Configuring Your Billing Settings
Your billing settings define the defaults that the platform uses when setting up billing for new students. This is a school level template — you can override everything on a per student basis later. The setup guide step
What Are Billing Settings?
Billing settings are your studio's defaults: the billing model you use most often, your standard lesson rates, your preferred invoice interval, and your payment instructions. When you create a new student enrolment, these defaults are used as a starting point — saving you time by not having to configure everything from scratch each time.
Key Settings to Configure
Default billing model
Choose the billing model you use for most of your students. Options include:
- Calendar-based — invoice based on lessons in the schedule
- Lesson packs — students prepay a bundle of lessons
- Monthly — fixed charge each month
- Term — one invoice per school term
You can always select a different model when creating a specific student's enrolment. See Which Billing Model Is Right for Your Studio? for a full comparison.
Monthly invoice detail
When your default billing model is Monthly, you can choose Show lesson dates on monthly invoices. This is the starting preference for new monthly enrolments. It lets their invoices show the scheduled lesson dates for that month, but does not change the monthly amount.
You can turn this preference on or off for any individual enrolment later.
Default lesson rate
Set a standard rate per lesson (or per period for monthly billing). This is drawn from your configured lesson types — the rate on the lesson type is the rate that will be used for billing.
If you teach both individual and group lessons, you will need lesson types set up as separate records for each. Individual and group lesson types are distinct in Octavia, and the app presents the relevant options in context — individual lesson types when you're working with individual enrolments, group lesson types when you're working with groups. Make sure you have lesson types configured for each teaching format you offer before you start creating enrolments. See Setting Up Lesson Pricing for how lesson types work.
Payment instructions
This is the text that appears on invoices telling families how to pay. For most studios, this is bank account details for direct transfer — for example:
Bank: First National Bank · BSB: 123-456 · Account: 12345678 · Reference: [student name]
If you connect Stripe for online payments, a Pay Now link is added to invoices automatically — you don't need to include card details in the payment instructions text. See Connecting Stripe for Online Payments.
Invoice collection mode
This sets whether invoices are generated manually (you create them when you're ready) or automatically on a schedule.
Tax settings
Billing settings include an optional tax configuration. This controls whether Octavia calculates and displays tax on invoice lines.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Enable tax | Turns tax calculation on or off for invoices |
| Tax name | The label shown on invoices (e.g. GST, VAT, HST) |
| Tax rate | The percentage applied to invoice lines |
| Prices include tax | Whether your lesson rates already include tax (inclusive) or whether tax is added on top (exclusive) |
When tax is disabled, these fields are still saved but have no effect on invoice calculations.
Enabling tax also changes how the Money Reports section presents your income and expenses — it separates figures into inc-tax and ex-tax columns and shows tax collected and claimable tax paid. See Money Reports.
Financial year
The financial year used by Money Reports is derived from your school's country setting. Australian schools use 1 July, UK schools use 6 April, and US and Canadian schools use 1 January. This updates automatically if your country changes.
See Money Reports for more on how financial year reporting works.
Completing the Setup Step
The billing settings setup step completes automatically once the required fields are filled in. There's no separate "save" action for the setup guide — filling in the settings is sufficient.
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