Studio income worksheet
Start from the take-home you want and work backwards to the students, hours and rate it implies. Your numbers only — this doesn’t tell you what to charge, and nothing you type leaves your browser.
What lands in your pocket, after tax and studio costs.
These are your numbers, not benchmarks — nothing here suggests what you should charge. The tax figure is a planning set-aside, not tax advice. Everything stays in this browser.
Studio income worksheet
To take home $50,000 a year, after $4,000 of expenses and setting aside 25% for tax.
What the studio has to bill
Before tax
$50,000 ÷ (1 − 25%)
$66,667
Plus expenses
total to invoice families over the year
$70,667
Per teaching week
over 40 weeks
$1,767
At $35 per 30-minute lesson
Weekly students needed
one weekly slot each
50.5
Teaching hours per week
lesson time only — not planning, admin or travel
25.2 h
Your effective hourly rate
$35 for 30 minutes
$70
Teaching hours are lesson time only. Planning, messaging parents, invoicing and travel sit on top, and for most teachers they add a substantial amount again.
Planning it is the easy half
The hard part is knowing, in March, whether you are actually on the line this worksheet drew — which families are behind, which lessons were taught but never billed, and what the year is really tracking toward. Note & Key keeps lessons, invoices and payments attached to each other, so that is a number you can look up instead of an afternoon with a spreadsheet and your bank statements.
No card required · Year-end invoicing · Pricing
Common questions
How many students does a private music teacher need?
It depends entirely on your rate, your lesson length, how many weeks you teach and what you need to take home — which is why this worksheet asks for those rather than quoting a number. Enter them and it works backwards to the weekly student count and teaching hours implied.
Does this tell me what I should charge?
No, and deliberately so. It uses the rate you type. Local rates vary enormously by city, instrument and experience, and a made-up benchmark would be worse than no number at all. What it does show is what your current rate implies about student numbers and hours.
Why does it add tax before expenses?
Because take-home is what is left at the end. The worksheet grosses your target up by the tax set-aside first, then adds studio expenses on top, since expenses are paid out of what you bill rather than out of what you keep.
Is the tax percentage accurate for me?
It is a planning set-aside, not tax advice. Self-employed tax depends on your country, your total income and what you can deduct. Use a figure you have agreed with your accountant, or a deliberately cautious one.
Why is my effective hourly rate higher than my lesson rate?
Because a 30-minute lesson at $35 is $70 of teaching per hour. That number flatters reality though: planning, messaging parents, invoicing and travel are unpaid, and for most teachers they add a substantial amount again on top of lesson time.
What counts as a teaching week?
A week you actually teach and bill. Most private studios land somewhere between 36 and 44 once school holidays, recital weeks and your own time off come out — but use your own figure, since it moves the result more than almost anything else here.
How do I know what I actually earned last year?
Guessing at it is the usual problem. Note & Key keeps lessons, invoices and payments attached to each other, so the income view is a record rather than a reconstruction — and it exports by fiscal year for the US, Canada, UK, Australia and Ireland. Every new studio starts with 30 days of Pro, no card.