Teaching is the job. Bookkeeping shouldn’t be a second one. With Fee-Lion you set each student’s monthly lesson fee once, let it bill itself on a schedule, and turn on auto-pay so families are charged like clockwork while you stay focused on the music.
Set up a recurring monthly lesson fee
Most teaching is a flat monthly rate, so a recurring invoice fits perfectly. Each student (or their parent) becomes a client, and the invoice repeats on its own.
- From the left sidebar, open Contacts and add the family as a client. If you’re billing a parent for a child’s lessons, the parent is the contact who pays.
- Go to Invoices and choose New recurring invoice.
- Add a line item for the lesson plan, for example “Weekly piano lessons — June” as a fee or unit (qty × rate), or as hours × rate if you’d rather bill by the lesson hour.
- Set the cadence to monthly and pick the day it should issue, like the 1st.
- Confirm your tax and payment terms, then save. Fee-Lion will generate and send each month’s invoice automatically.
If your studio runs in semesters or you want a single up-front bill, you can do a one-off invoice instead and keep the recurring schedule for monthly families.
Tip: Set your defaults first under Settings → Preferences (payment terms, tax, branding) so every lesson invoice goes out looking consistent without extra clicks.
Turn on auto-pay so families never miss a month
Auto-pay is the part that ends the chasing. Once a family enrolls, their card is charged automatically each time the monthly invoice issues, and the money lands in your own Stripe account.
- Connect your payouts first: Settings → Preferences leads you to connect Stripe, so card payments deposit straight into your account (Fee-Lion takes only a small platform fee).
- On the recurring invoice, enable auto-pay.
- Send the parent their magic-link portal — no login, no password. They open it on their phone, save a card, and opt in to auto-pay.
- From then on, each monthly invoice is paid automatically and marked Paid the moment it clears.
Families who’d rather pay manually still get a clear Pay button on every invoice and can tap it whenever they like.
Record the cash and check students too
Plenty of students still hand you cash at the door or mail a check. You don’t want those families lost in a stack of “unpaid” invoices, so record those payments manually.
- Open the family’s invoice and choose Record offline payment.
- Enter the amount and the method (cash, check, transfer) so the invoice flips to Paid and your books stay accurate.
- Mix and match freely: some families on auto-pay by card, others paying offline, all tracked in one place.
When you want the full picture — who’s paid, who’s late, how the studio’s doing month to month — the Reports section gives you a revenue drilldown and an aging view so a slow-paying family never slips past you.
Join the discussion
Members join the discussion
Comments are for Fee-Lion users. Enter your email and we'll send a one-time link to sign in — no password.