A tutoring booking system, built around one tutor’s week

Booking that knows the week

A family picks a session, in person or online, and sees only the times that are genuinely free: the tutor’s weekly hours, less the sessions already booked, a short break either side of each, and any time off. Times show in the family’s own time zone, which matters when some of them are overseas, and the tutor sees the same booking in her own.

• Start times are chosen so a free stretch never strands a gap too short to book
• Several sessions can be booked at once, each its own booking, with one confirmation
• Other families’ bookings show as booked, by time only — never by name
• Two families trying for the same time at the same moment cannot both get it: the database itself refuses the second

One place to run it from

The tutor signs in to an admin panel built for exactly this business. It is where the day runs from, not where the website is edited — changes to the site itself are still ours to make.

• Every booking, with what the family wants help with
• Mark a session done and invoice it in one step
• Move a session: the family is emailed the new time with an updated calendar invite, and the reminder follows it
• Weekly hours, time off, and a private calendar feed for the tutor’s own calendar
• Sessions, lengths and prices
• Enquiries from the website

Paid after the session, through Stripe

When a session is marked done, a Stripe invoice goes to the family by email and they pay on Stripe’s own page — card details never touch the website. Each invoice carries its booking, so a retry can never invoice the same session twice, and the admin panel shows whether it has been paid.

The emails nobody has to remember to send

Families get a confirmation with a calendar invite, a reminder the day before, and a notice if a session moves or is cancelled. They can cancel from the link in their confirmation. The tutor gets a note for every new booking, cancellation and enquiry, and can reply to it to write straight back to the family.

Care where it matters for a children’s service

The tutor’s address is never on the website; it goes only into the confirmation for an in-person session. Every form is checked for bots, and the admin panel locks after repeated wrong passwords.

What this means if you are not a technology business

None of this asked the owner to become technical. She signs in, sees her week, and marks a session done. The software is ours to look after and to change as the practice grows, which is the arrangement we offer every client: the build, and then someone who keeps improving it.

Questions we get asked about this

Q Why build a booking system instead of using an off-the-shelf one?

Because the business is going to grow, and a booking tool rents you its idea of how a week works. This one is built around how this practice actually runs — its session lengths, the breaks between them, families in other time zones — and it changes when the business does, without moving everything to a different tool.

Q Can families pay online?

Yes. After each session they get a Stripe invoice by email and pay it on Stripe’s own page, so card details never touch the website. The tutor sees in her admin panel whether it has been paid.

Q Could the same thing work for my business?

If you sell your time in sessions or appointments, very likely. The parts — real free times, no double bookings, reminders, invoicing after the work — are the same; the rules around them are yours. A system like this is a custom platform, quoted as a project rather than priced from a list.

Q Does the owner need to be technical to run it?

No. Running the business — bookings, hours, prices, invoices — happens in a panel built for it. Changing the software itself is our job, and it is part of what the subscription is for.