Workspace-level configuration: who has access, how you get paid, what connects to what, and the automation that runs without anyone pressing a button.
Workspace-level basics: name, branding, locale, currency, date format and the terminology your workspace uses. Terminology is worth attention, because it renames entities across the entire product to match how your business talks.
Staff accounts and their roles. Admin, Editor and Viewer are enforced everywhere, including in the API and the MCP server, so a Viewer key cannot write no matter what asks it to. Give people the lowest role that lets them do their job.
This screen is divided into sections: Teachers, Families. Each is part of the same screen rather than a separate page.
This tab lists every teacher who can sign in to the teacher portal. You don't add people here. Open the teacher's own detail page and turn on portal access there, and they appear in this list. If the list is empty, no teacher has portal access yet, even though your teachers may already be set up for scheduling and pay.
Use this tab to see which parents and guardians can sign in to the family portal. You turn access on from each account's contact detail page, not from here. Once it is on, the contact appears in this list. Only the contacts you turn it on for get a login, so if a family says they can't get in, check that the right parent has access.
Open this screen once, when you set up your workspace, and come back only when something about how you bill genuinely changes. The Documents tab is where you choose what your customers see on their paperwork: whether an invoice is called an Invoice or something your families find more natural, the prefix on each invoice, payment, credit memo and refund number, and whether prices on your invoices already include tax or have it added on top. The preview box under the numbering switches shows exactly how the next number will look, so adjust the prefixes and switches until it reads the way you want before you press Save Changes, which stays greyed out until you have changed something. The same tab also holds certificate branding: the name, default signer, and small header and footer lines printed on every certificate PDF. If you leave the name or signer empty, the certificate uses your workspace name and whoever issues it. Two things are easy to miss. Each document type keeps its own counter for each location, so turn on the location code if you run more than one site, otherwise two locations can print the same-looking number. Turning on the annual reset restarts every counter on January 1 and adds the year to the number, which is why these settings are best decided before your first invoice goes out: numbers already issued keep their old format, and a mid-year switch leaves your records with two styles side by side.
This screen is divided into sections: Payments, Collections, Automation, Lifecycle. Each is part of the same screen rather than a separate page.
Set the default number of days between an invoice's issue date and its due date. This applies only to manual invoices where staff leave the due date as it is. Turn on payment reconciliation if you want card, check, bank transfer and wallet payments to stay Pending until you confirm the deposit. Turn on the end-of-day cash close if you want cash to stay Pending until someone counts the drawer on the Payments page. Press Save Changes before you leave the tab.
Choose whether overdue invoices get a late fee, and set the grace period, the percentage or flat amount, and an optional cap per invoice. Leave the mode on None until your families know the policy, because fees start adding up on the next dunning run. The rental section charges a separate fee when instruments or other items come back late. Turn on the dunning worker to send automatic past-due reminders, and keep manual approval on the final collections level so a person signs off before that step goes out.
Turn on automatic invoicing to generate tuition invoices on a schedule, then set the default billing cycle, timing and billing day for new tuition fees. Keep the billing day between 1 and 28 so short months never skip a run. Creating invoices as Draft is a safe way to start, because you can check them before they reach the ledger. Automatic payroll creates draft teacher and staff payroll runs each month, so you still review and finalize them yourself.
Decide whether staff must confirm the attendance teachers submit before it counts toward payroll. The expiration toggles free up trial and reserved spots that were never converted, and close leads and pre-enrollments that went quiet, so your capacity and reports stay accurate. Give rolling-class trials enough hold days for staff to mark the outcome before the seat is released. Each rule runs on its own in the daily sweep, so you can turn on only the ones you trust. Approved leave sets what a student pays while on a leave you approved: full price, a percentage, a fixed amount, or free, where the invoice is still issued at 0. It applies to invoices generated after the approval, discounts then apply to the reduced price, and each priced line carries a note with the leave dates. Choose how a leave that covers part of a period is priced (prorate like tuition, only whole periods, or any day on leave) and, if you want one, a yearly maximum of months on leave per student. Packages and one-off lessons are not affected.
Open this screen when the words alinaflow uses don't match how your school, studio or center talks, for example when your families say "Lesson" where the product says "Class", or you call your branches "Campuses". The General sub-tab is one long form grouped into General, People, Academics, Places and Events & Performances. Each box is already filled with the current term and has a short hint underneath explaining what it refers to. The first box, in the General group, is your umbrella term (for example "Music School"). It is the name used in generic copy such as "the people who attend and learn at your Music School", so change it if the vertical name doesn't fit your business. Nothing is saved as you type. Edit as many boxes as you need, then click Save Changes at the bottom of the form, below the Events & Performances group. The row of sub-tabs above the form, from Students through Shows, holds the custom fields for each entity, one sub-tab per entity. Click Show more at the end of that row to see the entities that don't fit on screen.
