A season of lessons, from the sign-up to the last make-up
Lessons run the way clubs run them: a season, groups that meet the same hour every week with the same instructor on the same court, a price for the season, and a rule for what happens when it rains. The committee sets the frame, the instructors fill it, the pupils sign up from the club’s page, and everybody sees what they are owed and what they owe.
A season, groups, a register, rained-off lessons owed back, and the money ledger.
A season, not a calendar
The committee opens a season: its name, its dates, its price per pupil, and the rain rule. Inside it, a lesson group is a recurrence rather than an appointment: Tuesday at seven, an hour, on court two, with this instructor, from the first week to the last, for up to so many pupils at this price. Publishing the group writes every one of its lessons into the diary and takes the court for each of them.
Members sign up from the club’s lessons page, which lists every group with its weekday and hour, its level and ages, its instructor, the court, the places left and the price. The club asks its own questions on the way in: a level, a date of birth, a parent’s telephone, whatever the season’s form says.
A sign-up is a request until the instructor or the committee accepts it, and a full group has a waiting list. The price is frozen on the day somebody is accepted, so a change to the season’s price in March does not change what the people who signed up in January owe.
An instructor is appointed, and publishes only what they choose
The committee appoints an instructor, who need not be a member, and an instructor can never appoint themselves or anybody else. Appointed, they may plan their own groups, take their own register and keep their own pupils’ ledger, and may not touch anybody else’s, nor the club’s register, identity or groups.
Every instructor has a page on the club’s instructors page, and it is private until the instructor says otherwise: one switch for the page, and one each for the photograph, the words about themselves, the qualifications, the contact details and the groups they teach. Members message an instructor through the inbox they already have.
The instructor’s week
An instructor’s home is a week: today’s and this week’s lessons in time order, each with its court, its group and how many pupils, and after each one the single question that matters, what happened. Held, rained off, or I cancelled it; marking a lesson rained off writes a credit for every pupil in it in one act and says how many it wrote.
A group’s own page has the diary of the season with what happened to each lesson, the register with the names down the page and one lesson chosen at the top so that it works on a phone at the side of the court, and the money: per pupil, what is owed and what has been paid. Adding a group, editing it and cancelling it are on the same pages.
What a pupil sees
A pupil’s page answers the three questions in the order they are asked: when is my next lesson and where, what am I owed, and what do I owe. The next lesson comes with its date, hour, court and instructor and a way to message them; under it the rest of the season, each lesson carrying what happened once it is past.
Attendance is marked from both sides. The pupil says whether they were there, the instructor says whether they saw them, the instructor’s mark is the register and the pupil’s stays visible beside it. A register that silently overwrote what the pupil said would be a register pupils stop using.
A rained-off lesson is settled in lessons, not in money
When it rains, nobody has failed, and the lesson is not refunded: it is owed. The club says in advance whether every rained-off lesson is made up, every second one, or none, and caps the number per pupil per season. A lesson the instructor cancelled is different: the club failed to deliver, and it is made up one for one, outside the rule and outside the cap.
A pupil who did not turn up has had their lesson, and a make-up lesson that is itself rained off earns no second credit, or a season would never end. Every lesson that did not happen is recorded whatever the rule is, so a club that changes its rule halfway through a season loses no Tuesdays.
Make-up lessons are added by the instructor in the make-up weeks at the end of the season, on the group’s own weekday and hour where the court is free, and each one settles a credit.
What a pupil owes, and what the club pays for
Each pupil owes the price frozen on their registration, and the club writes down what arrived: a bank transfer, cash, or waived. The pupil’s page says what is left, the instructor’s page has the ledger of their own pupils, and the committee’s page has the two numbers it wants: how many pupils across the programme, and how much is still outstanding.
Online payment is not offered yet. The pupil’s page says the club will tell them how to pay, and the club’s ledger is kept by hand; when online payment arrives it will be a charge on the club’s own account, with the pupil paying the club by name and SetMatcher’s fee taken from it as it is on a tournament entry.
A club’s first 16 pupils are free, with everything on this page: the season, the groups, the register, the credits and the ledger. The seventeenth acceptance is the one thing the club needs SetMatcher Club for, at €39.00 a month, which also holds the booking sheet the lessons take their courts from.
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