StudioSchool Pro - 3.32

SSP is a product which offers a lot of database power in a turnkey package. I have used it for more than a year now and have found it to be an incredible asset to my business. I own and operate a Monart drawing school and currently have 180 enrolled students. We run our school on trimesters which requires us to re-enroll students three times per year plus a summer session. This task would previously take us more than a week each time to accomplish but with SSP it now can be finished off in a a day or so. And we have less errors and happier customers. My business runs as a for-profit which makes all of the built in fund-raising features irrelevant but I still consider SSP to be worth every penny I paid. Additionally SSP provides many management features for Classes, Students, Teachers, and Reporting. These are things that are used daily and are fluid enough to pop open at a moments notice when some bit of information is needed. I also feel like I have a much more lucid understanding of my cash flow and financial overview since SSP does report on outstanding balances and can manage customer credits. I cannot imagine going back to a manual system when SSP has given me so much control over this thankless (yet crucial) portion of operating a school based business.

The only negative that I think are worth commenting on is the fact that SSP is a closed database. However it's easy to understand why. If the product is to develop customers can't be writing custom code all over the place or the entire package would break at every update. It's still possible to export data into a custom DB if SSP can't provide the tweak you need. There are a few as-of-now unimplemented features that I look forward to and a glitch or two but overall the product is quite sound. SSP is clearly better than some of the offerings from large software publishers that I've purchased in the past.

The author of SSP has been very responsive to requests we've made for future updates and has added features that we've indicated would help us. The product has always been stable and has never crashed. We currently have approx. 500 families in SSP and it grows every three months. The software continues to feel brisk in use and is a workhorse product. We recently received a beta PDF manual which was greatly appreciated. SSP is not completely intuitive as many of its features require a number of steps and the manual was very helpful.

If you operate a school model business that involves enrollment, class management, student record keeping, family contact and/or light financial record keeping SSP may be your solution. I have personally recommended it to the 45 other Monart school owners throughout the US.