Performing Arts Academy
Makin’ Steps Performing Arts
A bespoke operating system for a performing arts academy teaching 50+ classes a week to 400+ students — connecting class discovery, customer journeys, subscriptions, finance and day-to-day operations.
Background
The business.
Makin’ Steps Performing Arts is a busy performing arts academy teaching more than 50 classes each week to over 400 students, from 18 months through to adults. The academy delivers multiple disciplines including Street Dance, Ballet, Tap, Street Tap, Modern, Musical Theatre, Singing and Melody Bear.
Before
Where things stood.
The build needed to support a high-volume academy with different class types, family relationships, recurring subscriptions, trials and a large amount of day-to-day administration. The goal was not to bolt another booking tool onto the business, but to create one branded system around the way the academy already operates.
Existing stack
- Class Manager
The operational problems
- Managing a large class timetable and 400+ students without creating more admin as the academy grows.
- Giving parents a clear, branded route to discover classes, book trials and enrol.
- Keeping customer, student and class information connected rather than split across separate workflows.
- Creating better visibility over recurring payments, Stripe fees, refunds and active subscriptions.
- Handling family billing and failed-payment workflows consistently.
The system
What was built.
Jamie built a bespoke Makin’ Steps operating system with a branded customer-facing booking experience and an admin environment for the operational side of the academy. The system connects class discovery, customer and student records, recurring subscriptions, payment visibility, registers and internal workflows in one place, while keeping Stripe as the financial source of truth.
Core system components
- Branded class discovery and enrolment
- Parent and student records
- Trials and onboarding
- Class registers and timetable management
- Recurring subscriptions
- Stripe-connected finance dashboard
- Failed-payment handling
- Customer operations and compliance tools
- Staff and admin dashboards
Automation
Workflows handled by the system
- Trial and onboarding workflows
- Recurring subscription handling
- Failed-payment retry workflow
- Customer and class record updates
- 4 Week Billing Structure
Integrations
Connected services
- Stripe
Results and operating scale
What the system supports.
Student and class numbers describe the school’s operating scale; they are not growth attributed to this system.
400+
Students supported by the academy
Displayed in the academy’s public-facing system.
50+
Classes taught each week
Displayed in the academy’s public-facing system.
- One branded experience from class discovery into the academy’s wider operating system.
- Centralised operational and payment visibility for the admin team.
- A system designed around the academy’s actual workflows rather than a generic feature list.