A student almost never arrives alone. There’s a parent to contact, sometimes a sibling, and someone who pays — and if you create those one at a time you spend the rest of the term joining them up. Add a family creates them together in a single pass.
Where to start
Open Students in the left sidebar and choose Add a family — the primary button, top right. On a phone, Students is one of your bottom tabs.
There’s no separate one-student form any more: students are added through Add a family, so parents, students and who pays are created together.
The flow, step by step
It’s one screen that moves forward as you fill it in.
- The first guardian. Their name and how to reach them — an email, a mobile, or both.
- The students. For each child: first name, last name, date of birth and instrument. Add as many as the family has; siblings end up on one account, billed once.
- Who pays? Three answers: a parent or guardian, the student themselves (an adult learner), or someone else or an organisation (a grandparent, an employer, a school). Choosing this now is what stops the invoice going to the wrong person later.
- Portal and consents. The portal invite is on by default for the payer — they’re the person who needs to see the bills. Three consents sit beneath it — email updates, WhatsApp, and photos — each off unless you turn it on, because consent you didn’t ask for isn’t consent.
- Done. The last screen offers to schedule their first lesson, which is usually the next thing you want anyway.
Billing emails aren't a consent Invoices, receipts and payment reminders are part of the arrangement, not marketing — so they aren't a tickbox. The three consents above are about everything else.
If you’ve met them before
As you type an email or a mobile, LessonLoop checks what you already have. If it recognises the contact, it says so and offers to add the new student to that existing family instead of creating a second one.
Take the offer when it’s right. A second family record for the same parent is the thing that later produces two invoices, two portal logins and a confused conversation.
What families never see
Date of birth and tags are staff-only. They don’t appear in the parent portal at any point.
Tags are free labels for grouping and filtering — grade-3, scholarship, Tuesday cohort. Keep them general: they’re a filing system, not a place for anything sensitive or safeguarding-related.
Filling in the rest
The flow deliberately asks for the minimum. Once the family exists, open a student’s profile to add the fuller picture — instruments and grades, a default teacher and location, a custom lesson rate, further guardians, and notes. See student profiles and notes.
Bringing in a whole roster rather than one family? See import your students for a spreadsheet, or bring your school in if you’re switching from another tool.
And someone who hasn’t signed up yet — a trial, a waiting family — belongs in the Enquiries pipeline until they join. See track enquiries.
Was this out of date or unclear? Tell us — we keep these guides matched to the live app.