A pupil does not book a lesson, they hold an hour: the same tutor, the same slot, every week until the exam. Picktime offers only the tutors who teach that subject at that level, holds a room with every session at the centre, and on the paid plans books the whole run to the end of term in one action.
Blu TutorsBook online
GCSE maths1h · Room 2 · Paige$40.00
A-level physics1h · Room 1 · Sam$50.00
GCSE Spanish, online45m · VideoBook
Next free4:00 PM5:00 PM6:00 PM
Booked online
9:20 PM
Everybody here was teaching until eight
Invoice
$160.00
Four weeks, raised to the parent
Tutor and room
Both free
Or the hour is not offered
Every one of these is about the same arithmetic: who holds which hour with which tutor, and what happens the week that stops being true. A tutor working alone, whose week is filled one message at a time rather than by a timetable, wants the page on booking a single lesson at a time instead.
Each subject and level is attached to the tutors qualified for it, so a parent booking A-level physics is shown the two people who teach it rather than everybody on the staff list.
On the paid plans you book the run to the end of term and the pupil has that slot with that tutor throughout. Nobody rebooks weekly, nothing is lost over half term, and the week the hour changes it changes once.
A lesson in the building takes a room as well as a tutor, so two tutors cannot be given the same one at five o’clock. An online lesson generates its own video link with the booking instead.
The contact, the invoice and the confirmations belong to a parent. The record (the subject, the level, every session attended) belongs to the pupil, so both halves are where they should be.
A tutor who gives notice in February, or is ill for a fortnight, is not one gap. It is every pupil who holds an hour with them, all at once, and finding out which ones is usually somebody’s evening with a whiteboard. Picktime already knows: every held hour sits against the tutor who holds it, so closing their hours shows exactly what has to be rehoused, and the pupils affected can be moved onto another tutor who teaches that subject rather than onto whoever happens to be free at five.
Illness, a school trip, a match on a Wednesday. What kills a tutoring business is not the missed session, it is the family who cancel one week, never rebook and drift away by March. On the paid plans a reminder before every lesson carries the link to move it, so a pupil who cannot make Wednesday takes another slot rather than simply not coming, and the hour they gave up goes back on the page, where the family who have been asking after that tutor since September can take it for that week only.
Two minutes past five, and there are two tutors standing in the same doorway. The timetable is a whiteboard in the office that was correct on Friday, and since Friday one pupil moved to a Thursday, a new Year 11 was slotted in by whoever answered the phone, and nobody rubbed anything out.
The enquiry that came in at ten to five is also still sitting there, because everyone who could answer it is teaching until eight. It was a parent asking whether there is anything for GCSE Spanish, which there is, with the one tutor who teaches it.
Picktime takes the whiteboard off the wall. Each subject offers only the tutors who teach it, a room is held with every session in the building, and a pupil holds their hour as one booking that runs to the end of term.
List what you teach as separate services with their real lengths and prices, and attach each to the tutors qualified for it. Set everybody’s hours, including the ones who only work Wednesdays.
Put in the rooms at the centre so a session cannot be booked without one, and decide whether lessons are paid per session or invoiced to a parent, with an invoice raised from the booking record either way.
The booking page is a link, so it goes on your site behind a Book Now button, on the Google Business profile parents find when they search for tutoring near them, and in the email you send when somebody enquires.
A tutoring centre’s phone rings between four and eight, which is exactly when every tutor is in a room with a pupil and nobody is at the desk. Picktime’s AI receptionist answers around the clock on a number of its own, takes the caller through what they are asking about, captures their details and turns it into a booked session against the same availability the booking page uses, so it will not offer five o’clock on Tuesday with a tutor who is already holding it. It handles several calls at once, which is what the fortnight before mocks looks like, and hands over to a person when a parent needs one. Every call is transcribed into your dashboard, so the enquiry taken at ten to five is one somebody can read at half past eight and act on the same evening.
The free plan is a plan, not a trial. There is no date at which it stops, no card to add, and nothing that quietly turns off in a fortnight.
A lesson lands in the calendar each tutor already has open, and the paid plans sync it both ways, so a tutor who blocks out a Thursday in their own diary stops being bookable in yours. On the same plans online lessons get a Zoom or Google Meet link generated with the booking, and payments run through a provider you already use.
