Olune vs running your studio on spreadsheets
Plenty of good studios run on spreadsheets for years, and there's no shame in it. It's worth knowing the specific points where they stop being free.
Last updated
Spreadsheets are genuinely good at some of this
They're free, you already know how they work, and they bend to whatever odd thing your studio does without asking permission. For a single teacher with sixty students and a simple fee structure, a well-kept spreadsheet is a perfectly reasonable way to run a studio, and swapping it for software you resent is not an improvement.
The failures below are specific. If none of them describe your studio, stay where you are.
Failure one: the same information in three places
The class list, the invoice sheet and the public timetable each hold a version of the truth. A student changes classes and you update two of them. Which two varies.
This is the failure that produces the term-fee error you find in week six, and it gets worse with every teacher you add, because now there are more hands and more copies.
Failure two: invoicing takes a weekend
Building term invoices by hand from a spreadsheet is a few hours of careful work four times a year, plus the corrections afterwards. Say five hours a term including fixes — twenty hours a year, on a weekend, doing arithmetic.
That's the clearest comparison available. Twenty hours of your time against a subscription. Most studio owners, asked to price their own weekend, find the software is cheaper.
Failure three: money quietly leaks
Spreadsheets are bad at chasing. Unpaid fees are only visible if you go looking, and reconciling against the bank account is a manual scan. Studios that switch usually find at least one family who hasn't paid for something — occasionally a whole term.
This is the failure that pays for the subscription outright, and it's the one people are most surprised by.
Failure four: it only runs if you do
The spreadsheet has your conventions in it. The colour that means paid, the tab that's out of date but you know not to use, the formula you'd have to explain.
That's fine until you're sick in enrolment week, or you want to hire an administrator, or you want to sell the studio. At that point the system existing only in your head becomes the constraint on the business growing.
How to tell you've reached the point
Three signals, any one of which is enough: you have more than one person who needs to update the same information; you've found a fee error you can't explain; or you've started avoiding the spreadsheet on a Sunday.
If you're there, Olune is free until general release in December, so you can move a term across and see the comparison honestly before spending anything.
Details about spreadsheets on this page were taken from publicly published information and last checked on . Pricing and features change — check their current published terms before deciding. Olune is not affiliated with any product named here.
Common questions
- Is studio management software worth it for a small dance studio?
- It depends on where your time goes. If term invoicing takes a weekend and you're chasing fees from memory, the subscription is usually cheaper than the hours. For a single teacher with a simple fee structure and a well-kept spreadsheet, staying put is a reasonable choice.
- What do studios usually get wrong with spreadsheets?
- The same information ending up in several places — class list, invoice sheet and public timetable — so they drift apart. That's what produces term-fee errors and out-of-date timetables, and it gets worse as soon as more than one person is editing.
- Can I move my spreadsheet data into Olune?
- Yes. Students, families and classes can be brought in rather than retyped. A term break is the easiest time to do it, since no fees are mid-collection.
Keep reading
Run your whole studio from one calm place
Enrolments, timetables, attendance and term fees in one place — free to use until general release in December.
Start free