How to switch from MyMusicStaff without losing a term.

1. Pick the cut-over date. Today.

   Make the cut-over date the first day of a billing month, and run both apps for the whole month before it. If today is March 10, April 1 is too soon, so make it May 1 and run both through April. If a new term starts on cut-over day, so much the better. Let MyMusicStaff run as usual until then.

2. Export what MyMusicStaff will give you. Before the month starts.

   MyMusicStaff's help center has an article called Can I download (export) my student data. Follow it, and keep the export open in a window beside Lesson Lineup, because you'll be typing from the file. Keep the file when you're done, too: it's your record of who was enrolled on the day you left. While you're in there, export any reports you think you'll want later. Export the balances last, on the last day before the month starts, once that day's payments are in: they're the opening balances you'll enter in step four.

3. Sign up, and set the policy before the people. The 1st.

   Sign up on the first day of the month you'll run both apps, so the 30-day trial covers all of it.

   You'll want to start with the students, because it feels like progress. Do the settings first, while Lesson Lineup is still empty. In Business Settings, Region is in Edit Business Profile, on the profile card beside the tabs. It sets your currency and date format, and every lesson price you type is in that currency. Naming Format, on the General tab, sets how names are shown, and Invoice Formatting, on the Accounts & Invoices tab, sets what an invoice looks like.

   Then the policy. Each category under Calendar → Options → Categories & Locations has two boxes, Events in this category can generate charges and Allow make-up credits to be used for this event type; set them for the categories you teach. Your cap and expiry for credits go under Business Settings → Email & SMS → Make-Up Credit Policy. The attendance statuses themselves are fixed: each one already says whether a lesson is charged and whether it earns a credit, as the cancellations guide explains. Set all of this first, and the invoices you compare in step six are built on your own policy.

4. Type in families, then students. The first weekend.

   Start with families, one account per paying household. Give each family one opening charge for what they owed MyMusicStaff when the month began, dated the day before: the balance you exported on that day in step two. If a family was in credit, enter a payment instead. Then add each student under their family. Two sisters who come in back to back on a Tuesday belong to one family account, which puts them on one balance and one invoice. For each student you need contact details, instrument, lesson length and price. Twenty students takes an afternoon, and forty is closer to a full day.

5. Build the schedule as recurring series. The same weekend.

   Give each student one recurring lesson, from the first day of the month you're running both to the end of term: Tuesdays at 4:30, thirty minutes, every week. Work down your MyMusicStaff calendar and do them all in one sitting. If you type two students into the same slot, Lesson Lineup warns you before it saves the lesson. Lessons from before that month stay in the MyMusicStaff exports. If you've already taught some of this month's, mark their attendance once the schedule is in.

6. Run both for the month. To its last day.

   After every lesson, take attendance in both apps, and record each payment in both. On the last day of the month, create that month's invoices in Lesson Lineup without emailing them (it builds them from the attendance you took) and lay them next to the ones from MyMusicStaff, along with each family's balance. If the Garcias' invoice comes out a lesson apart, look at the attendance status or the price you set in step four, fix it there, and create the invoice again. Don't type over the amount. If it's their balance that differs, check the opening charge, and look for a payment entered in only one app. Once every family matches, the billing is right, and that's mostly what the trial is for.

   Families aren't chased about these invoices. Send an overdue invoice reminder, on the Accounts & Invoices tab, only reminds a family about an invoice that was emailed to them, and these never were.

7. Cut over, then cancel. The 1st of the next month.

   On cut-over day, send the last invoices from MyMusicStaff, covering the month you ran both, as usual. Those lessons are already on each family's balance in Lesson Lineup, so don't enter them again: when the Garcias pay that invoice, record the payment in Lesson Lineup only. From then on, every charge and payment goes into the Lesson Lineup ledger, and each family's balance is added up from those entries. Cancel MyMusicStaff last of all, and keep the exports. Their pricing page mentions a 90-day money-back guarantee, in case you're still within it.

What stays behind: lesson history, old invoices, practice logs and notes. They're in the exports. Retyping a year of history gives you nothing the exported reports don't already have, and every number you retype could end up disagreeing with an invoice a family has already paid.

Before and after the move

• Lesson Lineup vs MyMusicStaff

  The two side by side, and what you save in a year. Read it before step one.

• Music lesson cancellation policy template

  The written policy behind the settings in step three. Send it to families along with the news that you're switching.

• How to stop chasing late lesson payments

  Invoices, balances and late payers, once your ledger is in Lesson Lineup.

Start it on the 1st of the month you run both, and the trial covers that whole month. It needs no card. After it, it's $6.99 a month.