Classes and lessons

Classes

What is a class?

A class is a specific group of students taking a course on a defined schedule. While a course describes what you teach, a class describes who, when, and where. Each class has an instructor, a time slot, an optional room, and its own roster of enrolled students. For example, 'Piano - Monday 4pm with Maria' is a class. You can have multiple classes for the same course, each with different schedules, instructors, or levels.

A class is one scheduled instance of a course: a day, a time, a room, a teacher and a roster. Create it from a course so it inherits the level structure, then set the recurring schedule. Conflict detection runs as you save and will stop you double-booking a teacher, a room or a student. Capacity is what drives the waitlist, so set it even if you are nowhere near full. A class can also be sold online: switch on On sale in the Portal on the class, or tick several on the board and use Put on sale or Take off sale. An offering of scheduled classes in the Portal only sells classes that are on sale, open to new students, before their close date and not full.

Adding a new class

Start by picking the course this class belongs to. The course has to exist already, so if it is missing from the list, create it on the Courses screen first. The wizard then takes you through fees and limits, lessons and teachers, and a final review before anything is saved. Nothing is created until you confirm on the last step, so you can go back and change earlier answers.

Inside a class record

The Details tab is where you set the class's tuition fee, enrollment fee, age range, maximum students and season. Leave Max Students empty and the class has no seat limit, so fill it in if you need a waitlist to kick in. Turn off Allows Enrollment to stop new sign-ups while keeping the current students enrolled. Your changes only take effect after you click Save Changes.

The record is organised into tabs: Schedule, Lessons 55, Enrollments. Each one is scoped to this record, so what you see is only this record's data.

Schedule

The recurring pattern this class runs on, the room and the teacher. Changing it here reschedules future sessions and checks for conflicts before saving.

Lessons 55

This tab lists every lesson generated from the class schedule, each with its date, room, modality, status and teacher. Use it to change a single lesson, for example to move it to another room or switch it to online, without touching the rest of the series. Lessons marked SUB are covered by a substitute teacher, which is worth checking before you run payroll. Use the status filter to jump to cancelled or completed lessons.

Enrollments

Click any class in the list to open its roster in a side panel. Add Student enrolls someone directly into this class, and the State column shows whether each student is active or on a trial. The History, Scheduled drops, Leaves and Waitlist tabs tell you who has left, who is about to leave, who is on a break and who is waiting for a seat. Check the Waitlist before you add a student to a full class.

Calendar

How does the Calendar work?

The Calendar shows all scheduled lessons and events for a location, organized by room and time slot. Each card represents a lesson or event - color-coded by course. Dotted cards are placeholders (classes with a schedule but no enrolled students yet). Click any card to see details, change status, or manage instructor substitutions. Use the week navigation to browse past and future schedules.

Everything with a time on it in one view: group classes, private lessons, one-off sessions, trials and shows. Filter by teacher or room to answer the two questions that come up most, which are who is free and what is in that room at four o'clock. Changes made here are real reschedules, so families are notified according to your notification settings.

The same calendar can be grouped three ways. Pick whichever answers the question you have: which room is free, who is teaching, or what a family has on.

Grouped by Location

Use this view to plan by room: each location gets its own column, so you can spot a free room before you book a makeup lesson or a new class. Watch for two cards stacked in the same room at the same time, since that usually means a double booking that needs to move. Dotted cards still hold the room even though nobody is enrolled yet, so check them before you assume a slot is free.

Grouped by Teacher

Switch to this view to see each teacher's week at a glance, which is the quickest way to check workload or find who is free to cover a lesson. Click a card to arrange a substitution when a teacher is out, and the lesson moves to the covering teacher's row. Look for gaps and back-to-back runs across locations, since a teacher cannot be in two buildings at once.

Grouped by Family

This view lines up every lesson by family, which helps when a parent calls asking when each of their children has class this week. Use it to spot siblings with overlapping times at different locations before a pickup problem turns into a missed lesson. Only enrolled students appear here, so placeholder classes with no students will not show under any family.

Substitutions

How do substitutions work?

When an instructor can't teach a scheduled lesson (illness, conflict, vacation), you mark them absent for that day. The lesson then needs a substitute. The Substitutions page lists all open requests - lessons that have lost their instructor and need coverage. From here you assign a replacement instructor, and the lesson stays on the schedule with the new person teaching. Substitutions keep the calendar accurate and students informed without having to cancel and reschedule.

