We hope your year is off to a great start. Here is the list of new features and bug fixes we released in January.

New Features

• On Money > Statements, we added the link “Click here to pay for invoice <invoice number>”
• We added UAE Dirhams (AED) to the list of currencies.
• Added a total sum at the bottom of the Family Accounts report.

Bug Fixes

• Teacher view in calendar was broken in Google Chrome. This is now fixed.
• Event Locations page only displayed 20 entries with no option to go to next page. The list wasn’t sorted either. This is now fixed.
• When creating an invoice, automatic billing from calendar option was taking to long to load. This is now fixed.
• Video tutorials did not work on Internet Explorer. This is now fixed.
• When creating new Invoices, the package select pull down menu did not work in Safari. This is now fixed.
• Details were missing when importing invoices in Quickbooks. This is now fixed.
• Permission denied appeared when a Teacher tried to create an Event Category even if permissions are correct. This is now fixed. Please re-save your permissions to reset.
• On the student cancellation page, the “Never mind” button did not work. This is now fixed.
• On the Location view of the calendar, lessons did not appear if they were at the same time and location. This is now fixed.
• When exporting contact lists, the notes section did not appear for teachers and parents. This is now fixed.

Here is the list of updates we launched in December, 2011. We’re monitoring the votes on our feedback system and are looking into adding those with the most votes soon. If you haven’t voted the features you’d like to see implemented into Studio Helper, please do so now.

• The system now prevents duplicate invoices when a recurring invoice start date is later than the current date.
• We added Dominican Pesos to the currency list.
• On your studio website login form, students who typed incorrect passwords got redirected to the main Studio Helper Login page rather than your website. This is now fixed.
• The button “Save and add another” on the Receive Payment page did not work. This is now fixed.
• On the Permissions page, the checkbox always stayed checked on the question “Who should be able to delete students.” This now fixed.
• On the Invoice List, if sorted by Client, the alphabetical order was broken whenever an invoice was deleted. This is now fixed.

The year is almost over, and we’re continuing make Studio Helper even better. Your feedback directly influences the changes we make, so remember to vote on which features you’d like to see on our Feature Request page.

Here is a list of the updates we launched in November, 2011. We have some other larger items under the hood that we’re working on, too, and we’ll keep you posted as we get closer to launching. Thanks for using Studio Helper.

• Email reminders were sent by the old studio email address even when it was recently changed. This is now fixed.
• On the Register for this Event, when the event has registration fee, the student’s checkbox was missing. This is now fixed.
• On the Birthday Report page a heading “Birthdays between Nov 1, 2008 – Nov 30, 2008″ was shown. This is now fixed.
• The mini calendar was not working on student accounts. This is now fixed.
• On the settings page, if the time format of military was selected, the calendar was still showing non-military. This is now fixed.

Studio Helper now allows you to do this through a calendar feed. For instructions on syncing your Studio Helper calendar with different calendar programs, click the Calendar menu, then click the Feed icon in the sidebar. We hope you enjoy this new feature.

Recent features and updates

• The Studio Helper calendar is now running up to 6 times faster on some studios.
• Added Singapore Dollar (SGD) and Norwegian Krone (NOK) to the currency list.
• Added calendar feeds for iCal format. Go to Calendar then click the ‘Calendar Feed’ link on the sidebar for instructions.
• Note: To be able to sync faster, we’ve changed the calendar feed to only show 2 months from the past and 6 months to the future.
• Changed vertical links to horizontal icons in the calendar sidebar to give more room for teacher, category, and location filter lists.

Recent Bug Fixes

• When a student is removed from the attendance of a series, it didn’t affect the attendance of future events. We’ve fixed this.
• The mini calendar on the right side did not appear properly on student accounts. This is now fixed.
• Calendar Feed displayed all studio events on teacher’s account. We’ve fixed this and it now only shows their own lessons.
• On rare occasions, the calendar event popup didn’t appear when clicked. This is now fixed.
• Video tutorials were not working when using Google Chrome. This is now fixed.

At Studio Helper we are continuing to work hard making improvements to the software and fixing any issues that arise. We’ve been getting more votes on the ideas listed on our feedback site, and if you have an idea for a new feature or a way we can improve Studio Helper, please submit your idea and vote on it. This will help us know which features are most important to you, and which we should focus on first.

In the mean time, here are the updates we made in September. Remember that we also post these updates live on our Twitter and Facebook pages, if you’d like to stay aware of the new improvements as they happen.

• Some students were randomly being removed as participants in an event. This bug has now been fixed!
• This month, we moved Studio Helper to a new server, and have made numerous speed optimizations. As a result, many pages of the site are now running several times faster than before.
• Some studios were having trouble accessing the “Receive Payment” page. This has now been fixed.
• An error message appeared when the link in Payments > Export to Excel CSV was clicked. This is now fixed.
• On Safari, when trying to add a recurring invoice one of the options reads “Every XX month(s) on the NaNth day of the month.” Fixed.
• Note: Some students may have received duplicate reminders during the two days following the move to our new server, because the old server was still running. We apologize for the error.
• Students and parents were able to delete invoices in some studios. This is now fixed.
• Emailing directly from the People List wasn’t working for a couple days. This is now fixed.
• On rare occasions an error appeared when someone tried to print a pdf week view calendar. This is now fixed.
• A rare bug when the Cancel My Account button was pressed, it resulted to an error message. This is now fixed.
• A message is displayed “This webpage has a redirect loop” when someone tried to log-in. This is now fixed.

