Placement by group text
Families ask which class their daughter belongs in, and the answer lives in your head or in last year's binder. Every message you answer by hand is a booking you did not confirm.
About 9 hours per term at the deskTerm enrollment for ballet and dance schools
Place the term, size every costume and collect the recital fees before the season begins.
TutuTerm turns your fall and spring terms into one clean run: class placement by level and age, a costume measurement sheet filled in by each family, and recital fees billed in stages instead of one painful lump. Your front desk stops chasing paper and your season budget stops guessing.
- 641 studiosrunning terms in 43 states
- 96,400 dancersplaced and measured since 2021
- One afternoonfrom roster import to open enrollment
What August actually looks like
The term does not fall apart in class. It falls apart on the desk.
You know the choreography. What eats the week is the paperwork that surrounds it: the level questions, the measuring tape, the deposits, the parent who swears she paid in June. Here is where the money and the hours leak.
Costume sizes arrive late
Measurements come in on scraps of paper, in texts, and from a parent who guessed. Rush charges and reorders on a 90 dancer recital are not small.
$1,400 to $2,600 in rush and reorder feesOne recital invoice, one panic
A single February bill covering costume, tights, media fee and theater share is the moment families drop out. You lose the dancer and the number in the routine.
6 to 11 withdrawals per springNobody knows who owes what
Tuition sits in one system, recital fees in a spreadsheet, and the sibling discount in your memory. Reconciling the two the week of tech rehearsal is the worst job of the year.
$3,100 average uncollected per seasonHow the term runs
Four steps from open enrollment to the last curtain call
TutuTerm follows the calendar you already keep. You set the term once, and every family sees the same clear path from registration through recital week.
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Build the term and the schedule
Enter your classes with level, age band, day, studio room and cap. TutuTerm turns that into a public schedule with real seat counts, so a Tuesday Ballet 3 that holds 18 stops taking registrations at 18.
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Place each dancer, do not guess
Families register the dancer, not a class. You see age, last level completed and any note from her previous teacher, then place her with one click. Placement letters go out as a batch, and the family sees the class she was given and why.
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Collect costume measurements per dancer
Each enrolled dancer gets a measurement form with the exact fields your costume vendor asks for, girth included, plus a short video on how to take them. You get one clean sheet per class, sortable by size, ready to order.
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Stage the recital fees
Split costume, tights, media and theater share across three or four dated charges from October to March. Families see the whole plan up front, and you see a running total of what is committed and what has cleared.
Inside the software
Built around placement, sizing and the recital ledger
Every screen exists because a studio director asked for it during a real September. Nothing here is borrowed from a gym booking app.
Level ladder and placement notes
Define your own ladder, from Creative Movement through Ballet 6 and pointe readiness, with the age and prerequisite rules you actually apply. Teacher notes from last spring follow the dancer into placement, so nobody is bumped up by accident.
Measurement sheets per dancer
Girth, chest, waist, hip, inseam and shoe, captured by the parent with a guide that shows how each one is taken. Export the class as a vendor ready sheet, or hand the size run to your costume rep in one file.
Staged recital fee schedule
Set the dates and the amounts once, and each enrolled dancer carries her own plan through the season. A family that adds a second routine in January gets the extra charge folded into the remaining dates automatically.
Sibling and multi class math
Second dancer discounts, third class free, and the unlimited rate all calculate at registration rather than at the desk. The family sees the discounted total before she commits, which is why fewer of them call to argue.
Recital week roster and running order
Pull the cast list per routine with costume, quick change flag and dressing room assignment. Print it, or share a link with your backstage moms so the wings run on the same page you do.
Two location roll up
Run each address with its own schedule, staff and fee plan while you watch enrollment, sizing progress and outstanding balances side by side. Move a dancer between locations without re registering her.
What changes by spring
Numbers our studios report after one full season
These come from 218 studios that finished a fall and spring term on TutuTerm and compared it against their prior year books.
92%
of measurements in by the deadline
Two reminders go out on your schedule, and the parent sees exactly which of her six numbers is still blank. Studios used to close at roughly 60 percent by the same date.
$4,850
recovered per season on average
Staged charges catch families before the balance grows large enough to feel impossible, and the outstanding list is one screen instead of three spreadsheets.
11 hours
off the enrollment window
Placement letters, waitlist moves and confirmation emails go out as batches. The desk answers questions instead of typing the same reply forty times.
3.4x
fewer rush costume orders
A clean size run, sorted and signed off by you before the vendor cutoff, means one order instead of an order plus two frantic corrections in April.
From studio directors
People who have run a recital say it better than we can
I placed 214 dancers in nine days and I never opened last year's binder once. The teacher notes riding along with each registration is the part I would not give up now.
