Lessons

Use Lessons to create lesson offerings, manage schedules, review bookings, and work with instructors.

All lesson invoices at the top of the Batches tab opens Invoices showing only lesson invoices.

Create the lesson offering, add times and prices, set capacity, and open registration when the details are ready. When registration opens, members can get a "Registration open" email with the lesson batch's name as its subject. It goes to members who chose to get pool news by email (not to anyone who unsubscribed or whose address you blocked), and its button opens the portal's lessons page. If a connected tool such as Claude asks to change a batch's name or description, or to turn that email on, the change comes to you for approval first, showing how many members will get the email and its subject. The email is never sent once the batch's registration has closed. A batch name can be up to 200 characters. Review bookings from the offering or household record. Check instructor assignments before publishing a schedule.

Use the cancellation or refund action on a booking when a family withdraws. The amount and deadline follow the lesson policy under Club → Programs. Instructors can access only their own lesson work. See Registrations and prices.

Lessons (under Programs) has four tabs: Batches, Instructors, Day sheet and Payouts. Managers and admins see all four; treasurers can open Payouts. If your club calls its teachers something else, such as coaches, the tab and screens use your club's word.

• Batches: a batch is a group of lesson times, such as a week. Give it a title and select Create batch, then open it. A batch's page has an Approval queue when instructors have proposed times (approve each one, or reject it with a reason), Scheduled times with a cancel action on each, Add a slot for one time (date, time, instructor, length, price and an optional location note), and Weekly pattern to create many times at once from chosen weekdays, start times and a date range. Times that break a rule, such as overlapping another lesson, are blocked and the message says why. Registration dates and prices are set under Registrations and prices.

• Instructors: the people who deliver lessons, described below.

• Day sheet: choose a Date (and optionally one instructor) and select Show for the confirmed lessons that day, with the swimmer's age, the household and the location. The filters and tabs are left off when you print the page. Below the filters you can cancel every lesson not yet started that day, with a required reason; see "Cancelling a lesson".

• Payouts: choose a date range (and optionally one instructor) for what each instructor is owed: lessons so far, cancelled, gross, refunded, the facility fee and the net. Download CSV gives the same table.

If lessons are on but no lesson time is open to book, the member's page says so ("No lessons are open to book right now", in your club's own word for a lesson) and that times will show up there once the club posts them, with a Contact us button. The pay-to-confirm note appears only when there is a time to hold. Adding lesson times does not email members by itself, so tell them.

The Payouts tab totals what each instructor is owed for a date range. It counts only lessons whose start time has already passed, so a range that runs into the future stops at today: a lesson that has not happened yet is not payable, and one cancelled that afternoon would otherwise be refunded after the cheque had gone out. Nobody records who turned up, so a lesson counts once its time has come, whether or not the swimmer was there.

Cancelling a booked lesson, a whole slot, or a whole day refunds the household in full and closes the time. When a connected tool such as Claude asks to do one of those, it is sent to you for approval first, with the refund total shown — the same treatment as any other refund. See Approving an action.

Part of a lesson may have been paid with account credit. That part goes back as account credit, and never more than the invoice can still give back: if you already returned some of it by hand or refunded the card part, the credit is smaller, and the treasurer gets a task saying so.

Cancelling a whole day only cancels the lessons that haven't started yet. Lessons that already started (the morning's lessons on a day you close in the afternoon) stay booked and are not refunded: they were taught, and the payout report already counts them. The message after you cancel the day lists the times it left. If one of those families should still get money back, cancel that booking on its own.

A member who is part-way through paying holds the time until their payment page expires. While that is true, the time cannot be re-priced, moved, or given to somebody else — the club would otherwise take their money for a lesson at a time they never chose.

Lessons a household has booked and not cancelled, including one being paid for and one that already took place, move to the household the other was merged into. Cancelled lessons and lessons whose hold ran out stay behind. The invoice stays on the household that was billed, and a refund as account credit for a cancelled lesson goes to the household the invoice is on. See Household ownership and merging.

Add each instructor on the Instructors tab: name, bio, photo, default length and price. A photo's location and camera details are removed when it is uploaded, and when you upload a new photo the old one is deleted. To give one their own sign-in, enter the login email of an account that already exists. They get an email with a link to My lessons. Only an admin can give a plain member account its own teaching sign-in; an account that already has another staff role (manager, treasurer, admin) is refused rather than changed. Change that person's role on Staff & tools first if they should only teach.

On My lessons, an instructor can:

• propose times for their own profile (a manager approves each one; they can never approve their own);

• withdraw a proposal nobody has approved yet;

• cancel one of their own approved times before it starts. If a family booked it, the family is refunded in full. Once a booked lesson has started it can't be cancelled from My lessons (it shows "Already started"); if the family should get money back, a manager does it;

• see their own day sheet and payout totals, and nobody else's.

Deactivating an instructor is refused while they still have future approved times.