TutorPanel Updates from November 2011

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November 30, 2011

November was a big month for us with the introduction of TutorPanel Mobile as well as some new features for TutorPanel including the addition of the ability to reconcile multiple lessons at once and the ability to upload students in bulk using a CSV file.

Below is a summary of features and bug fixes for the month of November:

  • Fixed a bug that was causing the calendar not to appear in teacher accounts when the calendar contained both tutoring sessions and general events.
  • TutorPanel Mobile – a convenient way to access information from your TutorPanel account from your smartphone. TutorPanel mobile lets you access student and parent contact info, upcoming tutoring sessions, reconcile tutoring sessions, account balances and past transactions.
  • Admins can now set the page that users are directed to after logging out. You can set this to your own website address.
  • Added a new remote login form that will keep tutors and students on the same page as the login form if an error occurs when logging in. The original would redirect them to the TutorPanel login form when the username or password was not correct.
  • Added a date range selector for the “Teacher Payment History”.
  • Changed “Expenses” in the navigation menu to “General Expenses” to provide a distinction between “Wage Expenses” which are separate.
  • It’s now possible to clear empty a date field by hitting backspace when the cursor is on the date field. Some users couldn’t remove a student’s birthdate when they inadvertently selected that field on the student profile.
  • Reset password page was not displaying a message when the username entered did not exist. This has been fixed.
  • Currencies and company name weren’t updating immediately after making changes in general settings. Changes to these fields are now reflected immediately.
  • Currency symbol was missing for lesson fees on automatically gernated invoices – these are now displaying correctly.
  • Batch reconcile – added a batch reconcile feature to admin accounts that allows several lessons to be reconciled at once.
  • Added the tutor wage to calendar event pop-ups and the “View Lesson” page.
  • Fixed a bug related to Internet Explorer that wasn’t displaying events on the calendar when a certain combination of options was selected for general events.
  • Bulk Upload – Admins can now upload multiple students at once to their TutorPanel accounts using the student bulk upload feature. Access it by going to the Student List and clicking “bulk Upload” in the sidebar.
  • Fixed a bug that was causing students to show up twice during reconciliation if new students were added to a single group event.  Adding students to a series of group events didn’t have this problem.

 

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Tutor Management, Updates

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Tutoring Software Series: How to Remember Everything

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November 28, 2011

This post is the third in a series on tutoring software that can be useful for tutoring companies. In this blog post we’ll look at some software with the goal of helping you “remember everything”.

The Concept: 

Evernote is a system that lets you capture information and then access it quickly by keyword, tag or even text found within images.

Description:

Evernote is an extremely useful system for cataloging general information in an easy way that can be quickly accessed later on. Evernote has a variety of versions of its software so that you can easily capture information using your computer or smartphone. The desktop software and web-browser extensions let you quickly capture text, images and links from web-pages. The mobile apps let you take pictures of receipts, handwritten notes, advertisements and more.
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Management, Tips

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Tutoring Software Series: A File Sharing Solution for Your Tutoring Business

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November 15, 2011

This post is the second in a series on tutoring software  that can be useful for tutoring companies. In today’s post we’ll introduce a file sharing system that can be extremely helpful for sharing documents with your employees and allowing you to access important files from anywhere.

The Concept:

Dropbox is a simple system that keeps files in sync between all of your computers and smartphones so that you can access them from anywhere.

Description:

Dropbox is a simple product that can make sharing and accessing documents extremely easy. To start using Dropbox you download the Dropbox software from their website and install it on your computer. A folder appears on your computer with the Dropbox icon. Any files you want to be able to access from other computers are put in this folder. Dropbox then syncs these files to their server so that you can access them from other computers with the Dropbox software.
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Starting, Tips

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Tutoring Software Series: A Virtual Phone System for Tutoring Businesses

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November 14, 2011

Now more than ever it’s easier for small businesses to compete with large companies due to the availability of a wide range of software tools designed for small businesses. These tools are available to help manage almost any task that a small business might need to take on – and best of all, they are low-cost and in some cases free. In our blog post  “Taking Your Tutoring Business from Good to Great” one of the principles Jim Collins says makes some companies great is their ability to use technology as a growth accelerator.  This post is the first in a series that will look at a variety of software tools that can help your tutoring company be more productive and profitable.
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Starting, Tips

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TutorPanel Mobile – Take TutorPanel With You

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November 11, 2011

Tutoring companies are often quite decentralized in their operations. They may have multiple tutoring center locations and they often have tutors that teach in students’ homes, at schools or in libraries. It’s for this reason that it’s important that their tutoring software can be accessed easily from any location. When we first launched TutorPanel we chose to make it a web-based system since this would allow users to log in from anywhere with a web-enabled computer — whether at home, the office or a library. This makes it possible for employees to log in at a tutoring center or from their homes so that they can check their schedules or reconcile tutoring sessions conveniently. It also makes it possible for customers to be able to access their TutorPanel accounts from their homes without having to install any software on their computers.

