Answering “can we move Tuesday?” by text is a job you can hand back to families. With self-serve booking on, enrolled families book and cancel from the parent portal — inside rules you set, so nothing lands in a slot you didn’t intend to offer.
This is for families you already teach. Brand-new enquiries still come through your public booking page.
Where it lives
Settings → Organisation → Booking & cancellation policy. It’s off until you turn it on.
Let parents book
Tick Allow parents to book lessons online, then set the guard rails:
- Minimum notice (hours) — how close to the start a family can still book. Set 24 and nobody books tomorrow morning at midnight.
- Book up to (days ahead) — how far into the future the portal will offer.
- Hold a weekly slot for (days after a missed lesson) — keeps a regular slot reserved for that family for a while after a miss, rather than opening it to everyone straight away.
- Only allow online booking with a make-up credit — the strict setting. Families can only book when they’re owed a make-up, so self-serve booking becomes purely a rebooking tool rather than an open diary.
Let parents cancel
Tick Allow parents to cancel lessons online, then:
- Cancellation deadline (hours before the lesson) — your notice line.
- Before the deadline: issue a make-up credit — cancel in good time and the family keeps the value as a credit.
- After the deadline: still issue a make-up credit — leave this off and a late cancellation is simply charged; tick it if you’d rather always be generous.
- When a cancelled slot frees up — choose Re-open the slot — anyone can book it, Hold it as a make-up — the student keeps a credit to rebook, or Do nothing — keep the slot closed.
There’s also a Policy note shown to parents (optional) — a line in your own words, shown where families make the change (for example, “Please give at least 24 hours’ notice to cancel”).
What a family sees
In the portal, on their Schedule, a Book a lesson button appears when booking is on. They pick from genuinely open slots inside your window, and it’s booked — you’re not asked to approve each one, which is the point.
Where self-cancellation is on, the option appears on the lesson itself, and your deadline decides whether a make-up credit follows.
Good to know Everything here respects your existing clash checks and make-up credit policy. A family can never book a slot that conflicts with your calendar, and credits behave exactly as they do when you rebook one yourself — see make-up credits explained.
Was this out of date or unclear? Tell us — we keep these guides matched to the live app.