How Student Identity Works
Octavia separates who a student is from how they are enrolled. Understanding this distinction makes the rest of the platform — billing, groups, Family Hub access — much easier to reason about. Every student in Octavia ex
The Two Layers
Every student in Octavia exists at two levels simultaneously.
The master record is the student as a person. It stores their name, email, date of birth, and login identity. It belongs to your school as a whole, not to any individual teacher or lesson type. If a student has both individual lessons and group lessons with you, there is still only one master record for them.
The enrolment is the teaching relationship — individual lessons with a specific teacher, or membership in a specific group. Enrolments carry the lesson-specific details: billing model, lesson type, rate, and teacher. A student can have multiple enrolments at your school at the same time.
| Master record | Enrolment | |
|---|---|---|
| What it represents | The person | The teaching relationship |
| Stored in | students_master_list | students (individual) or student_group_members (group) |
| How many per student | One per school | One per active teaching relationship |
| Carries | Name, email, DOB, Hub access | Lesson type, billing contract, teacher |
Why This Matters in Practice
Most of the time, this is invisible. When you add a student through My Students, both layers are created together and you interact with them as one thing.
In the teacher app, you'll usually notice the distinction in four places:
- My Students shows your individual students in a day-to-day teaching view
- Manage Students gives you a school-wide student record, and the Enrolment Editor (opened from there) handles placement — both become especially useful once you start running groups
- Student profiles show Family Hub settings, parent links, and billing responsibility at the student identity level
- Group pages let you work with students who may belong to a group even if they don't currently have an individual lesson with you
The separation becomes relevant in three situations:
Groups. A student who attends a group lesson only — with no individual lessons — exists in the master record but has no individual enrolment. You manage this through Manage Students and the Enrolment Editor rather than My Students. See Adding and Managing Students.
Billing. Invoices are addressed to the master record (the person / family). Invoice lines come from enrolments. This is why a family with one child in individual piano and one child in a group class can receive a single invoice covering both — both enrolments roll up to their respective master records, and the platform groups them. See Billing Families with Multiple Enrolments.
Family Hub access. Hub access is controlled at the master record level. When a student or parent signs up, their account links to the master record. This means a student who moves between teachers, or is enrolled in multiple groups, keeps the same login. See Managing Family Hub Access.
One Login Per Email
Octavia enforces one login account per email address, globally. A student who attends two different studios using Octavia has one login that gives them access to both. The same applies to parents — a parent linked to children at two different studios has one login and sees both schools in their Hub.
Teacher accounts work differently. A teacher email can only be registered to one school as a teacher. If you also happen to be a parent of a child who has lessons at another studio using Octavia, or a student yourself, you should use a separate personal email for those roles. It's recommended to use a professional email address for your teaching account, reserving a personal email for any parent or student roles you hold elsewhere.
What Happens When You Add a Student
When you create a student record in My Students, you are creating both the master record and an individual enrolment for your teaching at once. The student starts with no Hub account — that's set up separately when you're ready. Until a student completes their own Hub signup, you can still update their email address if needed. Once they complete signup, their email becomes tied to their login. See Setting Up Parent Accounts and Student Consent Settings.