Twelve schools, twelve arrangements
Alongside your own sessions, you deliver PE lessons and after-school clubs at local primary schools. One school pays per session. Another agreed a termly fee. One runs the after-school club itself and pays you a coach fee; at another, parents book and pay you directly. Two schools want invoices sent to the business manager, one to a central finance office with a purchase order number.
Your records are an email thread per school and a spreadsheet of sessions. When a session is cancelled because of a school trip, nobody notes whether it is charged. At the end of term, you build invoices by hand. A school queries one because a coach was absent one week, and you cannot say for sure which week.
Why school work gets tangled
- Every school has different terms, set in conversation and confirmed by email.
- Delivered sessions are not recorded consistently, so invoices are built from the plan, not the reality.
- Cancellations for school events, weather or coach absence are handled differently each time.
- Invoices need different recipients, references and purchase order numbers per school.
- Coach allocation for school sessions sits in a separate rota.
What the tangle costs
Sessions delivered and never invoiced. Invoices queried because they do not match what the school remembers. Slow payment because an invoice went to the wrong person or lacked a purchase order number. Awkward conversations with business managers you want to keep working with.
Schools are also a good source of new families for your own sessions and camps, and a relationship strained over invoices is a relationship that stops recommending you.
School contracts, sessions and invoices in one place
- Each school gets a record: contacts, what was agreed (sessions, times, fee basis, cancellation terms), term dates and invoicing details including purchase order needs.
- School sessions appear in your timetable and rota, with the coach allocated.
- Coaches mark each school session as delivered on their phone, with the register if you take one, or record a cancellation and the reason.
- Cancellations are treated by the terms agreed with that school, so charged and not charged are decided consistently.
- At the invoicing point you choose, invoices are drafted from delivered sessions and the school's terms, checked by you, and created in Xero or QuickBooks with the right recipient and reference.
- Each school's history shows sessions, coaches, cancellations and invoices together, so a query can be answered in minutes.
| Fee basis | Invoice built from | Typical timing |
|---|---|---|
| Per session | Sessions marked delivered | Monthly or termly |
| Termly fee | Agreed fee, adjusted by your terms | Start or end of term |
| Coach fee for school-run club | Sessions delivered | Monthly |
| Parents pay you directly | No school invoice; bookings through your system | Not applicable |
End of term without the invoice marathon
Coaches mark sessions as delivered on the day. At the end of the month, invoices for per-session schools are drafted automatically. You glance at them, notice one school's trip day was correctly left off, and approve. They arrive in Xero with the right purchase order numbers.
Renewals get easier as well. Before the summer, you can see every school's agreement, how many sessions were delivered, how many were cancelled by the school and for what reasons, and which coaches the pupils know. That makes the conversation about next year's arrangement a short one, based on a clear record, rather than a hunt through last September's emails.
When a business manager asks about a specific week, you open the school's record and see the session, the coach and the register. The query is answered in one email.
Is school work hard to keep straight?
- Each school's terms are in an email thread.
- Invoices are built from the plan, not from sessions delivered.
- Schools query invoices you cannot easily check.
- Invoices go to the wrong person or lack a purchase order.
- Cancelled school sessions are treated inconsistently.