Parents and Guardians FAQs About Moving from Charms to CutTime

CutTime is the leading fine arts education program management platform in North America. CutTime platform was previously owned and operated by J.W. Pepper & Son, until they formed a joint venture with Conn Selmer and GroupCollect and spun the company out into an independent commercial entity as CutTime, LLC. CutTime, LLC is headquartered in St. Augustine, Florida and employs over forty professionals dedicated to supporting fine arts programs across the United States and Canada.

CutTime offers a more modern approach to handling day-to-day administrative tasks associated with running and participating in a fine arts program. It is WAY simpler to use, offers more flexibility, and will allow you to take advantage of more services with the fine arts industry’s top suppliers of music instruments, apparel/uniforms, accessories, sheet music, fundraising, and more. With CutTime, you can keep more of your focus on your student’s growth and success as an artist.

Charms functionality is merging with CutTime. In parallel, we are ceasing operation of the current CharmsOffice.com platform on Friday, August 30, 2024. The primary reason behind this decision is the technology that Charms was built on (ASP Classic) is outdated. Microsoft no longer actively develops or supports this software, which poses several challenges to its long-term operations in its current state.

By merging with CutTime, we aim to provide a seamless transition for Charms users to a more modern, secure, and feature-rich platform that not only addresses these issues but also offers a range of new capabilities to enhance their program’s overall user experience.

Great news - you no longer have to use a User ID and password to access your student’s program details! Instead, CutTime provides you with a ‘Magic Link’, which is a uniquely personalized hyperlink for you and very secure. You will receive a Welcome Message (sent to your mobile device phone number or email address we have on file for you). Once you receive the welcome message with your CutTime Magic Link, you will need to quickly authenticate your identity to then gain access to your Portal Page, which is your gateway to announcements, events, account balances, volunteer opportunities, forms and questionnaires, and donation requests.

All of your Portal Page information can easily be viewed on your mobile, tablet, laptop or desktop device. If you have more than one student enrolled in a CutTime powered fine arts program, you will see each of their names appear on your portal page and can tap/click on the one you wish to view. You can easily bookmark your Magic Link on any of your mobile phone, tablet, laptop or desktop devices for easy recall and reference - see how to do this here.

Your student will receive their own, uniquely personalized ‘Magic Link’ to access their information in the new CutTime. You no longer need to ‘share links’ - they are individualized. Say goodbye to password reset headaches :)

No, your personal CutTime Magic Link is all you need moving forward. Your program no longer has any data stored in their previous CharmsOffice.com account. Any relevant information has been migrated over to their new account with CutTime. You will see your student’s current account balance statement, along with any music instrument assignments. Your Program Director will also republish any current announcements, upcoming events, and volunteer opportunities in CutTime. You might receive a request to re-sign a few forms through your Magic Link, depending on your school/district/organization’s policies.

Your student’s account balance information has been migrated over to your CutTime Portal Page. You should be able to view costs and payments for the current school year / program year. If you have questions about the entries in your student’s account balance, please contact your Program Director directly for assistance.

You will primarily receive short text / SMS messages (similar to a push notification) from CutTime if you’ve provided a mobile phone number to your program. In cases where someone is unable to provide a mobile phone number or the message is blocked, we can send your messages to an email address as a backup.

If you do not wish to receive text messages from CutTime, you can reply ‘STOP’ anytime to opt out. View our SMS Terms of Service here.

Your Program Director will republish any current announcements and upcoming events that are relevant for you and your student inside of your CutTime Portal Page.

No, you do not need to re sign up for your program’s eNewsletter. You will receive this information via ‘announcements’ that are posted inside your CutTime Portal Page with a notification to your mobile phone or email with your personal CutTime Magic Link.

Yes, you can sync your Google Calendar and iCalendar by clicking on the link to ‘Subscribe’ to your student’s events that are published through your CutTime Portal Page.

You can view a list of your student's upcoming program events on your Portal Page. We are exploring options for a calendar grid display option as part of our product roadmap. Your Program Director will publish select events on your school district and/or organizations’ public calendars which you can view via their website.

If your program has activated the online payment option within their CutTime account, then yes you can continue to make online payments using your credit card. When you go to make your first online payment, you will enter your credit card details for processing via Stripe. We are not storing credit card information at this time. You will need to reenter your credit card details each time you make a payment.

You will see any upcoming volunteer opportunities as part of each event listing in your Parent Portal Detailed Student View. Volunteer opportunities will display the type of opportunity (e.g. Chaperone, Concessions) and the number of positions needed vs. filled. To sign up for a specific opportunity, simply tap/click on the event listing to see one or more volunteer jobs and click the green ‘Sign Up’ button on the right hand side. You should see your name appear in the volunteer job once clicked. You can also see who else is volunteering for that same opportunity. You will receive a reminder notification from CutTime the night before you are scheduled to volunteer. Need to cancel? Simply tap/click on ‘delete’ next to your name.

Yes, your co-parenting partner can gain access by providing their name and mobile phone / email details to your Program Director who will add them as a guardian to your student’s profile in CutTime. Once they are added, they will receive a Welcome Message from CutTime containing their own personalized Magic Link. From there, they are able to view the exact same information about your student’s account balance statement, announcements, events, volunteer opportunities, etc. They are also able to make an online payment towards your student’s costs.

We are currently working on the set up of a new online store for your program in 2024. In the meantime, you will need to contact your Program Director if you need assistance with the purchase of spirit wear and other items. We apologize for this temporary inconvenience.

We focus on responsive web, rather than native apps, to deliver a premium user experience with all of the navigation and push communication bells and whistles without the extra software installation and update hassle. This enables us to optimize our product design, development and support resources on advancing one single platform versus three different platforms that have to keep up with Apple and Google constantly evolving native app standards.