Reviewing Your Attendance Settings
Attendance settings define the status options you use when marking lessons — for example, "Attended", "Absent", or "Teacher Cancelled" — and what each status means for billing and makeup entitlements. This is the one set
Where to Find Them
Go to School Settings → Lesson Settings and scroll to the Attendance card, below Lesson Types and Instruments. Its Attendance Types table lists every status. Everyone can see the list, but only school admins can change it.
Why Attendance Settings Matter
When you mark a lesson's attendance, you choose a status from your configured list. Each status has two key properties that the platform uses to determine what happens next:
Billable (shown as Billable (per-event)) — Should this attendance outcome create a billing event? For billing models where attendance drives charges (such as PAYG), a billable status triggers invoice creation. For calendar-based billing, this setting has no effect on invoices — the lesson is charged based on the schedule regardless.
Creates a makeup credit (shown as Allows make-up) — Should this attendance outcome entitle the student to a replacement lesson? If yes, the platform creates a makeup credit when this status is applied, which can be used to schedule and track a makeup lesson. See Makeup Credits: How They Are Created and Used for more detail on how this works.
Each status also has an Outcome (present, absent or cancelled), a Counts toward quota setting for prepaid lesson models, make-up expiry settings, and an Active switch. See Everything You Can Set on a Status for all of them.
Default Statuses
Octavia comes with a set of default attendance statuses to get you started. Common examples include:
| Status | Typical Billing Behaviour | Typical Makeup Setting |
|---|---|---|
| Attended | Billable | No makeup owed |
| Absent (student) | Billable | Creates makeup credit |
| Teacher cancelled | Not billable | Creates makeup credit |
| Late cancel | Billable | No makeup owed |
The exact defaults may vary. The important thing is to review them and confirm they match your studio's policy before you start using the app in earnest.
What to Review
Before confirming this step, check each status in your list and ask:
- Does the name describe a real outcome I'll use? If you have statuses you'll never use, you can remove or rename them.
- Is the billing setting correct? For example — if your studio charges for late cancellations, the "late cancel" status should be marked as billable. If you don't charge, it shouldn't be.
- Is the makeup setting correct? If your studio's policy is that absent students are owed a makeup, make sure "absent" creates a makeup credit. If not — for example, if you have a strict cancellation policy where forfeited lessons are charged and not replaced — make sure it doesn't.
- If students are on lesson packs, does the status use up a lesson? Check Counts toward quota as well as billable. A pack credit is used only when a status is both.
Confirming the Review
Once you've checked your attendance settings and are happy with them, click Mark as reviewed in the amber Review your attendance settings message at the top of the Attendance card (or the matching confirmation in the setup guide). Only admins see that message, and it goes away once you've confirmed. This is the only setup step that requires an explicit sign-off.
If your policies change later, you can update your attendance settings at any time and use the setup guide to mark the step as needing re-review.
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