Choosing dance studio software in New Zealand

Start with how your year is actually shaped

New Zealand studios run on four school terms, not semesters or rolling monthly memberships. That sounds like a small difference until you try to invoice for it. Software built around a monthly membership model will happily charge every family the same amount every month, which is not how a ten-week term with a two-week break works.

Before you look at a feature list, write down how you actually charge: per term, per class, per hour, family discounts, sibling discounts, casual drop-ins. Then check whether the software can express that without you doing arithmetic in a spreadsheet first. If you have to work out the numbers yourself and type them in, the software is a filing cabinet, not a system.

Check that GST is handled, not bolted on

If you're GST-registered, every invoice you send has to show GST correctly, and your prices need to be consistently inclusive or exclusive. Overseas software often treats tax as an afterthought or assumes a US sales-tax model where tax is added at checkout and varies by state.

Ask directly: can I set my prices as GST-inclusive, does the invoice show the GST component, and does that flow to my accounting software? In New Zealand the retail convention is GST-inclusive pricing, so if a system forces you to enter exclusive prices you will spend the year explaining to parents why the invoice doesn't match the advertised fee.

Work out what you're really paying

Class management software is usually priced one of three ways: a flat licence fee, a tier based on how many students you have, or per-student. Tiered pricing sounds fair until you notice the tier boundaries — going from 100 to 101 students can step your bill up sharply, and a busy Term 1 can push you into a bracket you stay in all year.

Also look for the costs that sit outside the monthly fee: setup fees, a separate charge for a branded parent app, payment processing on top of the platform fee, and whether a website is included or something you buy elsewhere. And check the currency. A plan billed in US dollars moves with the exchange rate, so the price you budgeted in March isn't the price you pay in October.

• Is the price in NZD, or converted from USD?
• Is there a setup or onboarding fee?
• Does the price change as your student numbers grow, and at what points?
• Is a website included, or is that a separate subscription?
• What does taking a card payment cost on top?

The register is the part you use every single day

It's easy to choose software on the strength of its reporting and then discover the bit you touch most — marking who turned up — is slow. You mark registers in a studio, often on a phone, sometimes with a class waiting. It needs to take seconds.

Two questions worth asking: does the register work when the internet doesn't, and does marking attendance actually update anything else? A register that syncs nowhere is a paper roll with extra steps. Attendance should feed the student's record, so when a parent asks how many classes their child has missed this term you can answer without counting.

Ask who holds the data and how you get it back

Your student list, family contact details and fee history are the most valuable thing your studio owns. Before you commit, find out how you export them. A vendor that can only give you a PDF, or that charges to release your own data, has made switching away expensive on purpose.

Also worth checking where the data is stored and what the privacy position is, particularly since you're holding information about children. Under the Privacy Act 2020 you're responsible for that information regardless of which software you chose, so 'the vendor handles it' isn't an answer you can give a parent.

Where Olune sits

Olune is built for New Zealand studios: prices in NZD, GST handled at studio level so your invoices match your advertised fees, and a term-based fee model with payment plans for families who need to spread the cost. Enrolments come in through your own public page, registers can be marked on a phone or taken by a tap at the door, and your studio website is included rather than bought separately.

It's free to use while it's in development, with general release due in December, so you can put a real term through it before deciding.