The problem appears to have been caused by the database getting overloaded with requests. We had a record month last month for new signups and I guess we weren’t as prepared for it as we should have been. We’re actively working to speed things up, and make sure this kind of issue doesn’t happen again. You should notice a slight speed improvement today, but we hope to have much better improvements in the days and weeks ahead.

Normally, if we take the server down for maintenance, we’ll do it during midnight hours and also notify you several days in advance. So this was definitely not a normal occurrence, and we’re sorry if this caused any disruptions in your business.

As soon as the site went down, we started getting dozens of emails about the issue, and we went to work fixing it right away. We replied to your emails as quickly as we could, but some people didn’t get an answer until almost right before the problem was resolved. However, we did post messages on Facebook and Twitter, to let you know that we were working on the problem. If you’re not currently following us on Facebook or Twitter, you may want to do this, so you can stay up to date on the latest updates, since we announce everything there before it hits our blog or newsletter, including new features and any bug fixes.

Here are the links:

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/StudioHelper?ref=ts

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/studiohelper

We hope you’re finding Studio Helper useful. We’re embarrassed about this issue and are working to make sure we won’t have any issues like it again in the future. Thank you for your continued support and for using Studio Helper.

Thank you and have a great day!

Brandon Pearce, President
Studio Helper

• On the event categories page, if you had a large number of categories, they weren’t all showing. We’ve fixed this.
• Error messages were sometimes appearing when mass email was sent. We’ve fixed this.
• On the remote registration form, the success message was not shown after a student registered. This is now fixed.
• The payment link in the pdf invoice was not secure — it started with http://. It’s is now in https.
• Teachers where able to see student details like email in the Teacher Roster report even if not permitted. This is now fixed.
• Students where able to see the Status drop down box in their profile. We’ve fixed this. It’s now hidden.
• Due days in recurring invoices were set to 7 days after the creation date. This is now fixed.

• The Lessons Taught report sometimes generated duplicate lessons. We’ve fixed this.
• Staff Members couldn’t see the birthday list on the sidebar. They are able to see it now.
• The username and password on the edit student profile sometimes got auto-populated with the logged in username. This is now fixed.
• Student package information is now hidden from teachers on the calendar unless they’ve been given permissions to student accounting.
• On the remote registration form, it asked for First Name & Last Name. We’ve changed this to Student’s First Name and Last Name.
• When students submit a ‘Request for Cancellation’, their attendance doesn’t change to ‘Cancelled’. We’ve fixed this.
• Invoices / Payments Report’s Total Outstanding Balance computation was incorrect. This is now fixed.

Here is a list of the improvements we made in June.

• Added an ‘Attendance’ filter on the Lessons Taught report. You may now filter Attended, Absent and Cancelled lessons.
• The ‘Forgot your password’ page was not working temporarily – error messages appeared. We’ve fixed this.
• Cancelled events in the calendar were not crossed out when exporting to pdf. We’ve fixed this.
• Studio phone numbers were not appearing on invoices. This is now fixed.
• On the Enrollment form, we changed the instrument drop down label from ‘Lesson’ to ‘Class.’
• When using Internet Explorer 8, the dates on ‘Recurring Invoices’ we’re not working. This is now fixed.
• Family phone numbers were not saving on parents’ profile when creating a new family. This is now fixed.
• Some addresses in the contact list report were not showing up even though they are recorded. This is now fixed.
• Sending mass emails sometimes timed out. Now, you can send emails as many as you like.
• Custom payment methods were not included in the drop down filter of ‘Payments List’. This is now fixed.
• Studio wide events were not being shown on the calendars of parents and students. We’ve fixed this.
• Some lesson email reminders had the student’s status as “Attended” even if attendance was blank. This is now fixed.
• Income/Expense report was hard to read because there were no commas in the totals. This is now fixed.

• We’ve fixed the pdf invoice to make it appear exactly as the web version.
• When editing invoice payments, it was creating a credit even though the invoice has already been fully paid. This is fixed now.
• On the ‘Teacher Roster’ report, old deleted packages were still showing up. We’ve fixed this.
• Teachers were not able to access some of their students’ invoices – it was showing a Permission Denied error. This is now fixed.
• You are now taken back to your last calendar view after editing an event.
• After saving an invoice, it went back to the first page of the invoice list. It now takes you to the page you were on before.
• When editing vendors or expenses it always returned back to the first page of the list. This is now fixed.
• The date format of the iif file on Export to Quickbooks is now fixed.
• The error messages on Calendar Location View are now gone. The calendar is also a bit faster.
• Cancelled calendar events are now properly showing as crossed out again.
• After a student requests to cancel an event, the email notification message was broken. We have fixed this.
• The sorting of inventory items now stays sorted after editing an item.
• The date at the top of the screen no longer disappears after editing the studio settings.
• Records in ‘Money > Payments > List Payments’ can now be filtered by credit card.
• A rare bug In Student Schedules report where the scheduled date of the lesson is wrong.
• Amount Due on the Student’s Profile Money Tab is no longer rounded up.
• When resetting user logins from the People List, the new usernames and passwords are now e-mailed properly to the users.