We are currently in the process of setting up our School Programs on Tessitura.
We have two separate schools in our building. Ou Professional Division includes a approximately 100 students (200 in summer). Most of these students live in our attached Residence and attend schools associated with our program. We provide 24-hour care for these students with meal-plans, activities, physiotherapy, etc.
Our second division is our Recreational Division which has a current enrolment of just under 1000 students. At this time we offer 176 different classes in this Division. Enrolment in classes is dependent upon a number of factors which may include age as of Dec. 31st, teacher placement as per end of year report cards, audition, concurrent classes, and/or adult or boys only classes.
Both programs have associated exams and report cards as well as special shows, dance competitions, etc. Both programs require that we issue appropriate tax receipts - T2202A and Child Fitness Tax.
We also run a few satellite programs throughout the province.
Keeping in mind that we generally have only three admin staff to run everything, I would greatly appreciate the advice of anyone who has implemented programs similar to our own.
Thanks.
Kris Wiklund
Royal Winnipeg Ballet School
kwiklund@rwb.org
Hi Kris,
I think this is an excellent example of what a number of ballet organizations (and other orgs) that are using Tessitura are looking for. There seems to be a large need for more robust sales of semester-long programming with a lot of additional tracking as you've detailed. I suggested it as a 2012 conference session.
Is your goal to sell and track absolutely everything about your School Programs in Tessitura? Or would it be OK to do just some parts?
If you were to track everything you detailed, it would require a number of custom screens and some creative hacking. Probably possible but it would be time-consuming, and I'd personally want to pull in some consultants to write the custom pieces.
If you wanted to start small and just have the money run through Tessitura, that would be fairly easy. You can set up one or a few dummy performances that contain as many seats as you need, and then sell a seat to a customer when they enroll. (Some places use editable pricing as needed.) The transaction is paid out, and then separate systems are used to track the fine details (scheduling, report cards, etc.)
If your organization's goal is to get a snapshot of your customers and their activity in Tessitura, and you're OK with the idea of simply knowing that they enrolled in a School Program in a given year without any other details, then the second option is probably best.
-Michael