This article is intended for Music Tutors who are Staff users with Extra Staff User Access Options and can create and edit their own tuition Sessions. Please note that only Admin users can create Attendance Flags.

Tuition Sessions need to be created in advance. Depending on how music tuition scheduling works in your school, these Sessions may need to be created for a set number of weeks, or they can be created on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis. Check out our helpful article on Creating Sessions for Individual Students.

If a student has the same tutoring Session time each week, creating the Sessions as a series is quicker and more efficient. That way, they can be easily created to run for a set number of weeks or until a specific end date, and the Sessions can be edited together instead of individually.

If a student has different tuition Session times each week, then the spreadsheet creation method is advised, as you can create Sessions with different times and days for each student.

The Rotating Schedules feature can also be used when a series of Sessions are created at a different time or day each week. Students, especially those participating in the Music Department, may typically have music lessons at different times every week to fit in with their academic timetable. This feature automates the process at the start of each term to make it easier for you to schedule tutoring sessions when you are available.

Creating Sessions retroactively or editing and moving the Session to a future date after it has been held is not advised, as it will cause problems with attendance records and adding hours to your Timesheets. For example, if the roll has been marked for a Session which is then moved, the marked roll will reflect the original date's attendance, and if it has already been added to a past Timesheet, an option to add these hours to a Timesheet will not appear, as the Session has already been logged in a previous Timesheet.

Sessions should only be edited before they are scheduled to occur. For example, if you need to change the location, date, or time of a Session.

If you have scheduled your Sessions to be part of a series, then check out these help articles on Editing a Single Session within a Series and Editing Multiple Sessions within a Series. If your Session is not part of a series, you will need to edit it individually.

Editing sessions after they have occurred is not advised, as this will cause issues with attendance and timesheets. For example, editing a Session and changing which student attended after the roll has been marked will cause inaccuracies in the attendance record. This is because the original student’s attendance will be attached to the Session, not the new student. This will also result in inaccurate billing of tuition Sessions for parents, as the student assigned to the Session and the attendance record will not match.

If a student gives sufficient notice that they can’t make a Session, it is best to cancel the Session and create a new Session to reschedule their tuition lesson. The cancelled Session will remain in your schedule, just greyed out, and you can always un-cancel the Session if the student can later make it. Check out our help article on Cancelling Sessions.

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However, depending on your school’s policy, if the student doesn't give sufficient notice of their absence or doesn't show up to your lesson, you may be required not to cancel the Session, but instead to mark attendance as the parents will still be charged. So, instead of cancelling, you can mark the student as absent or unexplained and use an Attendance Flag of Charged or Without Notice. This will record that the student was absent, but still should be charged for the lesson as insufficient notice, or none at all was provided.
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If a student does not show up due to a school event, then you can mark the student as absent or unexplained with the Attendance Flags of Not Charged and School Event. This will record that the student was absent due to school commitments and the parents should not be charged for the missed lesson.

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Check out our help article for examples of How to use Attendance Flags and Exports to determine Session costs for students.

Unlike cancelling, deleting Sessions is not reversible, and permanently removes the Session from both the student's and your schedules, and deletes the attendance recorded for that Session.
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If the Session or Sessions you wish to delete are part of a series, then check out these help articles on Deleting a Single Session within a Series and Deleting a Series of Sessions. If your Session is not part of a series, you will need to delete them individually.

Sometimes rolls can be marked incorrectly. A common reason that this happens is confusion over whether attendance is recorded as Present or Absent by Default, meaning when marking a roll you are required to mark students as present (as the default shows them as absent) or absent (because the default shows them as being present). Whether a roll is set to be marked as present or absent by default is determined in the settings of an Activity, so all rolls within that Activity will be marked according to that setting. If you work across multiple Activities and mark rolls for them, you will need to check which setting each Activity uses.

As a Staff user, you have up to one week after the Session has ended to Update a Roll. After this, you will need to contact your Manager to update the roll for you if it is incorrect.

Groups and Teams are interchangeable terms in Clipboard.

Creating a Group with the individual students you tutor in a particular instrument is helpful, especially when it comes to being able to bulk email your students and their parents or guardians. As a Staff user, you will need to ask your Manager to create a Group for you!

However, it is not advisable to add the Group to a Session where an individual student is being tutored, as this will generate a roll for this Session that includes the entire group and not the specific student. Consequently, it will then prompt this roll to be marked, resulting in inaccurate attendance records as multiple students are shown to have absences for Sessions they were never attending.

Check out our article on Creating a Group for Tuition Students.

Note: Timesheets is an additional module that may not be included in your current subscription.

You can choose whether to add hours to your Timesheet after every Session you have worked, at the end of each day, or at the end of the Pay Cycle. It is important to check that you have no unclaimed hours left to log on your Timesheets (signified by an orange alert symbol) as these won't be approved, signed off and processed, meaning you will miss out on being paid for them. Check out our help article to learn more about Adding Hours to a Timesheet. If you work Sessions outside of your Schedule, for example, if you are covering for a sick colleague, you can follow this helpful article for Adding Hours for a Session not in the Schedule.

Attendance is not linked to your Timesheet, so make sure you add hours to your Timesheet after marking the roll, too!

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Check out the video below to see how music tuition works in Clipboard!