Class Booking for Independent Teachers

The vertical decides the vocabulary, the questions asked at checkout, the inventory model, the door, the payout terms and the theme. This page says "place" and "class" because that is what a teacher says; a config whose primary call to action is generic ticketing wording fails validation rather than shipping.

The software wants a monthly fee before you have taught a single class

Studio platforms are priced for studios: a bill that arrives whether you taught four classes or forty, and keeps arriving through August when half your regulars are away and you are teaching two mats in a park. For a solo teacher that subscription is a real fraction of a term's takings, and the month it hurts most is always the month with the fewest people on the floor. The decision it quietly pushes you towards — keep taking cash, keep the list in your phone, keep the waivers in a tote bag — costs more than the subscription did, just less visibly.

What bindro does: Nothing is charged until somebody books. 2.5% + $0.99 per paid place, no monthly fee, no setup fee, no contract, no minimum, and a free taster class costs nothing at all. By default the student pays the booking fee, so a teacher can go from signing up to a full term without paying bindro anything up front at any point. Each class carries its own setting — the student pays, you absorb it, or you split it — and the fee itself does not change with the choice, only which side of the sale it comes from.

The pack money sitting in your account is not actually your money

January is a good month to sell ten-class packs, so you sell them, and the balance looks healthier than it has since last spring. What you have actually sold is thirty classes you still owe, and the term when everybody redeems them is a term with the hall hire going out and almost nothing coming in. A bank balance cannot tell you which half of itself you have already been paid for, and by the time the shortfall shows up the money has been spent on a room you had to book to keep the slot.

What bindro does: A class pack is prepaid attendance here, held as a liability rather than counted as income. The money sits on a class-pack liability account from the moment it is bought; nothing is credited to you and no platform fee is earned until a credit is punched against a class that actually ran. A 10-credit pack at $150.00 makes each credit worth $15.00 and carries $1.37 of fee at redemption rather than at purchase. It is the same rule as never paying anyone before delivery, seen from the other end — and it means your payout figure is money you have already earned by teaching.

The hall has no signal and the register is a website

Church halls, community centres, scout huts and park pavilions are where classes without a studio happen, and the thick-walled ones are the cheapest to hire. A register that needs a connection turns the two minutes before a class into a teacher standing at the door watching a spinner while twelve people wait to be told whether they can put a mat down — and it is the same two minutes in which somebody wants to tell you about their shoulder.

What bindro does: Offline check-in is a requirement for this vertical rather than an add-on, so it is designed into the data model instead of retrofitted. The device carries a signed manifest of who is booked, ticks people off with no network at all, and reconciles when signal returns. A name list is the primary method here rather than scanning, because reading a name off a phone is faster than asking twelve people standing on mats to find an email. Two things worth knowing anyway: an offline count is only as fresh as its last sync, and a place taken on a second device will not appear on the first until both have been back online.

Two people have been told they have the last mat

Bookings by direct message, a spreadsheet, three bank transfers and a regular who always just turns up is a system that works until the week it does not. Then two people have been promised the same place, and the conversation happens in front of the room, standing up, with the person who is least at fault. Everybody is gracious about it and one of them does not come back.

What bindro does: There is exactly one money path in bindro, and places move only under a row lock inside the transaction that confirms the booking — with a database constraint behind that as the backstop rather than as the mechanism. A place you took in cash and entered from the back office draws down the same inventory as one bought online at midnight, so the page and the room agree with each other. When a class does fill it says the class is full and offers a waitlist for that exact class, instead of quietly accepting one more booking.

The concession rate turns into something you have to police

Most teachers who want a lower rate for people who need one end up running it on trust: a price mentioned in a caption, a transfer for an amount somebody decided on, and a running total nobody keeps. It is generous and unmanageable at once. Worse, the students who most need the lower rate are the ones least willing to ask for it in a message, so the people it was built for are exactly the people it misses.

