A dance studio demo, from the front desk to a parent's phone

The last dance demo was a franchise with dozens of locations. Most studios I talk to are one building: a few rooms, a front desk, a lobby full of parents and a recital every June. This demo is that studio.

It's a made-up studio called Marigold Lane in south Chandler, with four rooms, 82 classes a week, about 430 dancers and a competition team. Every family and number is invented. You can try it from the demos link on forecheckai.com.

One record, every view

The studio has a public website, a front desk, a teacher's view, a parent app and a check-in tablet for the lobby, and they all share the same records. Book a free trial on the website and it shows up at the front desk right away. On the trial day the parent checks in on the lobby tablet, and the teacher's roster shows that dancer as a first class. A confirmation, a reminder the day before, a text after class and a note from the teacher go out on their own, and they stop the moment the family enrolls.

The same goes for a missed class. A parent taps "Can't make it" in the app, the teacher sees it on the roster before class, and the family gets a makeup credit good for 60 days in any matching class with an open seat.

Prices that add up before you finish

Tuition goes by each dancer's total time in class each week, so a second class always costs less than the first. Brothers and sisters get 10% off every dancer after the first, and registration is per dancer with a family cap. When a family enrolls on the website they see the monthly price, the sibling discount, the registration fee and the prorated rest of this month before they finish, and their first statement charges exactly that.

Every other fee posts on its own date: recital costumes, the recital fee, competition costs. Parents can open one list of every charge and every date for the whole season, so nobody has to call the office to ask what a charge was. A few of the rules it follows:

• Withdraw by the 25th and there's no charge next month; after the 25th, next month is the last one billed.
• If a card is declined, every charge waits until it's fixed, with one late fee per month; the parent updates the card from a text and the balance clears.
• A dancer who joins after costumes are ordered is charged on the day they join, never backdated.

Recital season without the sticky notes

The showcase running order flags any dancer in two numbers too close together to change costumes, and one tap suggests an order that fixes them while keeping the finale last. Each dancer gets a backstage cue sheet with their numbers and call time.

Parents enter measurements once in the app, and every costume is sized from its maker's own chart, including the brands that run small. The office sees how many dancers in each class are measured and an order sheet by size. Showcase seats are reserved: families and grandparents pick seats on a map, and the office sees every sale.

The parts most studios still do by hand

• Competition fees per family. Pick which routines go to a competition and the entry fees total themselves per dancer and per family, with siblings combined, then post to each family's statement with a line for every routine.
• Waitlists into classes. When a class has a waitlist, the studio suggests a time when a room and a qualified teacher are both free. One tap opens the new class and offers its seats to the families who can make that time.
• Next season. Teachers mark a dancer ready for the next level during the year. Those marks, plus the September 1 age cutoff, become each dancer's proposed classes for next season, and the office sees which classes will overflow before building the schedule.

If your studio runs on three tools that don't talk to each other, this is what it looks like when they're one.