We’re proud to announce that TutorPanel is now even easier to access. We’ve launched a mobile site called TutorPanel Mobile that allows administrators and tutors to access key areas of their TutorPanel accounts from their smartphones.

TutorPanel Mobile is a browser-based mobile site that uses a layout optimized for the smaller screens on smartphones to make navigation easier.   It can be used on all major smartphones including iPhone, BlackBerry and Android devices.  The areas that can be accessed using TutorPanel Mobile are the ones that are most frequently accessed on the TutorPanel site. This includes student and parent contact information, calendars and lesson details, reconciling lessons, and for admins account balances and past transactions.

Over time we’ll add additional features to TutorPanel Mobile to make it even better. If you have any suggestions that you’d like to see implemented please let us know by contacting us here.

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Updates

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Taking Your Tutoring Business From Good to Great

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November 11, 2011

“Good to Great” is an well-known, business book written by author Jim Collins that looks at the factors that allow some companies to make the transition from average to great while other companies don’t.   As the owner of a tutoring business I’m sure you’re interested in finding out how you can take your tutoring company from good to great and hopefully this article will provide you with some useful insights that you can apply to your tutoring business. In his research Collins identified seven areas that separated the great companies from the ones that remained average. Let’s take a look at each of these areas and see how you can apply them to take your tutoring business to the next level.

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Management, Strategy

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TutorPanel Updates for October 2011

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October 30, 2011

We’ve made some more improvements and bug fixes in October. One of the more notable new features is the ability to export payments and invoices to Quickbooks. This is a feature that a lot of businesses have been requesting so we’re happy to have completed this.  Read this article in the Knowledge Center to get started: Exporting from TutorPanel to Quickbooks

Below are the features and bug fixes for the month. You can get updates in real-time by following us on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/tutorpanel

  • Changed the wording on invoices to display “Scheduled” instead of “Unreconciled” for future lessons to make more sense to invoice recipients.
  • Added validation to “Add Lesson” form to notify the user if the start date entered is later than the end date.
  • Individual teacher hours page was not working when a new date range was entered on that page – this has been fixed.
  • Information pop-ups are now displaying correctly in Internet Explorer when hovering the cursor over the “i” icons.
  • When including the starting balance on an invoice, but not payments the starting balance was also not including payments. This issue has been fixed.
  • The “Edit” link has been hidden on the calendar event pop-ups for reconciled lessons so that previously reconciled lessons cannot be edited.
  • Lesson reminders were being sent for cancelled tutoring sessions – this has been fixed.
  • Added a “Teacher Timesheet” to the reports tab for displaying teacher hours and wages broken down by date.
  • Student table now displays parent phone and email address if no email or phone is entered on student’s profile.
  • It’s now possible to set a default tutor for a student. This makes it possible for a tutor to add lessons to the calendar for that student (if permissions granted) without the admin having to set up the initial schedule.
  • Tutors with permission to add lessons can only add lessons for their own students now.
  • When editing a series of events a confirmation window now appears to inform the user the effects of editing a series of events and requires a confirmation to continue.
  • “Invoice Sent” confirmation was displaying for invoices created for users without email addresses. The confirmation message now displays that the email was not sent and the reaosn.
  • Automatically generated invoices now include future unreconciled lessons when selected.
  • It’s now possible to add general events to the calendar for non-tutoring events and blocking of unavailable times.
  • It’s now possible to add custom fields to student profiles to record additional information.
  • Added an option to include “prior unreconciled lessons” in the starting balance for regular and automatically generated invoies.
  • Invoice font is now darker to make printed invoices more readable.
  • When clicking a time slot on the calendar to add a lesson, the date field was being set to the incorrect date. This has been fixed.
  • Student and teacher lists pages where adding lessons to the calendar are now in alphabetical order by last name for easier viewing.
  • Added the ability to export invoices and payments to Quickbooks.
  • Lesson fees on invoices are now listed in ascending order for both date and time so that events on the same day appear in order of time.
  • Added table to display lessons that have been reconciled but not invoiced or not paid.
  • Added a table that displays tutoring sessions that have been invoiced and paid by the cutomer and are ready to have the wage paid to the tutor. Check the lessons that you want to pay the tutor for and submit the form to record a payment and mark the lesson wages as having been paid.

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Updates

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Tutoring Business Simplified – The Art of Getting More From Less

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October 09, 2011

When you operate a tutoring business, you’ll find that there is always something to do. If you’re not responding to inquiries from potential customers, you might be interviewing new tutors, marketing your business, sending out invoices, or managing your tutoring business’s accounting. There is always something you can be doing that will help you grow your business. However, where many companies differ is in how productive they are with what they do. The results you get from the time you spend on activities related to your tutoring business can vary greatly depending on how much time you spend on certain activities. In this post we’ll take a look at how to evaluate your business activities and determine which ones are high-impact activities that will help you grow your tutoring business and which ones are related to maintaining your business. By being creative to find ways to reduce the amount of time you spend on the low-impact activities you will be able to dedicate more time to the high impact activities and grow your tutoring business.
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Management, Starting, Strategy, Tips

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September 2011 Updates

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October 01, 2011

We’ve received a lot of feedback this month with suggestions for new features and to point out bugs — if you have any suggestions please let us know by sending us a message using our contact form here: Contact Form.  In addition to the work we’ve done this month we are almost finished work on two major features that will make managing your tutoring business even easier.

