Why you need it
Schools teach students a subject or activity but they are first and foremost—businesses. To stay open and be able to teach students, schools must succeed as businesses—TaskMaster will help your business succeed.
For some school owners, their schools are a part-time businesses, for others, their schools are small businesses, and, for a few, their schools are relatively large businesses. Some instructors who do not own schools teach small martial art classes at community centers, junior colleges, in their homes, etc., often at little to no profit. Regardless of the size of the school, there are many school tasks and business tasks that must be completed.
Some tasks are enjoyable, such as instructing, while some tasks are dreaded, such as recordkeeping. Recordkeeping and the proper processing of paperwork are factors that determine whether or not a school will be successful. The bigger the school, the more records and paperwork; be it accounting requirements, complying with federal, state ,and local laws, rules, and regulations, or maintaining student personal information, releases, contracts, attendance records, testing records, etc.
Keeping records on paper has some inherent problems:
- Papers are always being misplaced or lost.
- Entering student information on paper is time consuming and the same information must be reentered on various forms, which increases the opportunities for errors.
- It is difficult to find the exact information you need it at a moment’s notice, such as needing instantaneous access to a student's attendance in response to a parent's phone call.
- Analysis of data, such as attendance trends, is time consuming, and sometimes impossible.
Paper recordkeeping has a relatively inexpensive initial cost but it has continuing operating costs due to labor, storage, and retrieval expenses:
- Paperwork requires a lot of storage space, such as for storing of years of releases, contracts, attendance records, and testing records.
- Backing up paperwork is cost and time prohibitive.
- Duplication costs of paperwork are high.
- Paperwork is costly to send to other locations, such as sending by express mail.
Computerization of recordkeeping has many benefits:
- Paperwork is greatly reduced.
- All student data is easily backed up since it is all located in a central location.
- Information is easily entered and key information only needs to be entered once.
- Specific data may be quickly and easily located, analyzed by numerous combinations of criteria, displayed, and printed or transmitted in a useable format.
- Automation of attendance keeping and rank testing.
- Money is saved! When freed from paperwork, school owners have more time for growing their businesses so they may compete with other schools for the limited number of available students in their communities. With the extra money generated by growing their businesses, school owners may buy extra equipment or move into larger spaces, or renovate the present ones.