We’ve just released a new feature called “Attendance Power Entry”. Here’s what it looks like:

New Attendance Power Entry

This new page allows you to rip through an entire stack of attendance cards in a very short time. It does NOT replace the old way of recording attendance (by clicking a blue link next to a student’s name). It’s an additional option for you.

To get to this page, click the “Attendance Power Entry” link in the Students sidebar:

How to Use the New Attendance Power Entry Screen

On this page you enter two pieces of info: a date and a student number. Click in the date field and a calendar will pop up. Like so:

Then enter a student’s number. You can find this number on a student’s detail page in the upper right hand corner:

In this example, the Student ID is “3605″. This is the number you enter in the “student number” field.

(Helpful hint: If you use attendance cards, go through your students one-by-one and jot this number on the back of each card. Then when you’re ready to record attendance for the day, turn the cards over and rip through them.)

You can also choose days in the past. Once you set a date, it doesn’t change. This means you can enter a stack of cards for yesterday, then switch the date to today and enter that stack of cards.

Using this screen, our beta testers found that they were able to enter an entire stack of attendance cards in less than a minute!

This will greatly speed up your attendance process. I hope it’s useful to you!

Student Tabs

You’ll notice the look of our student tabs has changed. The reason we changed the design is simple. First, the tabs are bigger. This means they’re easier to press if you’re leaning over the computer after teaching class. Usability has improved because they’re simply easier to see. Second, the tabs now match the UI (user interface) and design throughout the rest of the application.

Attendance Pagination

The other small change we added this week is pagination (buttons for pages) in a Student’s attendance tab area. Before, the days attended trailed down the page. We noticed that this was slowing the application because many, many days were being loaded – some of which you didn’t need to see. By default, 10 attendance days for a student load when you click a student’s attendances tab. You can see all of them, however, by clicking the pagination.

Another update is coming soon – a revamp of the tasks page.

Update #1: Printing Lists for Offline Use

If you look at bottom of your students list, you’ll see a “print” link.

This takes you to a preview screen where you can print the list.  To print, click on “file”, then “print” in your browser software (Internet Explorer or Firefox).  It’s formatted for most standard 8.5″ x 11″ printers.  The nice thing about this print feature is that whatever list you pull up (ex. past-due students, all students, tagged students, whatever) will be printed as you see on the screen.

It’s a simple update, but an important one because you’re not always in front of your computer!   Check it out.

Update #2: Sorting By Last Name, Not Belt Rank

After many requests and a consensus from a majority of users, we have changed the default sort order for your Students list. Right now, it sorts based on rank code. That means it groups all your ranks together. Blue belts are grouped with blue belts in the list and brown belts with brown belts. However, many users are confused by this – and some users don’t use rank codes at all.

This has changed. Now the default sort order is by last name.

This is true of all lists: active students, inactive students, searches of students and tagged students. The only exception is the birthday list. That’s sorted by the date of the birthday.

We believe this approach is more logical and intuitive. And if you want to see your students grouped any particular way, all you have to do is tag them and hit that button in the sidebar.

If you have any questions about this, post a question in the support area when you’re logged into the application. Thanks!

A tag is a lot like a “keyword”.  Tags help you find students with something in common. Some common tags include things like:

• auto-pay
• leadership
• referral source
• on vacation
• tournament on 11/15/2010
• instructor
• eligible for upgrade
• and so on.

If you’ve ever said to yourself, “I wish Studentbase had a field for that”, this is your solution. You can assign up to 20 tags per student. And it’s super-easy to do:

Just enter tags when you create or edit a student. You’ll see the field for tags at the bottom, right above the “Submit” button.

Here’s a closer look:

Just enter your tags separated by commas and submit. It’s that simple. Once your tags are entered, you’ll see them appear in a list below their name. Like so:

You can easily edit a student’s tags by clicking the “edit tags” link. It takes you to this edit page:

You’ll see all the tags for this student and you can add or remove tags from here. Easy, right?

Once you enter all your tags they automatically appear in the bottom of the sidebar (which we also revamped). We even added some common searches to get you started: active students, inactive students, all students, birthday this month, birthday next month, enrolled this month, went inactive this month and missed two weeks of class.

All you do is click a tag button and the list of all the students with that tag pops up. Nothing could be easier! Want to see all your upcoming tournament attendees? Bam! Want to see all your auto-pay people? Bam! Want to see all your students who are tagged as an instructor? Bam! Tagging makes sifting and sorting your students incredibly easy.

We hope you like tagging. It’s a major feature release. We’re currently working on tagging for all your leads, too!

Anyway, here are two screenshots of the upcoming payments editing feature. In this first screenshot, you’ll see a small “Edit” link next to the trash can icon.

All you do is click that link and it takes you to the editing screen for that individual payment.  Like so:

Then all you have to do is change any of the amounts you initially entered, such as the amount, the payment date, the notes and the paid status.  Click “Update Payment” and you’re done.

If you have any questions, please post them in the support area inside the app.

Before, when you entered a note, a task, an attendance date, payment (etc.), you did so in the sidebar off to the right.

Before

And here’s a closeup:

You clicked in the box and pressed “Add Note”.  This has changed to an “in-line” form which you access by clicking a link.  You now enter a note, record a payment, log a day attended (etc.) like this:

After

You simply click the link and a box drops down:

This makes more sense, too.  The form is out of view until you need it.  It’s a minor design change, but one I want you to be aware of.  Again, we made this change to make way for some new billing and invoicing features as well as “tagging” of leads and students (which I’ll explain in upcoming post).

Thanks! Post any feedback in the members support area.

The Studentbase development team.

The purpose is to give you (or members of your staff) a way to capture lead information when you’re not in front of your computer. When I managed a school, I used these forms to capture most of the leads, then transferred them into my school manager later. There are two versions:

• A “handout” version you can give to walk-ins, parents and potential students to fill out themselves.
• A “staff” version your staff can use while on the phone or in person.

Both versions come in a Word format (which you can modify) and a PDF version (which you cannot modify). Use them any way you like.

• Studentbase Lead Form (Handout) - Word Version (234)
• Studentbase Lead Form (Handout) - PDF Version (243)
• Studentbase Lead Form (Staff Use) - Word Version (219)
• Studentbase Lead Form (Staff Use) - PDF Version (255)

Here are some screenshots and a sneak peek of the feature:

Why this feature? The answer is simple: as a martial arts school owner, you need to track every marketing effort you do. This new feature – campaigns – is how you do that.

For example, let’s say you redesigned your website. You want to know how well it’s working. Every lead your new website generates is traced back to that campaign.

This answers some critical questions for you:

• Is my new marketing campaign working?
• If so, how well?
• What leads did this campaign bring in the door for me?
• Did any of those leads turn into sales?
• If so, which ones?
• What is my “batting average” on turning leads into students?

As you can see, tracking your marketing campaigns is critical. This new feature from Studentbase makes it easy to do!