Sunday night with the laptop
The agency is growing. The owner spends Sunday evenings trying to see how. Lessons taught come from the tutors' logs. Enquiries are in the inbox. Margins are somewhere between the billing spreadsheet and the tutor pay spreadsheet. Capacity is in her head. She pieces together a rough picture, and it is never quite finished before Monday starts.
She knows the numbers matter: a slowdown in enquiries, a subject running short, a margin that has crept down. But by the time she spots them, they are weeks old.
Why the numbers are hard to see
- Every number lives in a different place: schedule, inbox, billing, accounts.
- Some numbers, like capacity by subject, are not recorded anywhere.
- Definitions change depending on who worked them out.
- Pulling it together takes hours, so it happens irregularly.
- There is too much detail and no summary.
What not seeing them costs
Slow reactions: a drop in enquiries noticed a month late, a subject that ran short all term, a tutor whose students kept cancelling. Growth decisions made on feel. The owner's own time, every weekend. And when you want to talk to an accountant, a lender or a buyer, you do not have a clear record of how the business has performed.
Tutoring has its own rhythm, which makes rough numbers especially misleading. Lessons dip at half term and over Christmas, spike before mocks, fall away in the summer. A quiet week in late October might be perfectly normal or might be the start of a problem, and without the same week last year to compare against, there is no way to tell. Owners end up worrying about the normal dips and missing the real ones.
The weekly page we build
- Your schedule, enquiry list, billing and accounting package are connected, using their exports or APIs.
- We agree a short list of numbers with you and define each one once.
- The page shows the week against recent weeks: lessons taught, active students, new enquiries and how many became students, cancellations, tutor hours available by subject, and margin.
- Anything that moved sharply is highlighted, with a link to the detail behind it.
- The page updates overnight and goes to you by email on Monday morning.
- Month and term summaries are kept, so trends are visible and your accountant has what they need.
| Number | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Lessons taught this week | The core measure of the business |
| New enquiries and conversion | Whether growth is coming |
| Cancellations by tutor | Early sign of problems |
| Spare tutor hours by subject | Where you can take more, and where you cannot |
| Margin by subject | Where the business makes its money |
The numbers are yours and use your definitions. We do not benchmark you against other agencies or tell you what good looks like.
Monday morning, afterwards
On Monday morning, the owner reads one page over coffee. Lessons are steady. Enquiries rose after a local newsletter mention. Physics capacity is nearly gone. One tutor's cancellations have doubled. She makes three decisions before nine: recruit physics, ask the newsletter about advertising, and call the tutor.
Sunday evenings are free.
Months later, when the owner meets her accountant to plan the next year, the history is already there: term by term, subject by subject, with the same definitions throughout.
The list of numbers usually starts short. Five or six is enough to run an agency week to week. Anything that is not used after a few months comes off the page, and anything the owner keeps asking about goes on it, so the page stays something she reads rather than scrolls past.
Is this your Sunday night?
- You build the agency's numbers by hand.
- You find out about problems weeks late.
- You do not know your margin by subject.
- Capacity by subject lives in your head.
- Your accountant waits for figures each quarter.