This screen is divided into sections: Students, Families, Family Members. Each is part of the same screen rather than a separate page.
Use this tab to decide what you record about each student. Tick or untick the flexible fields suggested for your type of school to show or hide them on student forms and reports, and use Add Field for anything else you track, such as a uniform size or a preferred lesson day. Before you add a custom field, check that one of the flexible fields doesn't already cover it, so the same information doesn't end up in two places.
Add custom fields here for details that belong to the whole household rather than to one person, such as how the family heard about you or an agreed payment day. Every family record gets these fields, so keep the list short and only add what your staff will actually fill in. If a detail is really about one student or one parent, put it on the Students or Family Members tab.
Use this tab for details you keep about each parent, guardian or other contact linked to a family, such as their workplace or whether they are allowed to pick a child up. These fields sit on each person, so two parents in the same family can hold different answers. Keep student details on the Students tab so they don't get mixed up with the adults' records.
Come here when you first set up your school, studio or center, or after a rebrand, so the product your staff and families see carries your own look instead of the default purple. Click Upload Logo to pick your file. The line of grey text under the button is the size guidance, so check your file against it before you upload. Each colour has a small swatch you can click to open a colour picker, and a box next to it where you can type or paste an exact hex code such as #7246c1. That is the easiest way to match the colours in your existing brand guide. Nothing takes effect until you click Save Changes at the bottom. If you leave the tab or switch to another Admin tab first, a new logo or colour you picked is not kept. Choose a primary colour dark enough for white button text to stay readable. Keep the secondary colour clearly different from the accent colour so titles still stand out against backgrounds.
Use this tab to decide which automatic messages go out and on which channels. You do not need to set anything up first: the banner at the top explains that messages already send from a shared alinaflow.email address and shared alinaflow numbers for SMS and WhatsApp. If you want them to come from your own domain, phone number or sender name, use Go to Integrations. Switching a channel off for one message does not affect any other message, so you can, for example, keep Student absent today on SMS but send Farewell by email only. A few rows have extra settings. Upcoming no-lesson day has a Lead (days) box that sets how many days before a closure families and teachers get the heads-up. Setting it to 0 turns that reminder off completely. Mass message and Survey invite also have a grace period, so you can still cancel a one-off announcement for a few minutes after you send it.
This screen is divided into sections: Students, Staff, Billing. Each is part of the same screen rather than a separate page.
Use this tab to decide how students hear about a new class enrollment and their birthday: switch email, SMS or WhatsApp on or off for each message. The grace period is how many minutes the message waits before it goes out, so if you enroll a student in the wrong class by mistake you have that long to undo it before they are notified. Click Customize to change the wording so it sounds like your school.
These messages go to your teachers and staff: welcome and portal access, class and event assignments, substitute requests, reminders and report exports. Keep the grace period on Teacher welcome, since that window lets you delete a teacher created by mistake before they get their login. Messages set to 0 minutes, like the virtual class join link, go out instantly and cannot be pulled back. Report export messages only go by email, so the SMS and WhatsApp switches stay off.
This is where families hear about money: new invoices, due-date and past-due reminders, and gift cards. Past-due reminders go out automatically at 7, 14, 30 and 60 days overdue, so check the wording with Customize before you rely on it. Reminders and gift card messages send immediately with a grace of 0, while New invoice waits 60 minutes so you can fix a wrong invoice before the family sees it.
Come here when you are near your student limit, when you want to move between monthly and annual billing, or when you need an invoice for your own records. The banner at the top shows how many students you have against your plan's limit, the percentage of that limit you are using, and the dates your current cycle started and ends. Each plan card lists its student limit, and a plan whose limit is below your current student count is greyed out and cannot be selected, so check that number before you pick a smaller plan. The Monthly and Annual switch above the cards only changes which prices you are looking at. On the card for the plan you are already on, the button offers to switch you to annual billing instead of Select Plan, so that is how you change the billing cycle without changing plans. Manage Payment & Invoices opens your payment method and past invoices, and Cancel subscription is kept separately at the bottom of the page, below the plans.
What is a location?
A location represents a physical place where your school operates - a building, campus, or branch. If your school has a single address, you'll have one location. If you operate across multiple sites, each site is a separate location. Every location can have multiple rooms inside it, and classes are scheduled in specific rooms. Locations also help with filtering - instructors and staff can be assigned to specific locations.
Sites and the rooms inside them. Rooms are what classes and bookings are scheduled into, and what conflict detection protects. Multi-site workspaces can scope staff and reporting per location. Each location also says how it appears in the Portal: a facade photo, a public description (how to find you, parking, what to bring) and a switch for whether the street address is shown.
