How a language school, tutoring centre or independent teacher actually runs: money and scheduling, student retention, and choosing a system to keep track of it all.
Feature lists look identical. What separates school management systems is how they bill you, how they track class packs, and what happens when a teacher calls in sick.
How a class pack actually works: what counts as the balance, when credits can expire, who pays for a reschedule, and how to handle a freeze or a refund request.
Most solo tutors do not need tutoring software. Here are the three signals that say a spreadsheet has stopped working, and the arithmetic to run before you pay.
A permanent teacher swap versus a one-off substitution, who decides on a reschedule, and why room conflicts almost always get caught too late to matter.
Parent messages get lost not because of WhatsApp or Telegram, but where the chat lives. Where the holes are, and what a shared inbox does and doesn't fix.
Export before you decide, freeze pack balances by hand, and move on a period boundary. A practical checklist for moving a school between systems.
A student-records spreadsheet fails in three places: pack balances, payment reconciliation and shared editing. Here is exactly where, and who it still suits.
Student churn rarely starts with 'we're leaving.' Attendance, payment and messaging signals usually show up weeks earlier. Here's what to watch first, and why.