What bindro does: Publish a range on the place and the student chooses inside it at checkout, with nobody asked to explain themselves. The amount is checked against the published floor and ceiling inside the confirming transaction: an amount outside the range is refused with the range named, and a browser is never allowed to state a price bindro has not published. Pay-what-you-can is the same mechanism with the floor set to zero — there is no second feature to switch on, and no separate list to reconcile afterwards.

The waivers are a pile of paper in the bottom of a tote bag

Signed forms only matter on the day something happens, and that is precisely the day they have to be findable: this student, that class, that date, and the wording they actually agreed to. A carrier bag of paper, or a photograph of a clipboard taken in bad light, is not a record anyone can produce a year later under real pressure — and the insurer asking for it is not asking out of curiosity.

What bindro does: The physical-activity waiver is presented and signed as part of the booking, and the acceptance is written in the same transaction as the money: who signed, the name they typed as their electronic signature, a digest of the exact wording they agreed to, and a 36-month retention period. A student signs it once with you: their later bookings carry that acceptance forward and link to it rather than re-presenting the box. The edges are published rather than buried — another teacher, another email address, a reworded waiver or a lapsed retention asks for a signature again, and the first booking always does.

A class is a timed slot with a place count, not a door

Bindro models a class as timed-slot inventory: the class is the session, the session carries its own places, and a Tuesday at seven with twelve places is the unit of sale. Remaining places are live while booking is open and on the day-of screen, so a class that has gone says so rather than taking one more booking and leaving you to sort it out on the mat.

• Set the place count to the mats that fit the hall you actually hired, not the hall you wish you had.
• Each session in a term keeps its own count, so a busy Tuesday is not capped by a quiet Thursday.
• Students book a named session rather than a term in the abstract, which is why the register knows who is coming tonight.
• Places move only under a row lock inside the confirming transaction — two students cannot take the last one in the same second.

A whole term on sale in one evening

Describe the cadence once — Tuesdays at seven for eight weeks — and every session is generated with its own places in a single transaction. A series that half-created itself would sell places in dates that do not exist, so it is all or nothing. The cadence itself is stored rather than only the sessions it produced, which is what makes extending a term later a change to a rule instead of an archaeology exercise on a list of dates.

• One transaction per series: either the whole term exists or none of it does.
• Price tiers sit on the session, so an early-bird rate and a drop-in rate can run side by side.
• Extending or adding to a term re-uses the stored cadence rather than a copied list of dates.
• A one-off workshop is the same object with one session — there is no separate kind of thing to learn.

Class packs that behave like prepaid attendance

A pack is credits a student buys in advance and spends one at a time. The platform treats it as money you have not earned yet, which is unglamorous and is the entire point: it keeps the pack cash out of your balance until the teaching happens, so the number you get paid is a number you can spend.

• Between 2 and 100 credits, valid for 1 to 36 months, priced so the credits divide exactly — a 10-credit pack at $150.00 is $15.00 a credit, and a price that would strand a fraction of a penny is refused rather than published.
• The money is a liability until a credit is punched: not your balance, and not our fee, until a class has run.
• Credits are punched whole and only as many as a booking can absorb; where a class is worth more than a credit, the student spends the credit and pays the difference.
• An expired pack is refused at checkout rather than quietly absorbed — what to do for a student who lost track of one is your decision to make, and the platform will not make it for you.

A waitlist that reserves the place it promotes

When a class is full it says so and offers a waitlist for that exact class. When a place genuinely frees up, a worker promotes the front of the queue by putting a time-boxed hold on the place and emailing a link straight into checkout — so being promoted means the place is theirs to claim for the next 24 hours, rather than a race with everyone else who got the same message.

