Month end, two spreadsheets
At the end of each month, tutors email in their lesson logs: dates, students, hours. The office builds the tutor payments from those. Separately, the office builds parent invoices, partly from the same logs and partly from what parents are expected to have had. The two spreadsheets are close, but not the same.
A tutor claims a lesson on the 14th that is not on the parent's invoice. A parent is billed for a double lesson that the tutor logged as a single. A tutor on a higher rate for A level is paid the GCSE rate. Nobody notices until the owner looks at the bank balance and wonders why the margin seems thinner than it should.
Why pay and billing drift apart
- Tutor pay comes from tutors' claims and parent billing from a separate list.
- Rates differ by tutor, subject, level and sometimes by family, and are held in several places.
- Cancellations and rearranged lessons are treated differently on each side.
- Some families are on packages or discounts, which change what they are billed but not what the tutor is paid.
- There is no check that every lesson appears on both sides.
What the gap costs
Lessons paid to tutors and never billed are pure loss. Lessons billed wrongly lead to refunds and complaints. Paying the wrong rate upsets tutors or costs you money. Without a margin per lesson, the owner cannot see which subjects, tutors or families are profitable. The monthly reconciliation takes days.
The one lesson record we build
- Every lesson is recorded once, from the schedule, and confirmed by the tutor on the day.
- Each lesson carries the parent rate and the tutor rate that apply to it, from rate tables by subject, level and any family or tutor exceptions.
- Cancellations, packages and discounts are applied under your rules to the parent side and the tutor side separately.
- At month end, parent invoices and tutor pay are produced from the same records.
- A check lists any lesson paid but not billed, billed but not paid, or with an unusual margin.
- The owner sees margin by tutor, subject and family, and the total for the month.
- Invoices go to your accounting package, and tutor payments are prepared for your usual payment run.
| Lesson | Parent billed | Tutor paid | Margin shown |
|---|---|---|---|
| A level maths, standard | A level parent rate | Tutor's A level rate | Yes |
| GCSE English, package lesson | From package balance | Tutor's GCSE rate | Yes |
| Late cancellation, charged | Per your policy | Per your policy | Yes |
| Lesson logged, not on schedule | Held | Held | Flagged for the office |
Rates and margins are your commercial decisions. The system only makes sure the records agree.
Month end, afterwards
There is no second spreadsheet. The office runs month end from the lesson records, looks at the short list of flagged lessons, sorts them, and approves. Parent invoices and tutor pay go out from the same data, so they agree.
The owner looks at margins and sees that one subject is running at a much lower margin than the others because of an old rate nobody reviewed. That is now a decision to make, not a mystery.
Tutors notice the difference as well. When a tutor asks why a lesson was paid at a particular rate, the office can show the lesson record and the rate that applied, rather than rebuilding it from an emailed log.
Rates are usually the first thing to tidy. Many agencies find that tutor and parent rates have been agreed one at a time over years and live in emails. Bringing them into one table, with the date each was agreed, is often the most useful single step, and it makes future rate reviews far quicker.
Signs your pay and billing do not match
- Tutor pay and parent invoices come from different spreadsheets.
- You have found lessons paid but not billed.
- Rates are held in more than one place.
- You do not know your margin per lesson.
- Month end takes days.