User guide
Everything about running your studio.
One page per feature, organized by topic. 22 guides: pick one to get started, or just ask Ida inside the app.
Rather just ask?
Inside Ida, Ask Ida answers from this guide and from your studio’s own records, on the web and in the app.
- Who hasn’t paid this month?
- How do I refund a workshop?
Getting started
4 guides- Setting up with IdaA new studio is set up by chatting with Ida. Setup opens full screen with your studio's live preview beside the chat: Ida asks what it needs (a few questions at a time, as tappable answers), brings in your families from your old system or a spreadsheet, and builds your levels, classes, tuition, billing, forms, team and payments with you. Nothing changes until you apply it: every change arrives as a card listing exactly what will be created, which you can trim line by line, send back with a note, or apply — and undo afterwards.
- The dashboardThe dashboard is the first screen you see after signing in, and it is the home base you return to from anywhere in Ida OS. What it shows depends on who you are: studio staff see an operational overview of the whole school, while families see a personal summary of their own students and account.
- Your account & signing inEveryone in Ida OS — staff and families alike — has an account page for their name, photo, and personal sign-in settings. This is separate from your studio or family record; it controls how you appear and how you log in.
- Report a problemIf something in Ida OS itself looks broken — an error message, a page that will not load, a button that does nothing — you can report it in about a minute. Instead of a form, Ida (the built-in assistant) takes your report: if it does not already know which page and what's wrong, it asks that, then files it with the product team.
Run the studio
5 guides- Students & familiesStudents and Families is your roster — the single source of truth for every household and dancer in the studio. Staff manage the whole roster here; families use the same area as their profile to keep their own details current.
- Calendar & bookingsThe calendar is the studio's single live schedule. Everything that happens in a room — classes, practices, private lessons, rentals, and workshops — lives here, and families book against it in real time. You can view it by Day, Week, Month, or Agenda, jump to today, and a live line marks the current time.
- AttendanceAttendance lets you track who shows up — to classes and to practices — session by session, and roll it up into a record over time. You take it right from the class or practice on the calendar, and the totals appear next to each student and on a studio-wide Attendance report — so when a dancer's results slip, you can point to exactly how many sessions they missed.
- DocumentsDocuments is the studio's shared library — tournament packets, FAQs, forms, policies, and training videos in one place instead of scattered email attachments. Upload files or write documents right in Ida, organize everything into folders, control exactly who sees each item — or set access once on a folder and let everything inside inherit it — and Ida AI can read your documents so it can answer questions about them.
- Data & insightsData and Insights is your studio's numbers in one place — enrollment, revenue, attendance, and trials — for any window of time you choose. Open it from My Studio in the sidebar. Every trend is compared against the prior period of the same length, so each number tells you not just where you stand but which way you are moving.
Get paid
7 guides- Tuition plansTuition plans define the packages you bill against — the price, how often it bills (monthly, quarterly, every 6 months, or yearly), and an optional practice hourly rate. A plan's price is always the full amount for its period, like $450 per quarter. Each plan corresponds to one of your studio's dance levels (which you define under Settings → Classes) and is kept in sync with a Stripe product and price so recurring billing 'just works'. You set your plans up here, and students land on them from the student record — by their dance level, or by picking an exact plan when a level has more than one; a family's tuition is the sum of its active students' plans.
- PaymentsPayments is the studio's ledger. Tuition, bookings, workshops, shop orders, and competition fees all flow through one place, powered by Stripe. Staff track and reconcile the money; families pay and manage their own billing.
- RegistrationRegistration is how families formally enrol — and re-enrol — with your studio. You design a registration form once, and families complete it from their portal: confirm their contacts and dancers, answer your questions, accept your policies, and pay the registration fee in one pass. You choose whether registering is a one-time step, renews every year, or runs in terms you define.
- Family onboarding with IdaFamily onboarding is a warmer way for new families to join: instead of one long form, Ida welcomes them on your sign-up link and asks one question at a time — who's dancing, birthdays, who to call, your studio's own questions and terms, the fee, and how they'd like to pay tuition. A progress thread shows how far along they are, their answers are saved as they go, and a record called 'What your studio will see' fills in beside the questions, so a family always knows exactly what they are handing over. When they finish, everything lands in the same place as your registration form — the Responses tab, the family's record, the fee — so nothing about your review changes.
- WorkshopsPrograms is where you sell camps, intensives, drop-ins, class bundles, and monthly tuition — one date or a whole series — to your families. You build each one on Programs, families register from Catalog (the same list, including recurring tuition), and the money lands in the same ledger as everything else. A family already on a monthly program can join the weekly class from Catalog or the calendar without paying that plan again. Every date also becomes a real event on your calendar, so the schedule stays your single source of truth. The Workshop and pack bookings table on Programs lists every dancer — package, dates, fee, and status — and is where you cancel a signup.
- CompetitionsCompetitions is built for feis-style schools that front fees to organizers and recover them from families. It tracks what you have paid out, what you have recovered, and what is still owed — per event, per dancer, and per fee type (entry, coaching, costume, and more).
- Studio shopThe Shop is your studio's own merch store: hoodies, tights, shoes, costume rentals — whatever your studio sells, families buy it straight from their portal or the iPhone app and pay online through Stripe. There is no shipping to manage: families pay first, your team prepares the order, and it is handed over at the studio.
Reach families
4 guides- Booking formsBooking forms are widgets you can embed on your website or share as a public link. Use them for prospective dancers trying your studio or for customers booking adult drop-ins, class passes, workshops, and camps.
- Parent communicationComms lets you email the right families at once instead of managing dozens of individual threads. You write the letter as families will see it, then pick who gets it and send.
- MessagesMessages is built-in chat between your studio and your families: private direct messages with a single family, and group chats that reach a wider circle at once. On the web it lives in the sidebar, with a Messages icon at the top of every dashboard page carrying your unread count; in the iPhone app the same Messages icon sits at the top of the screen, with your unread count on it, so a conversation is never more than a tap away.
- Ida AI assistantIda is the built-in AI assistant, available to anyone attached to a studio. It answers questions grounded in your studio's own documents and records, so the answers reflect how your studio actually works — not generic advice. Ida can also make changes — staff each role exactly what their own screens allow, from the owner's whole studio to the front desk's roster and an instructor's class details, and families their own bookings and classes — always showing you exactly what it is about to save and waiting for your go-ahead first.
Configuration
2 guides- Studio settingsStudio settings is where you shape how Ida OS looks and behaves for your school — your identity, your branding, your team, and the rules for payments and booking. It is organized into tabs — Studio & Branding, Payments & Bookings, Messages, Shop, Team, Customizations, and Subscription. Email alerts live on the Notifications page (user menu → Notifications). Booking forms, Registration, and Data and Insights live as their own pages under My Studio in the sidebar.
- Multiple locationsSome studios teach in more than one place — two rooms across town, or sites in different cities under one brand. Ida OS handles this as one studio with multiple locations: one roster, one set of tuition plans, one payment account, and one portal, with a location label on the schedule so everyone knows where things happen.
See it on your studio
Book a walkthrough and we’ll set up your families, calendar and tuition together.
Still stuck?
Email us and we’ll get back to you, typically within one business day.