• A plain refund does not free a place: the place stays counted as sold, so a refund on its own promotes nobody. Worth knowing before you promise a waiting student otherwise.
• A cancellation inside a window you published with a share you keep DOES free the place — bindro keeps your share, returns the rest and puts the place back on sale in the same act, and the next sweep promotes on it.
• Otherwise the queue moves when an abandoned hold lapses, or when you raise the class size yourself.
• A full class with people waiting is the clearest evidence you will get that the next term should be bigger, or that there should be a second one.

A register that works in aeroplane mode

The door tooling here is one-handed, standing up, in bad light, with no signal — because that is the actual situation, not a degraded version of it. The device holds a signed manifest of who is booked and ticks names off against it offline; a code can be scanned where a student has one to hand, and a name can be found where they do not. A second tick of the same booking reads as a duplicate rather than a fresh admission, so the count stays honest however many times somebody hands you a phone.

• Name list first, scanning second: the fastest thing in a hall of twelve people is a list of twelve names.
• Everything reconciles when signal returns; nothing is lost by being out of coverage for an hour.
• The register shows the injuries a student declared, because you need it to teach safely — and that answer is classified as health data, so it is excluded from analytics exports and from AI context absolutely.
• A cover teacher can be given a door role that shows a name and whether the place is booked, and nothing about what anyone paid.

A link you can put in a bio, and a card that unfurls properly

Every class has a public page and a share address with a generated preview card, so a link pasted into a story, a bio or a community group unfurls with the class, the date and the price instead of a bare address. The card is a real image built from this vertical's own palette, and the share page is indexable and self-canonical, so a class can be found as well as sent. Every route out of it lands in the same checkout as every other way of booking.

• The class page is server-rendered and works with scripting off — a student on a bus with one bar can still book.
• The post-class email goes out after the class completes and is the best-read message you will send these people; the next term belongs in it.
• Your student list is yours: orders, students and attendance export as CSV whenever you want them, with what a student declared about an injury in the student file only, and the download itself audited.

Cash places, comps, refunds and an intro code that cannot overrun

The four controls a teacher reaches for in an ordinary month, all of them yours rather than a support request.

• Enter a place for someone who paid you in cash: same inventory, same order, same ledger, payment recorded as external. It cannot be refunded through bindro, because there is no card payment to reverse — cash you took is cash you hand back, and the attempt fails honestly rather than pretending.
• Comp a place for a trainee, a friend or a make-good after a cancelled class: it consumes a place and checks in normally, and writes no revenue at all, so your occupancy stays honest and your takings stay clean.
• Refunds run themselves — a student can refund from the link in their confirmation until the class starts, and a class you cancel stays refundable afterwards. The unwind order is fixed: your proceeds first, then tax, then our fee.
• An intro code carries a redemption cap enforced in the database rather than counted afterwards, so a code meant for the first twenty new students cannot quietly reach eighty when a post does better than expected.

Who pays the booking fee?

The student, unless you say otherwise. Every class carries its own setting — the student pays, you absorb it, or you split it — and the fee itself does not change with the choice, only which side of the sale it comes from. On a ten-place $25.00 class that is $16.20 either added to what students pay or taken out of what you keep.

Because the default is the student, a teacher can go from signing up to a sold-out class without paying bindro anything up front, at any point, ever. We are paid out of sales that happened or we are not paid.

The word "event" is load-bearing and worth reading twice. The scheduler groups by class, admits one only once its LAST session has ended, and pays it once. A class sold as a run of dates therefore pays after the final date, not after each one — a season's float is not something an operator should discover halfway through the season.

Bindro never pays before delivery, in any vertical. A pre-event advance is a configuration violation platform-wide rather than a policy someone can be talked out of, because paying out on classes that have not happened is exactly how a cancellation becomes students with no refund. "Paid" also means the money moved: a payout only reaches its paid state with a real transfer reference attached, enforced by the database rather than by a status field someone can set.

