The Cincinnati Spanish School & Academy offers quality, affordable language services, aiming to reach as many people as they can regardless of financial status. With the help of PaySimple, Cincinnati Spanish School streamlined their billing efforts and built a more reliable revenue stream with online registration and billing. Their business now serves over 1,200 adult students and 700 school-aged students per year with online classes as well as classes at four Ohio locations.

Background

Since its founding, The Cincinnati Spanish School has offered fun Spanish language learning opportunities to kids, as well as immersive learning experiences for adults. With adult group classes, private lessons, flexible online classes, translation services, and corporate events, the school’s education model is capable of serving every member of their community.

The Cincinnati Spanish School has come a long way since its inception, but has endured the stress and chaos of a new business. When they first started, day-to-day operations of the business, including hiring, payroll, student registration, scheduling classes, managing customers, and accepting payments was all done manually. Despite growing pains, the school has found much success and has expanded year after year. Consequently, new and significant challenges arose. 

Challenge

Because The Cincinnati Spanish School was dedicated to making classes flexible and affordable, they allowed students to pay for classes over time, rather than requiring tuition to be paid in full with registration. Students were able to pay in installments by check, which were tracked in a spreadsheet. Unfortunately this approach to managing payments created a lot of problems.

“We were spending 80% of our time chasing people down to make the next payment. Instead of focusing on classes and growing the school, we were just making phone calls, leaving voicemails, and sending emails.”

Megan Meconi, Owner, The Cincinnati Spanish School

Feeling the pain of spreadsheets, the school knew they needed to take a different approach to payments. Additionally, the school’s management had big goals to serve even more students in the coming years. The opening of a fourth school location was in planning. 

To ensure the future of the school would be successful, they committed to finding a payment solution that was sustainable for long-term, continued growth.

Solution

After hours spent wrangling spreadsheets, following up on missing payments, and endlessly waiting for checks to arrive in the mail, school management and staff were fully ready to make a change. A simple Google search delivered PaySimple as a solution to their pain. PaySimple provided a one-stop streamlined payment system that would allow the school to easily collect recurring payments and set up payment plans on different schedules.

With PaySimple’s support, administrative tasks became easier, freeing up time the school needed to expand their business. Their one physical school grew into four locations in less than five years, allowing them to reach even more students. 

After all physical locations were running smoothly, the school turned their attention to online classes. By providing online language learning, The Cincinnati Spanish School could offer a flexible solution for busy families who couldn’t always attend an in-person class. The challenge? Providing textbooks and other instructional materials to a non-centralized student base. 

PaySimple was there to help. 

With PaySimple, The Cincinnati Spanish School built an online storefront to serve all physical locations and virtual classes for The Cincinnati Spanish School. In one convenient place, students can now register for online or in-person courses, find books and other items they’ll need for the course, and pay for it all online. No-contact curbside pick-up is par for the course, with students able to select that option at checkout. Being able to manage students, collect payments, and handle eCommerce with one solution streamlines all aspects of the school’s operations.

“The online store enabled us to integrate with our website much easier. We weren’t spending so much time making payment forms and linking them to an antiquated website. Before, we were wearing IT hats. Now we don’t even have to do that.”

Megan Meconi, Owner, The Cincinnati Spanish School

Student contact details are saved automatically in PaySimple, which enables the team of teachers to download class lists and reports as needed right from the mobile or desktop site.

After setting up PaySimple’s billing and online store tools, 80% of time collecting payments reduced to only about 5%. Online classes were a hit too–they now serve as many students online as they do in all four physical locations!

“When we grow and open a new class, it takes a little time to get the new online store going, but once it’s done, it just runs itself. It used to be opening a new class was a lot of work. That’s simplified now.”

Megan Meconi, Owner, The Cincinnati Spanish School

Their customers also enjoy easier payments, with set-it and forget-it recurring payments or automated payment plans. Not only are current customers happier, prospective students are more likely to book classes since they can pay anytime through the online store.

“We get feedback that paying through PaySimple is so much more convenient. More families can participate and afford our program now thanks to our payment plans. In schools where families aren’t as affluent, registration is up.”

Megan Meconi, Owner, The Cincinnati Spanish School

With PaySimple, The Cincinnati Spanish School continues to grow their school with affordable online and in-person classes that serve everyone in their community.

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