The last Sunday of the month
It is the last Sunday of the month and you have the attendance export open in one window and last month's pay spreadsheet in another. Your instructors are paid a base fee per class, plus a small amount per client above eight, except on reformer where the threshold is six. Workshops are split fifty-fifty after costs. Cover classes are paid at the cover rate. Two instructors are on a flat monthly fee for their regular slots.
You filter by teacher, count heads, check which classes were covers, look up the workshop takings, and build each instructor's total by hand. Then one of them emails to say she taught the Wednesday class that the export shows under someone else, because the swap was agreed by text and never changed in the system.
By ten at night you have fourteen invoices to check and a nagging feeling that last month's numbers had a mistake in them too.
Why instructor pay is so fiddly
Boutique studios pay creatively because it helps. Per-head bonuses reward teachers who build a following. Workshop splits share the risk of a new format. But every rule adds a column, and the booking system reports attendance, not pay.
Most studio software has a payroll or staff pay report, but it rarely handles tiered bonuses, split workshops and covers at once. So the export goes into a spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet grows formulas that only one person understands.
The data itself is also imperfect. If covers and swaps are not recorded in the booking system, the pay calculation starts from a wrong list of who taught what.
What the monthly pay job costs you
| Problem | What it causes |
|---|---|
| Manual head counts | An evening every month, every month |
| Swaps not in the system | Pay sent to the wrong instructor |
| Formulas nobody else understands | The owner cannot hand the job over |
| No statement for instructors | Queries and doubt about the numbers |
| Mistakes found late | Awkward corrections on next month's pay |
Freelance instructors talk to each other and to other studios. Being known as the studio where pay is always right, and always on time, helps you keep good teachers. Being known for corrections does the opposite.
How we automate the calculation
We read attendance from your booking system and apply your pay rules in code, with a person checking the output before anyone is paid.
- We write your pay rules down with you, including base fees, per-head thresholds by class type, cover rates, workshop splits and any flat arrangements.
- Attendance and teacher data come from the booking system through its API or a scheduled export, with checked-in clients counted the way your rules say.
- Covers and swaps logged through the booking system, or through a cover tool if you have one, are credited to the person who actually taught.
- The calculation runs at month end and produces a draft total per instructor, with a line for every class and how it was priced.
- Anything unusual is flagged: a class with no teacher, a head count that looks wrong, a workshop without costs entered.
- Once you approve, each instructor gets a statement by email, and the totals go to your accounts software, such as Xero or QuickBooks, as bills or a payroll input.
We do not decide how instructors should be classed for tax or employment purposes. That is for your accountant. We only calculate what your rules say.
Month end afterwards
On the last day of the month, a draft pay run is waiting for you, with three flagged lines to look at. You fix one, approve the rest and statements go out. Instructors can see exactly how their pay was worked out, so queries are about facts, not trust.
- Pay calculated from attendance, not rebuilt by hand
- A line-by-line statement for every instructor
- Swaps and covers credited to the right person
- A job someone else can check or run
Is this how pay works at your studio?
- Pay includes per-head bonuses, splits or multiple rates.
- You build pay from a booking export in a spreadsheet.
- Instructors query their pay most months.
- Class swaps are agreed by text and fixed at month end.
- Only you know how the pay spreadsheet works.