Dana Whitfield Owner and Artistic Director, Cedar Grove Ballet Academy, Asheville, North Carolina
Our costume order went in on October 30 with every girth measurement filled. My rep asked what changed. I told her the parents finally had a form that made sense on a phone.
Marisol Reyes Aguilar Studio Director, Brio Dance Center, Tucson, Arizona
Splitting the recital fee over four dates ended the February exodus. We lost two dancers last spring instead of the usual nine, and I stopped dreading the email inbox.
Kathleen O'Rourke Owner, Rosin Box Dance Works, Naperville, Illinois
641Studios on the platform
96,400Dancers placed since 2021
98.2%Recital fees collected on plan
Plans
Priced for a studio, not for an enterprise
One flat monthly rate covering the whole term, the whole recital and every family in it. No per dancer surcharge and no fee taken out of what parents pay you.
One Studio
$45 per month
For a single address running up to 250 enrolled dancers.
- Unlimited classes, terms and waitlists
- Placement with teacher notes and level rules
- Costume measurement forms and vendor export
- Staged recital fee schedules
- Email support with a same business day reply
Most studios choose this
Studio Plus
$95 per month
For a busy single address with a competition team and a full recital.
- Everything in One Studio, with no dancer cap
- Competition team rosters and travel fee plans
- Recital week running order and dressing rooms
- Sibling, multi class and unlimited rate rules
- Payment plan reminders on your own schedule
- Roster import and setup done with you
Two Locations
$189 per month
For two addresses under one name, with shared staff and one recital.
- Everything in Studio Plus at both addresses
- Combined enrollment and balance roll up
- Move a dancer between locations in one step
- Per location staff permissions
- Season close out reporting for your accountant
Every plan is billed monthly in US dollars and can be cancelled at any time, effective at the end of the current month. No annual contract, no setup fee, no percentage of tuition.
Questions we get on the first call
Straight answers before you move a season onto new software
The plan price covers the software for your whole season: enrollment, placement, measurement collection, recital fee scheduling and every family account attached to your studio. One Studio is $45 per month, Studio Plus is $95 per month and Two Locations is $189 per month. We do not charge per dancer, and we do not take a cut of the tuition or recital fees your families pay you. Card processing is handled by your own merchant account, so those rates stay between you and your processor.
Most studios open registration within one afternoon. You send us last year's roster as a spreadsheet export and we map dancers, guardians and levels for you before your first working session. Building the class grid takes about an hour once your schedule is settled, and the measurement and fee templates are copied from a library you can edit. Directors who start in late June are usually taking registrations the first week of July.
Only the staff you invite, and only at the level you grant them. A teacher sees her own classes and the notes she wrote, the front desk sees balances, and measurements are visible to whoever handles your costume order. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, hosted in United States data centers, and it belongs to your studio: you can export everything as CSV at any hour without asking us. We never sell it and we never use it to market to your families.
TutuTerm connects to Stripe and Square for card and ACH charges, pushes paid invoices into QuickBooks Online or Xero, and publishes your class schedule to your existing website with a small embed. Placement letters and reminders can send through your own Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 address so families see your name in the inbox. Measurement sheets export in the column layout used by the major costume houses, and there is a plain CSV if your vendor wants something else.
You cancel from the billing screen and the plan ends at the close of that month, with no exit fee and no phone call required. Your account stays readable for 60 days so you can pull rosters, balances and the measurement archive at your own pace. If you cancel after the recital and come back in August, we keep your class grid and level ladder waiting rather than making you rebuild it. Nothing about the cancellation touches the money your families already paid you.
This is the objection we hear most, and it is fair. Families never create a password: they get a link by text or email that opens their dancer straight away on a phone. The measurement form asks for one number per screen with a photo showing where the tape goes, and a guardian who gets stuck can hand it back to the front desk to finish. Across last season, 94 percent of families completed registration without a single support message to the studio.
Barre and Ledger
The working magazine for studio owners
Term pricing, costume sizing, placement day and the real cost of a recital, written for directors who handle all four in the same season. Here are the three newest pieces.
Talk to us
Bring us your messiest term and we will show you how it lands
Send the class grid you are wrestling with, the fee plan you have been meaning to change, or last year's costume order and its corrections. On a 30 minute call we will build a piece of your season live and you will see exactly where the hours go back into your week.
What the call covers
- Your level ladder and how placement rules would be written
- A measurement sheet mapped to your costume vendor
- A staged fee plan built against your recital date
- What moving your existing roster would involve
A real person replies within one business day, usually the same morning during enrollment season. Prefer email? Write to jimenezjulien42@gmail.com.