Connected but alone

I came across this TED talk via Dan Martell, one of the people I follow on Twitter, and just loved it. There are so many great quotes I couldn’t pick just one to share here. The central them: Technology isn’t just changing what we do and how we act. It’s changing who we are. As a species.

It made me realize one of the things I love about Yoga is that, outside of sleeping, it’s probably the only time I spend 90 uninterrupted minutes completely and totally unplugged.

And the time spent before and after class hanging out with people who have become friends is just as valuable as the yoga itself.

This video is a reminder that what is scarce is valuable, and in an ever more connected world where technology and interruption is all around us, yoga studios are one of the few refuges where we can find solace.

There is extreme value in that. If you can find 20 minutes to watch this video, I highly recommend it.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Xr3AsBEK4&w=560&h=315]

Introducing Payment Center

Last night we released a major new feature to Tula. It’s called Payment Center, and I’d like to tell you a little about it, what it does, the philosophy behind the decisions we made, and why we think you’re going to love it. What is Payment Center?

At it’s core, payment center allows you to store your student’s credit card information, set up recurring memberships with automated billing, and also perform one time charges for individual class purchases.

Beyond this, you can now save purchases by transaction type, see payment history by student, view revenue reports across your entire system, and send automated receipts.

Payment Center is also the foundation upon which we will be building other key features as it relates to enabling our customers to collect money online.

How it works

To make this happen, we have deeply integrated with one of the most innovative payment providers around, called Stripe. Stripe has no setup fees, no monthly fees, and clear per transaction pricing (2.9% + $0.30). Even better, they have a sign up process that can be completed in 3 minutes.

With the launch of Payment Center, our customers can literally be set up to take credit cards in less than 5 minutes.

The philosophy behind Payment Center

Nothing defines our philosophy more than the decisions we made around Payment Center. We are aiming to be nothing other than the absolute best software in the world for independent yoga studios.

We are not, however, aiming to be the best credit card processing software in the world. And so we deeply integrated with people who are.

We have built a state of the art payment system that gives our customers the ability start taking credit cards in minutes, is PCI level 1 compliant, and puts student credit card information in the hands of our customers.

Once you have connected your Stripe account with your Tula account, everything is managed from within Tula. Stripe is used to store credit cards, (we store tokens related to those credit cards, allowing us to maintain PCI compliance), charge those credit cards, and deposit money into your bank account. Everything else, such as setting up recurring membership plans, charging your students, giving refunds, and sending receipts, is all handled through Tula.

What’s Next?

Now that we have a solid payment foundation, you can expect to see more features along this line. Without spilling all the beans, let’s just say that we definitely plan on enabling our customers to easily accept payments via their own websites. Wait, that’s probably all the beans, isn’t it?

We’re thrilled to launch Payment Center, and we’re excited about the things we’ll be able to build upon it’s foundation. We hope you like it as much as we do.

Video Tutorials

To help guide people as they set up their accounts, we put together a few video tutorials which we’ve embedded in the application itself. Check them out below.

What is an API

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FSNvhE8EMY&w=560&h=315]

How to connect your Stripe account using your API keys

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3lUT0FQLsY&w=560&h=315]

 

PayPal Here Launches

It’s almost impossible to overstate the level of disruption happening in the payment industry right now. And small business owners are going to be the winners no matter what happens.

It’s about time.

Today, PayPal announced PayPal Here. They’re taking direct aim atSquare, and this gives merchants yet another way you can easily take payments with your iPhone.

I haven’t gotten my hands on this yet, but safe to say it’ll be on my phone as soon as it comes out.

How our software is different

In the end, all software is trying to please someone. It tries to solve specific problems for a group, or groups, of people. What determines the kind of software that is created then, depends on who the people making the software are trying to please. TULA software was born because my wife opened a yoga studio, and she asked me for my opinion on a few products she had looked at. After checking them out, I felt my team and I could make something better.

I’ll assume you’ve gathered I make software, and indeed, I have a small software company in Chicago. When Maile asked me to check out the yoga studio products, I felt like they weren’t tailored to what she was saying she really needed.

A lot of them solve problems that have since been solved in different, much more elegant ways using better technology. Point of sale systems is a great example. And the problems that did need solving were corrupted by a lack of focus on them.

So we focused on the things that were truly important, specifically for the yoga studio. We make it so students can get your schedule on their phone, and so studio owners can embed their calendar in their own site. When an instructor needs a substitute, we thought all they should have to do is press a button. Checking students in should be super fast, but shouldn’t require a plastic card and a bunch of peripheral hardware.

These are all in there because of what we focused on – and because of what we left out. And during the course of making this software for people we care deeply about, we made something that’s pretty great for a lot of other independent studio owners too.

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A bit more on point of sale systems: By far, the most frequent question we get is about whether we have a point of sale system. This is understandable because it used to be that getting set up so you could sell merchandise and accept credit cards was really hard.

Now however, the best way that I can help an independent studio owner with their ‘I need a point of sale system’ problem, is to tell them aboutSquare. If you’re not familiar with Square, you can instantly create an account that will allow you to accept credit cards on an iPad, iPhone, or Android phone. They send you a little square that goes in the headphone jack of your phone or iPad, and you can swipe credit cards through it. It’s crazy awesome. Seriously. The iPad application is a full point of sale system that you can sell products on, export data for inventory, etc.

While we won’t be building a point of sale system, the folks over at square have hinted that they’ll be releasing an API at some point. If that happens, we’ll likely integrate with them in some way.