Getting started with LessonSolutions: the first thirty minutes

What you need

Your practice details as they belong on an invoice (name, address, Chamber of Commerce number, IBAN), your logo if you have one, and for your first student their name, year group, a parent with an email address and the standing lesson time. Nothing more. The rest builds up by itself while you teach.

Once you have created your account you work for 30 days with everything in Start, without a card. Today shows the “Getting started” checklist; it ticks itself off and disappears once everything is in place.

Step by step

1. Go to Settings › Branding and fill in your practice name, address, Chamber of Commerce number and IBAN. This appears on every invoice and every monthly report; without an IBAN there is no account number on the invoice.
2. Under Settings › Rates and billing, choose your standard rate, your standard lesson length, your payment term and your VAT scheme. Have your accountant confirm the scheme before you send your first invoice.
3. Under Settings › Subjects and topics, create your subjects, for example maths, spelling and reading comprehension, each with a colour. You do not need to think up topics in advance: they build up as you write up lessons.
4. Go to Students and click “Add a student”. Fill in the first name, surname and year group and choose a parent, or create one straight away with “+ New parent”: a name and an email address are enough. That is where the invoices and the parent link will go.
5. Set a standing lesson time: on the student's page or on the Schedule with “Add a standing slot”. Choose the subject, the day, the time, the length and the start date. The schedule then fills itself in ahead.
6. Teach your first lesson and write it up afterwards: open the lesson on Today, tap the topics, say how each subject went and add a sentence. That marks the lesson as taught.
7. On the student's page, copy the parent link with “Copy parent link” and send it to the parent. From then on they can follow along themselves.

What you can set up later

• Your logo and accent colour, and from Tutor upwards, leaving our name off the bottom of your documents.
• The language of your documents, separate from the language you use the app in.
• Whether a lesson cancelled late counts as taught, and whether new write-ups are shared with parents by default.
• Lesson packages, if you ask for payment in advance.
• What parents hear from you automatically, and whether they may send you messages through the portal.
• With Plus: inviting colleagues and sending from your own domain.

Moving over from a spreadsheet

Adding a student takes a minute: first name, surname, year group, parent, standing lesson time. With fifteen students you are done in a quarter of an hour. If you would rather not do it yourself, attach your spreadsheet to an email and I will move it across for you.

You do not need to enter past lessons. Start with the current week; invoices for earlier months you make the way you always made them.

Frequently asked questions