A group lesson is simply a lesson with more than one student in it — an ensemble, a theory class, a pair of siblings sharing a slot. You book it on the Calendar just like a private lesson, then add each student. Everyone shares the time and the room, but each student keeps their own rate, so billing stays correct for every family.
Book a group lesson
- Open the Calendar (second item in the left sidebar) and choose New lesson at the top. Clicking an empty slot opens a smaller New lesson card instead — that one books a single student, so choose More options on it to open the full form.
- Choose Group (beside Private, at the top of the form).
- If you like, give the class a name in Class name (optional) — “Christmas Choir”, say. Leave it blank and the calendar names the lesson after its students, or “Open class” while nobody is on it.
- Under Students, add each student in turn — or add nobody at all if families will book themselves on once you publish it as an open class.
- Choose the Teacher, the Date, Start and Length, and the Location, as for any lesson.
- Choose Save lesson (Save series if it repeats). The lesson shows all its students and appears once on the timetable for that slot.
Add or take off a student later
Someone joins the class, or leaves it? Change it on the lesson itself.
- Open the lesson on the Calendar and choose Edit (on the register, Edit lesson opens the same form).
- Under Students, choose Add a student and pick them — only students who aren’t already on the lesson are offered. To take someone off, choose the × beside their name. Each change shows as Adding or Taking off until you save, and Undo puts it back.
- Before you save, the form says who’s told: the family of each student you add or take off gets one e-mail about their own child — never the class’s name or anyone else’s child — for lessons still to come. A change to a lesson that has already happened (a register put right afterwards, say) e-mails nobody, and the form says so. Untick Tell the families by e-mail if they shouldn’t hear. In setup mode nobody is e-mailed, and the form says so.
- Choose Save changes. For a repeating class you’re asked This lesson only or This and all future lessons — the class stays in its series either way. The message after saving says how many messages to families are on their way (or that no family was told), and how many later lessons were left as they were because they’d been cancelled or already taught.
A few things keep a student on: a register mark on the lesson, their place already being on an invoice, or their family having asked to change that lesson. If one applies, saving says which, beside their name, and the students stay as they were. A lesson that’s been taught or cancelled keeps the students it had.
Taking a student off never cancels the lesson and never issues a make-up credit or touches an invoice — if they’d booked a make-up onto it, the credit goes back to them. A class left with nobody on it stays on the timetable as an open class.
Good to know If adding someone would take the class past its places, the form says so before you save — with the numbers — and offers Add anyway. Swapping one student for another never counts as going over. A one-to-one lesson shows its student with Change student instead: pick the new student and save, and the swap is made in one go. If the lesson's own title named the student who left, it goes back to plain "Lesson", so the calendar shows it by its new student.
Families can still book themselves on too, once you publish the class as an open class.
Rename a class
Open the lesson, choose Edit, change Class name and save — for this lesson only, or this and all future lessons. Empty the name to take it away, and the calendar names the class after its students again. If the class has a public listing, the listing keeps its own title (the form tells you so) — change that under Growth → Website. Families aren’t told about a new name.
Room capacity
Rooms can carry a capacity, and if a group lesson has more students than the room holds, LessonLoop shows a gentle warning when you save — it never blocks you, so you can still go ahead, pick a larger room, or split the group across two slots.
Room capacities are set per room under People → Locations. Teaching alone? You get Locations as its own sidebar row instead of the People group, with the same rooms and capacities — see locations and rooms.
How billing works
Every student in a group lesson carries their own rate snapshot — the rate that applied to that student at the time of the lesson. So billing is per student, not a single shared charge:
| What’s shared | What’s per student |
|---|---|
| The time slot | The rate (each student’s own) |
| The teacher and room | The invoice line |
| Attendance register | Make-up credit if absent |
When you run your invoices (Billing & Finance → Billing runs), each student is invoiced for their share at their own rate — exactly as if they’d attended a private lesson. One family paying a different rate from another in the same group is handled automatically.
Good to know Because each student carries their own rate snapshot, changing a student's rate later won't rewrite the charge for a lesson that has already happened — the lesson keeps the rate that was in force on the day.
Attendance and make-ups
Take attendance for a group lesson the same way as any other — the register lists every student, and you mark each one present, absent or late individually. If one student is absent, only that student earns a make-up credit; the rest of the group is unaffected. The lesson itself still ran for everyone else.
Filling a group from the public
A group class can also be advertised on your public website as an open class, with its own listing and an embeddable widget for your own site — see publish an open class.
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