Only the location name is required, so you can save quickly and fill in the rest later. Set the time zone before anything else is scheduled here, because reminders and notifications go out on this clock. Prices you enter for this location are treated as net, and the default tax category is added on top. You can only upload the email header and footer images after the location has been saved once.
Choose the location first, since each room belongs to exactly one site and that link cannot be changed from the room later. Capacity is the most important field: it stops a class in this room from being enrolled beyond what the space can hold. Pick a color so the room is easy to spot on the calendar.
Open a location to update its contact details, address, fiscal data and which payment methods families can use there. If a site closes, switch off Active rather than deleting it, so past classes and invoices keep their history. The sorting number controls where this location appears in lists, and the Inventory tab shows the equipment kept on site.
The record is organised into tabs: Inventory, Tax and invoicing. Each one is scoped to this record, so what you see is only this record's data.
Equipment kept in this room, so you know what is there without walking to it.
Pick the default tax rate for this location here. Anything billed at this site uses it unless the item has its own rate. The table below shows every kind of charge, from class fees to late fees and card fees, and whether it uses the default. Items tagged All locations share one setting across every site, so changing them here changes them everywhere. Before you send the first invoice, go through the Questions for your accountant list and confirm each rate, because the suggested rates are not tax advice.
Here you rename a room, adjust its capacity or change its calendar color. The location is fixed, so if a room was created under the wrong site, create a new one in the right place and deactivate this one. Check the classes scheduled in the room before lowering its capacity.
Turn on Bookable by students when you want students to reserve this room on their own, for example a practice room between lessons. It is off by default, so rooms used only for classes stay private. Remember to save after flipping the switch, and manage the reservations themselves from Room Bookings.
This tab lists only the items that live in this specific room, which makes it easy to see what a teacher will find there before a class. Add Unit places a new item directly in the room, and the Status filter helps you spot anything that is damaged or out of use. When you move an item to another room, update its placement here so the location checklist stays accurate.
Key fields
What are Payment Methods?
Payment methods are the different ways your school receives money from families - cash, bank transfer, card processors (Visa, Mastercard), digital wallets, checks. Configure each one once with its commission percentage, settlement days, and installment support, and staff picks it when registering a payment or issuing a refund. You can also flip 'pass through commission' on any method to automatically add a separate fee line to the invoice so the family covers the processor fee instead of the school absorbing it.
Which ways of paying you accept, and which is offered by default. Separate from the processor connection: this is the list a family sees, that is the plumbing behind it.
Key fields
What are Tax Categories?
Tax Categories are the tax rates your school charges on fees, tuition, and products. Define each category once with its name and rate (for example, 21% VAT, 10% Sales Tax, Exempt) and reuse them across your whole workspace. Each category also has a 'Tax included' flag that controls whether prices typed for items using it are gross (the tax is already inside the price) or net (the tax is added on top at checkout). You can then assign a default category to each Location and Venue so the right rate auto-applies to fees and tickets billed there - perfect for chains with branches in different states or countries.
Tax rates and the rules for applying them, so invoices come out correct for your jurisdiction without per-invoice thought.
What are connected apps?
Every external service alinaflow talks to on your behalf - messaging channels your customers receive notifications through (Email, WhatsApp), automation tools that let you wire alinaflow into the rest of your stack (Public API, Zapier), and identity systems for bigger teams (SSO, SCIM). Email and WhatsApp are connected from day one using alinaflow's shared senders; open a card to bring your own domain or number whenever you want full branding.
Connections to the tools you already use: payment processors, messaging channels, calendars, accounting and storage. Connect the payment processor and the messaging channels first, since most of the automation depends on them.
To add it, open Admin and then Connected apps, open the Zoom card and switch it on. Each teacher then connects their own account from My Connections in their profile, because the meeting is hosted by whoever teaches the class; the Workspace fallback host covers anyone who has not connected one. To use it, mark a Class as Virtual or Hybrid and the meeting is created for you - the join link appears on the Class and goes out with the reminders, and it follows the class when you reschedule. To remove it, use Disconnect on the same card to revoke the workspace connection, or Disconnect in My Connections to remove only your own account; either way alinaflow deletes the stored tokens immediately and stops creating meetings. Google Meet and Microsoft Teams use this same drawer, field for field, so these steps apply to all three.
What are Automated Tasks?
The routine jobs alinaflow runs for you on a schedule - reminders and messages, invoicing and collections, payroll, and housekeeping sweeps. They're grouped by what they do, with the everyday ones up top. Anything switched off, gated by a business rule, or waiting on an integration is collected under 'Not running'. Use Run now to trigger one immediately, or open a task to change its schedule and see its history.
Scheduled jobs that run without anyone present: invoicing runs, reminder sweeps, report deliveries, data exports. This page shows what is scheduled, when it last ran and whether it succeeded.
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