• One payout per class, after its last session ends, one in flight at a time.
• T+2 for this vertical (low risk tier), no reserve.
• Refunds reverse in a fixed order — your proceeds first, then tax, then our fee — so a refund never leaves you charged for a sale that was undone.
• Sales tax, where it applies, is held as a liability rather than mixed into your balance, so the payout figure is proceeds rather than a number you still have to do subtraction on.

The three numbers underneath it are pack utilisation, pack expiry rate and student churn. Pack utilisation is the honest one: credits sold against credits actually spent, which tells you whether packs are filling classes or just moving money forward. Expiry rate is its uncomfortable twin — a pack that expires unspent is income you keep and a student you have probably lost, and a high rate is a warning rather than a windfall. Churn is the slowest to move and the one that decides whether the timetable grows.

The console computes occupancy — places sold against capacity on sale — and prints both numbers under it, so it is checkable rather than asserted. Around it sit the inputs: places sold against students checked in with a no-show percentage per session, live remaining capacity while booking is open, and gross, fees and refunds per class read from the ledger the payouts reconcile against. Orders and students export as CSV, and every figure came off the money path rather than out of a form somebody filled in afterwards.

What the console shows today, without an integration or a spreadsheet:

• Gross, platform fees and refunds per class, read from the ledger the payouts reconcile against.
• Places sold against students checked in, with a no-show percentage per session.
• Live remaining capacity while the class is running, per pool, on the day-of screen.
• This teacher's own funnel — view → class selected → paid or pack redeemed → attended → rebooked — stage by stage with the drop-off between them, and any step the platform cannot see said so rather than shown as a zero.
• Refunds, transfers, turnout, no-shows, add-on attach and repeat buyers, each printed with the two numbers it was divided from.
• Orders and students as CSV, so anything not on the screen is one export away.

Two more that are worth stating plainly. Sensitive answers are classified on the field rather than by convention, and health data is excluded from analytics exports and from AI context absolutely, with no override in any vertical. And a teacher's own people see only what their role allows — a door login sees a name and whether the code admits, not what anyone paid — which is checked in the handler rather than by hiding a button.

• Monthly memberships and recurring billing — subscription billing is optional for teachers and is not resolved. Payouts settle per delivered class, so a membership charge would credit a balance the payout engine could never release. Subscription appears in this vertical's pricing models and is deliberately not sold.
• Signing the waiver once and never again, anywhere — a signature carries forward within ONE teacher's bookings, for the same email address and the same wording, while the acceptance is still retained. A different teacher, a different address or a reworded waiver presents the box again, and the first booking always does.
• Moving a student to a different date — deferral is not a capability this vertical declares. A student who cannot make it refunds and rebooks; there is no "move my place" button.
• Handing a place to a friend — ticket transfer is optional for teachers and is not turned on, so a direct call is refused rather than silently ignored.
• Gift vouchers — gift cards are optional here and not resolved. A class pack is the only prepaid product a teacher can sell.
• Taking a card at the door — door POS is optional for teachers and is not turned on. A walk-in books on their phone through the same checkout, or the teacher records the place and the cash from the back office.
• Selling mats, props or merchandise alongside a place — add-ons are optional for teachers and not resolved.
• Teaching under-18s — minor consent is not declared for this vertical, so there is no guardian countersign and no under-18 gate on the money path. These classes are configured for adults.
• Verified member pricing — nothing checks a student against a membership roster here, so a "members pay less" tier cannot be enforced. Sliding scale is the mechanism teachers use instead.
• Instalments, invoices and purchase orders — not declared for teachers; a place is paid for in full at checkout or with a pack credit.
• Collecting documents — there is no file upload here, so insurance certificates and teaching qualifications stay wherever they live now.
• Being your studio management system — bindro sells places, takes the register and pays you. It does not run a room rota, staff payroll, a video library or a branded student app.

If one of those is the thing you need, say so — the answer is a capability declared, built and gated properly, or a straight no. It is never a feature flag that collects the request and does nothing.