When a teacher cannot take a session, record the substitution here rather than editing the class. The class keeps its identity and its history, the cover teacher gets the session on their schedule, and payroll pays the person who actually taught it. Most cover starts in the teacher Portal: a teacher who reports an absence, or books time off over their lessons, shows up here and in Tasks so you can assign a substitute, and the substitute sees the lesson under Substitutions in their own Portal.

Attendance

How does attendance work?

Every class or event on the calendar moves through a four-stage workflow: Not started → In progress → Pending review → Confirmed. instructors mark per-student attendance (Present / Late / Absent / Excused) while teaching, or staff enters it after the fact from this page. Only Confirmed attendance feeds payroll and the consecutive-absence rule (3 absences in a rolling 30-day window flags a student as consecutively absent). The tabs below split the work into four queues so no one loses track.

Mark attendance in one tap per student, or let students check themselves in with a QR code. The system flags consecutive absences automatically, which is the earliest reliable signal that someone is about to leave. A missed session can generate a makeup credit here rather than being argued about later.

Makeups

What are makeup credits?

A makeup credit is a debt your school owes a student for a lesson that didn't happen the way it was supposed to - either the class was cancelled, or the student missed class under a policy that allows recovery. Each credit can be redeemed into a future lesson (same class, or a different one if the source policy allows it), creating a temporary enrollment for a single lesson so they show up on the attendance list for that day only. Credits expire based on the source class's configured duration, and can be refunded (optionally as a billing credit memo) instead of redeemed.

Use this screen to see which students are owed a lesson and to settle those credits. You do not create credits here: alinaflow grants them automatically when a class is cancelled or when a student misses under a policy that allows recovery. That means an empty list usually just means nobody is owed anything right now. The Status filter opens on Active, so credits that were already redeemed, refunded or expired are hidden until you change it. Use the Class filter to narrow the list to one class, for example before rescheduling a group. When you redeem a credit, the student is added to that one future lesson only. They appear on the attendance list for that day and their regular enrollment does not change. If a make-up lesson will not work for the family, refund the credit instead. You can also issue the refund as a billing credit memo so it comes off their next invoice. Each credit expires based on the duration set on the class it came from, so check the Active list regularly so families do not lose lessons they were owed.

Private lessons

Private lessons

Private lessons are 1:1 - one instructor, one student. They work exactly like regular classes (attendance, payroll, makeups, substitutions) but are shown here separately for easier management. Recurring private lessons generate a weekly schedule; one-off private lessons are single dated sessions. For group instruction, use the classes menu instead.

One student, one teacher, one slot. Booked individually rather than on a recurring roster, and priced per session or from a package. Families now book private lessons in the Portal like any appointment: make each one an Appointments offering in Portal Studio and it appears in the Portal catalog, with the teacher's free times. When a family books a private lesson that needs approval, it waits in Portal Studio, Orders, and in Tasks, until you approve or decline it. The old Private Lesson Requests page only keeps the requests families sent before that change.

One-off lessons

One-off lessons

One-off lessons are single-date sessions - drop-ins, makeup redemptions, placement tests, masterclasses. They can be linked to a course (for pricing) or be Course-less. Students are added via the detail page with one of three modes: Charge (auto-invoice), Redeem Makeup Credit (consume an existing credit), or No Charge (comp / manual invoice).

A single session that is not part of a recurring class and not a private lesson: a catch-up, a workshop, a trial that turned into something. Use this when you need the session to exist on the calendar and on the invoice without creating a whole class around it.

Adding a new one-off lesson

Fill this in to put a single-date session on the calendar, such as a drop-in, a placement test or a masterclass. Pick a Course only when you want the lesson to use that course's pricing. For a placement test or masterclass, leave it on No Course. Date and Duration are required, but also set the Time and Room so the lesson doesn't clash with anything else in the building. You add students after you click Create, from the lesson's own page.

Inside a one-off lesson record

Open a record to change its name, course, fees, age range or seat limit. The Tuition Fee and Enrollment Fee set here are what a Charge-mode student is invoiced, so check them before you add anyone. Nothing is stored until you click Save Changes. Delete removes the record for good, so switch on Inactive instead if you only want to hide it.

The record is organised into tabs: Schedule, Lessons 2. Each one is scoped to this record, so what you see is only this record's data.

Schedule

When the session runs, in which room and with which teacher.

Lessons 2

The Lessons tab lists every dated session behind this record, with its time, room, teacher and status. Use the status filter to find cancelled or completed sessions, which are hidden among scheduled ones otherwise. You can change a session's modality right in its row, for example to move one date online, and the rest keep the default.