Billing in LessonLoop follows your teaching, not the other way round. You don’t build invoices by hand — lessons flow into them. This is the shape of the whole cycle, with links to the how-to guide for each step.
The lifecycle, start to finish
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Lessons happen. You schedule lessons on the Calendar, each one carrying a rate (more on that below).
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Attendance confirms them. When you take the register, each lesson is marked attended, absent or cancelled.
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A billing run turns lessons into invoices. When you’re ready to bill, you start a billing run, and the run bills each pupil the way they pay:
- Each pupil’s setting — the default. Every pupil is billed before lessons (every scheduled lesson in the period) or after they’re taught (completed lessons only). Set it per pupil with Bill this pupil on their record, and the studio-wide default under Settings → Organisation → Billing timing. One run bills a studio with both kinds of family.
- Delivered (completed lessons) — everyone billed after lessons are taught, whatever their setting. Under Advanced. Only confirmed, billable lessons become charges, so an unmarked lesson never lands on an invoice by accident.
- Upfront (all scheduled) — everyone billed for every scheduled lesson in the period, marked or not. Under Advanced; how you bill a whole term in advance.
Either way the run groups lessons by family and produces one invoice per family. (For a single ad-hoc charge you can also raise a New invoice by hand — same Invoices page.) See create and send invoices.
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The family pays. With card payments connected, each invoice gets a Pay button and the money lands in your bank — see set up card payments. A family can also set up a Direct Debit from their portal and switch autopay on, after which invoices are collected automatically — see get paid by Direct Debit. Paid by cash or bank transfer instead? You record that payment by hand against the invoice, and LessonLoop marks it paid.
Where each step lives
| Step | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Schedule lessons | Calendar |
| Confirm attendance | The register, opened from the Calendar’s “Take attendance” button |
| Create invoices (bulk) | Billing & Finance → Billing runs |
| Raise a one-off invoice | Billing & Finance → Invoices → New invoice |
| View invoices & balances | Billing & Finance → Invoices and Family Accounts |
Most invoices come from a billing run, which links each charge to a confirmed lesson so nothing is billed twice or missed. For anything outside your regular run — a one-off charge, a single family — use New invoice to build one by hand. See create and send invoices.
Why each lesson carries its own rate
Every lesson stores its own rate, captured at the moment the lesson was created. That snapshot is what the billing run uses.
Good to know Because the rate is snapshotted onto the lesson, changing a rate card partway through a term does not rewrite invoices you've already generated, and it won't retroactively change lessons that were scheduled at the old price. New lessons created after the change pick up the new rate; everything already on the calendar keeps the rate it was booked at. That's what keeps your past invoices accurate and your families' bills predictable.
If you do need to adjust a single lesson’s price, you can change it on that lesson before the billing run picks it up.
In short
Teach, confirm, run, get paid. In a Delivered run attendance is the gate that decides what’s billable; in an Upfront run the schedule is; with Each pupil’s setting, the default, each pupil’s own timing decides which of the two applies to them. Either way the billing run is the moment lessons become money owed, and the per-lesson rate snapshot means your history stays exactly as it was charged.
Was this out of date or unclear? Tell us — we keep these guides matched to the live app.