How Your Lessons Are Counted
Calendar based billing always counts from your schedule. Every eligible lesson in the calendar for the billing period is billable at the rate on that lesson's lesson type. Attendance does not change what appears on the i
The Calendar Is the Source of Truth
In calendar-based billing, invoice generation looks at one thing only: which lessons are scheduled in the billing period. If a lesson is in the calendar, it is counted. If a lesson is not in the calendar, it is not counted. Attendance records — whether a student was present, absent, or cancelled — play no role in this calculation.
This design makes billing predictable and consistent. The same schedule always produces the same invoice, regardless of what happened on the day. There is no hidden dependency on whether attendance has been marked, no risk of invoices changing if attendance is updated later, and no need to have attendance fully recorded before you can generate an invoice.
Which Lesson Type and Price Are Used
Calendar billing uses the lesson type saved on each scheduled lesson. That lesson type supplies both the lesson duration and the rate used for that lesson's invoice charge.
Usually this is the same type attached to the student's or group's enrolment. However, when adding an ordinary one-off lesson, you can choose another lesson type from the same category for that lesson only. If you do, calendar billing uses the selected type and its rate; it does not fall back to the enrolment's usual type.
If lessons in the same billing period use different lesson types or rates, they may appear as separate invoice lines so the quantities and prices remain clear. Before sending the invoice, review the draft to confirm that each lesson type and amount is what you expect.
This lesson-only choice is not available for makeup bookings. Makeup lessons keep the type attached to the enrolment and are excluded from calendar billing, as explained below.
How the Platform Thinks About Lessons
To understand why calendar billing works this way, it helps to know that the platform separates lesson information into four distinct layers. Each layer has a clear, independent job:
| Layer | What It Represents |
|---|---|
| Scheduling — What was planned | The lessons in your calendar: who, when, and with which student or group. This is what calendar-based billing uses. |
| Attendance — What actually happened | Whether the student was present, absent, cancelled, and so on. This drives Pay As You Go (PAYG) billing, and determines whether a makeup credit is owed. |
| Entitlements — What is owed | Makeup lesson credits and lesson pack credits. These represent lessons a student is owed, and they are used to exclude already-compensated lessons from future invoices. |
| Billing — What is charged | The invoice itself: the financial document sent to the family. For calendar billing, this is built from the scheduling layer, with entitlements applied to avoid double-charging. |
The critical rule is that billing must not depend on attendance for calendar-based billing. If attendance should control what gets charged, the correct model is Pay As You Go (PAYG) — not calendar billing.
What About Students Who Miss Lessons?
This is the most common question when studios first encounter this model. If calendar billing ignores attendance, does a student get charged for a lesson they missed?
The short answer is: yes, the lesson slot is charged — but fairness is maintained through the entitlement layer, not by filtering invoices.
Here is how it works:
- When a student misses a lesson and your attendance status for that outcome is configured to create a makeup credit, the platform records that the student is owed a replacement lesson.
- That makeup credit entitles the student to a future makeup session.
- When the makeup lesson is scheduled and attended, it is excluded from billing — because the entitlement shows it has already been paid for.
The result is the same as if you had not charged for the missed lesson in the first place, but the accounting is cleaner: the original lesson slot was a real booking that the studio made available, and the makeup is a fair exchange, tracked explicitly.
What If My Studio Does Not Offer Makeup Lessons?
Many studios have a firm cancellation policy: if a student misses a lesson without sufficient notice, they forfeit that lesson. In this case:
- Calendar billing charges for the scheduled slot as normal.
- You configure your attendance statuses so that the 'absent' or 'late cancel' outcome does not create a makeup credit.
- No entitlement is created, and no makeup is owed. The invoice stands.
Whether missed lessons generate makeup credits is controlled entirely by your attendance status configuration — not by a billing setting. This gives you full flexibility to run your studio according to your own policy.
What If I Genuinely Only Want to Charge for Attended Lessons?
If your studio's core model is "charge only for lessons that actually happened", the right billing model is Pay As You Go (PAYG), not calendar-based billing.
Under PAYG, no lesson generates a charge unless attendance is marked as billable. Calendar-based billing and PAYG represent two genuinely different studio philosophies:
| If your studio policy is… | Use this billing model |
|---|---|
| Charge for scheduled lessons; manage missed lessons through makeup credits or your cancellation policy | Calendar-Based Billing |
| Only charge for lessons the student actually attended, with no other billing for missed slots | Pay As You Go (PAYG) (guide coming soon) |
Makeup Lessons Are Always Excluded
One firm rule applies regardless of your policy: makeup lessons — lessons flagged in the system as replacements for a missed session — are never included in calendar-based invoice calculations. This is automatic. You do not need to remove them manually.
See Makeup Lessons and Billing for the full picture of how this works.
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