Below are the new features and bug fixes for the month of September:

  • Added the option to send a confirmation email to clients when you record a payment.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing tasks from displaying in teachers’ daily summaries.
  • Fixed a bug that was causing backslashes to appear in some tables and forms in teacher accounts as well as the website header.
  • Fixed a bug that wasn’t saving titles for group lessons when the title was changed.
  • Added validation to file upload forms to ensure that all fields are filled out correctly.
  • Changed transaction table’s detail column to display the lesson description instead of lesson notes.
  • Fixed a bug that wasn’t saving adult student names when recording an invoice payment.
  • Missed lessons on the calendar are now correctly showing a line through the time.
  • Added “Print View” to calendar in teacher accounts
  • Admin accounts now display both employee and student birthdays for the current month as well as the person’s age.
  • Tutor account index page now displays student birthdays for current month and displays age.
  • Admins can now adjust the first hour that appears for week and day of the calendar. This can be changed under Account Management ->General Settings.
  • Fixed a bug on student and parent forms that were requiring email addresses when they weren’t supposed to be required.
  • Added parent table to admin accounts
  • Admins cann now let tutors view sessions from other teachers in their company.
  • The income statement now displays the current month by default.
  • The financial snapshot on the index page now includes tutor wages in the expense figure
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing new students from being added when trying to add a new secondary parent at the same time.
  • It’s now possible to hide student and parent contact information from tutor accounts. This can be set under the tutor profile’s account permissions.
  • Added subtotals for earnings, payments, starting balance and wages due in the tutor hours table.
  • The tutor hours table now includes a column displaying wages due for each employee.
  • Removed backslashes that were appearing in front of quotation marks in lesson notes sent to secondary parents.
  • It’s now possible to record payments to teachers.
  • Lesson cost is now automatically set to zero for canceled lessons reconciled from teacher accounts where costs have been hidden.
  • Fixed a but that was dropping any numbers after the comma symbol for lesson costs over 1,000.
  • Invoices now display the company name by default if a logo has not been uploaded.
  • PDFs are now attached to invoice notification emails.
  • Fixed a bug that was preventing invoices created using automatic invoicing from being saved.
  • Added a report that lists all tutoring sessions in list form by date. This is meant to overcome some of the size limitations when trying to print the calendar.
  • Added a preview box to the automatica invoicing page that shows when the first invoice will be generated and the invoice period based on the auto invoicing settings selected.
  • Added “Export to Excel” function for account balances, transactions, prepaid balances, tutor hours, tutor payments and invoices.
  • Added a basic search form to the students table.
  • Online payments made through PayPal will now automatically be recorded in your TutorPanel accounts and invoices are marked paid.
  • Preview button is hidden when the “Generate Invoice” checkbox is checked.
  • Time pickers now display 12:00pm as the default time instead of using the current time.
  • Added an option to send a copy of invoices to your company email address.
  • Fixed a bug that wasn’t updating the company name used in email notifications when changed on the general settings page.
  • Invoices can now be sent and have the option of an html or pdf attachment and sending a copy to your company email address.
  • Teachers can now view hours and payments in their own accounts.
  • Added a pyments table to the teacher’s detailed hour view.
  • The “Edit” option is now displaying for events in teacher accounts where permissions were set to allow editing and adding lessons.
  • Added a “Tutoring Locations” page that lets you add or delete locations. You can also disable default locations.
  • Admins are now able to save default invoice instructions for manually created invoices.
  • Teacher name listed in student list is now based on the teacher for the student’s next tutoring session instead of the first scheduled session.
  • Invoice previews now open in a new window, whereas generated invoices open in the same window.
  • Invoices for students using the “Prepaid Package” billing method now display the tutoring package detail instead of the separate lessons.
  • Admins can now generate pdf copies of past invoices on the “View Invoice” page.

 

We’re working on a couple projects that should be finished in the next couple weeks that will make TutorPanel even more useful to your tutoring business, so stay tuned and check for updates as they happen by following us on twitter.

TutorPanel is tutoring business software designed specifically for tutoring companies. You can sign up for a free 30-day trial at www.tutorpanel.com

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Tutoring Business Word-of-Mouth

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September 22, 2011

Word-of-mouth can play an enormous role in the success of any tutoring business, and if you can encourage it correctly you won’t need to spend as much on other more expensive forms of marketing. Making some small adjustments to the way you do things can lead to big results as word-of-mouth about your tutoring business spreads through your market.
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Marketing

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