Picktime runs in a phone browser as well as on the machine in the office, and there are iOS and Android apps, so a tutor between two pupils can move next Wednesday without waiting for somebody at a desk to do it.
This page is the tuition business. Several tutors, several subjects, a room at five o’clock, and a pupil who holds the same hour with the same person until the exam. Two neighbouring pages take the questions it deliberately leaves out, and it is worth two minutes to land on the right one before you set an account up, because the thing each of them is built around is different.
If you sell the session rather than the term, read the tutoring scheduling app for booking a single lesson. It follows one hour all the way through: the parent who books it at twenty to nine on a Sunday, the pupil record it lands on, and what happens to that hour when a school trip hands it back on the Monday. It is the page for a tutor working alone, whose problem is eleven messages rather than a timetable.
If the school pays you rather than the parent, you want teacher scheduling software. A salaried teacher is not selling hours at all: what is bookable is a free period on Tuesday, twenty minutes after school, and one evening of ten-minute slots in November, and the hard part is that cover can take one of those away on the morning it was going to be used.
The one that thinks in held hours rather than in appointments, because that is what a pupil actually has. Picktime offers only the tutors who teach a subject and holds a room with every session at the centre, free for one tutor and with no card. Booking a whole term as one run is on the paid plans, and it is the thing worth paying for.
Picktime’s free plan covers a booking page of your own, email notifications when anything is booked or moved and a record for every pupil, with no end date and no card. The weekly hour booked as one run, reminders before a lesson and two-way calendar sync are on the paid plans, and so is a fourth tutor: three sit on the free plan.
Yes, and the thing to establish is whether you are being offered a plan or a trial, because the same word covers both. A trial has a date on it. Picktime’s free plan does not: no card, nothing that switches off in a fortnight, and the limits are on how many tutors and centres sit on the account rather than on how long you keep it. Read those limits before you build a term of lessons on top of them.
Yes, on the paid plans, and as one booking rather than something you rebuild every week. The run books once and holds that hour with that tutor to the date you set, so half term does not lose it and nobody rebooks on a Sunday.
Yes. Subjects and levels are attached to the tutors qualified for them, so a parent booking GCSE Spanish sees only the person who teaches it and never books forty-five minutes with somebody who was never going to take it.
Yes, and in the same calendar. A session in the building holds a room so two tutors are never given the same one, while an online lesson generates its own video link with the booking and carries it into the confirmation, and into the reminder on the paid plans.
Every hour they hold is already attached to them, so closing their hours shows exactly which pupils have to be moved, and each can be rehoused with another tutor who teaches that subject rather than with whoever happens to be free.
Yes. The contact, the confirmations and the invoice belong to whoever is paying (and the reminders too, on the paid plans), while the subject, the level and the sessions attended sit on the pupil’s own record.
It depends whether you teach in a school or sell your own hours. For parents’ evenings and office hours a sign-up sheet is nearer to what you want, and Doodle does that job better than any booking page will. For a teacher taking private pupils the test is whether a weekly hour books once rather than every week, which is what Picktime is built around. A school timetable is a third thing again, and nothing here will build one.
Whichever one attaches the joining link to the booking instead of leaving you to paste it into an email, because the pasted link is the one that reaches the wrong pupil. Picktime generates a link with the booking and carries it into the confirmation on the free plan. Naming a particular platform is where the plans divide: Jitsi Meet is the free connection, and Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams are on the paid plans. Setting work and holding resources belongs to a learning platform rather than to this.
Yes, Microsoft Bookings, on the business and enterprise plans that include it. It does well when everybody involved already has a Microsoft account and the thing being booked is one person’s time. Where it thins out for a tutoring business is the weekly run: the same hour with the same tutor to the end of term, with a room at the centre held alongside it. If you are already paying for Microsoft 365, try Bookings before you take our word for any of that.
Free periods Gaps in a timetable, catch-ups after school and an evening of ten-minute slots.
See teacher scheduling
Hours and tests Two-hour lessons booked in a run, with an instructor who is never at a desk.
See driving school scheduling
Terms and places Termly places in a room that only holds so many easels at once.
See art class schedulingFree forever for one tutor. No card, no trial clock, and the centre can be bookable before tonight’s first lesson.
Google Calendar
Outlook Calendar
Zoom
Google Meet
Stripe