.56 because fewer payments are processed. The cost per student nevertheless rises from $88.82 to about $96.21. A smaller roll does not automatically reduce office work or account charges by the same proportion.

Higher renewal prices. Enter 0.05 in the year-two and year-three licence-uplift cells. Leave the base-price rows unchanged, otherwise you will count the increase twice. For the four-account example, annual licensing becomes $400.68 and about $420.71 in those years, adding about $58.19 to the three-year baseline. Five per cent is a sensitivity case, not a forecast from the supplier.

More support time. Add the hours the pilot actually required. One extra staff hour a week for 50 working weeks would be $1,250 at the example’s hourly rate. Track which tasks caused it: password help, billing corrections, training or duplicated data entry. Our one-term software pilot gives you a way to gather that evidence before a wider rollout.

Also test the payment mix. Cash, bank debit and cards have different costs and administrative work. A single blended percentage can be a reasonable estimate only if you explain how it was calculated.

Turn the sheet into a decision someone can approve

Attach the supplier’s dated quote and a short summary. Keep the wider vendor checks alongside it; a completed cost model does not establish that the system can handle your teaching or data requirements. If you are still choosing the admin product, the My Music Staff and Jackrabbit comparison covers that separate decision.

If practice preparation is a separate part of your plan, include its cost in the same worksheet rather than hiding it under “other”. You can discuss a scoped Practis institution setup with us and enter the resulting quote alongside the admin system. The worksheet does not assume that one replaces the other.

Before submitting, have a colleague change one input and check the result. Then lock down the dated version you are asking them to approve, with the assumptions still attached.