01CHALLENGE
What the project had to solve.
A dance studio with two halls came to us: 178 students, 4 teachers, and both group and individual classes. Everything depended on a notebook, a Google Sheet, and conversations in the administrator’s personal chats.
What was breaking:
• Attendance was not recorded consistently — a teacher forgot, the administrator did not have time, a class was not deducted, and the membership balances did not match the money at the end of the month.
• The schedule lived in the administrator’s head: group classes, individual sessions, and hall rentals overlapped, and a conflict was noticed only when two people arrived for the same hall.
• Memberships were counted manually — how many classes remained, when they expired, and who owed money.
• Calculating teacher pay took half a day with a calculator: each teacher had a different model — an hourly rate, a percentage of a group, payment per student, and separate rates for individual classes.
• Students dropped out silently: nobody noticed that a child had not attended for three weeks until the parents wrote, “we are not coming anymore.”
02SOLUTION
What we built and why.
We designed the studio’s processes and built a system with three parts: an admin panel, a check-in point at the entrance, and a Telegram bot for students.
What is inside (9 screens):
• Schedule — the whole day by hour and hall at once: occupied slots, free windows, and conflicts are visible at a glance. A free window is clickable, so a class can be placed directly in the grid; the system immediately checks whether the hall is free and whether the teacher is already scheduled elsewhere at the same time.
• Groups and disciplines — the members of every group, the teacher, available places, and groups that still need enrolment.
• Students — a profile with membership, debt, bonuses, freeze status, attendance, lifetime spend, history, and a personal QR code. Segments include: membership expiring, absent for 3+ weeks, debt outstanding, and trial class not converted.
• Check-ins — a live scan log showing who entered, when, for which class, and what was deducted. Manual check-in remains only for exceptions: a forgotten phone, a guest, or a trial class.
• Entrance scanner — a full-screen mode for any phone or tablet at reception, with stop cases for an expired membership, no current class, or an existing check-in.
• Leads and trial classes — a funnel from “wrote in Direct” to a purchased membership: conversion at every step, lead sources with payback, the manager’s tasks for today, and reasons why people did not attend.
• Plans and discounts — memberships with freeze and transfer conditions; discounts (family, referral, early renewal, second discipline, return, and seasonal) and promo codes. The system applies the largest discount for which the student qualifies.
• Money and payroll — cash desk, payments, debts, and teacher pay calculated from classes actually delivered, using each teacher’s own model.
• Telegram — reminder scenarios, segment-based messages, and a log of what the bot completed automatically.
Students install nothing: their QR code, schedule, reminders, and “class counted” confirmation all live in Telegram, which is already on their phone.