Sell the term, not the class. Generating eight Tuesdays in one gesture costs you one evening and gives a student the whole term to look at, which is the difference between a regular and a person who books when they remember. Publish the pack alongside it: a pack is the reason somebody looks at your timetable in February without you having posted anything.

On the night, the register is the only tool you need and it does not need signal. Names come up in the order they will be standing in front of you, the injuries somebody declared are there because you need them to teach safely, and a walk-in who paid you in cash goes on the same list from the back office rather than into a note you will not find later.

Afterwards it is two numbers and an email. Occupancy tells you whether the slot is working; pack utilisation tells you whether the packs are. The post-class message goes out on its own. Then the money: one payout per class, two days after it ends, no reserve held in this vertical — and never before, because paying out on a class that has not happened is how a cancelled term becomes students with no refund.

• Generate the term from a cadence, in one evening, before the first week.
• Set the place count to the mats that fit; let the waitlist prove the room is too small.
• Take the register offline; assume the hall has no signal, because it usually does not.
• Read occupancy and pack utilisation weekly; export the student list whenever you want it.

The mechanism is worth understanding, because it explains why this is a refusal rather than a roadmap item. Payouts group by class and admit one only once its last session has ended; money that does not belong to a delivered class has nothing to settle against, so it would sit in a balance with no route out. Taking a monthly payment we could not pay out would be the platform holding a teacher's money indefinitely while the status page said everything was fine, so the capability is off and the call is refused with a hard error rather than a silent no-op that loses the request.

A class pack gets you most of the way there and behaves better for the student. Ten credits is a term of attendance bought in advance, without the did-I-cancel-in-time anxiety a membership carries, and without the month in which somebody pays for four classes they did not attend and then resents you for it. It also gives you the number this vertical is actually scored on beside occupancy: how much of what was sold got used.

The same honesty applies to the rest of the list. Deferrals, transfers to a friend, gift vouchers, taking a card at the door and selling mats alongside a place are all configured as optional for teachers and none of them is resolved, so each one is refused at the call rather than half-working. They are published in full further down this page, on the reasoning that a gap found here costs us a signup and a gap found after you migrate costs you a term.

Momence and Punchpass are built around a studio — a room rota, staff, memberships, in one case a video library and an app with your name on it. If you have that, or want it, they do things bindro does not and is not building, and the honest recommendation is to use them. What a teacher with no studio buys in that case is a recurring commitment sized for a business with a lease. Check their current pricing yourself rather than taking a figure off a page we wrote; the comparisons name what each one is good at and carry the date they were last reviewed.

Eventbrite is the opposite problem. It will sell places in a class perfectly well and it is the tool most teachers already know, but a class pack is not a ticket and it does not model one: prepaid credits spent across future dates, held as a liability until they are redeemed, are the whole economic shape of this trade and a general ticketing platform has no reason to carry it. The same goes for a sliding scale enforced at the money path and a register that expects no signal.

The case for bindro is narrow on purpose. If you teach a handful of classes a week out of hired halls, sell packs, want a concession rate you do not have to administer, and refuse to pay a monthly fee through a quiet August, this is built for exactly that. If you run a studio with staff and a room rota, it is not, and you should read the comparisons to see why rather than take our word for it.

The booking form already asks for a phone number, presents the physical-activity waiver for signature, offers an optional free-text box for injuries or conditions you should know about, and asks how much experience the student has. The injuries answer is declared as health data on the field itself, and that declaration does the work: encrypted, kept out of analytics exports, redacted in logs, excluded from AI context absolutely in every vertical with no override, and anonymised by the retention sweep well before ordinary contact details are. It is not a setting anybody can forget to tick.

The vocabulary is configuration too. This page says class, place, student and teacher because that is what a teacher says; a vertical whose primary call to action is generic ticketing wording fails config validation rather than shipping. The theme, the questions, the check-in method and the payout tier come from the same file, which is why none of this looks like a general ticketing product with a yoga photograph on the front.