Academy attendance and fees: how to connect the register to the fee book

In many academies the register and the fee book are kept by different people. The coach marks who came to training. Someone at the front desk records who paid. The two lists meet once a month, if at all, when the owner asks why income dropped. Linking them takes a fee pattern for each course and a short weekly habit, and software can do most of the counting. This article shows how, using a sports academy as the example.

Alderbrook Sports Academy is fictional. It teaches swimming and football to children aged 5 to 14 at two sites, a pool and a set of pitches. For example, it has 180 learners in 16 training groups, a monthly fee for regular training and a two-week holiday camp paid once.

What the register tells you about money

Attendance is the earliest warning you get that a family is about to leave. Learners rarely stop paying first. They miss a session, then another, and at the end of the month the parent decides it is not worth continuing. If you notice the second missed session, there is still time to call and find out what changed. If you only notice the unpaid fee, the family has usually decided already.

The link runs the other way as well. A family that has not paid for two months but still brings their child every week needs a different conversation from one whose child has stopped coming. The first is usually about cash or a forgotten payment. The second is about the class itself or the time slot, and a reminder about money will not fix it.

Choose one fee pattern per course

Mixing patterns inside one course is a common cause of fee disputes. Pick one pattern per course, write it down and tell families when they join. Alderbrook's choices look like this, with example amounts in your currency:

What Alderbrook runs	Fee pattern	Example amount
Weekly swimming lessons, all year	Monthly	45 a month
Football training, three sessions a week	Monthly	60 a month
Holiday swim camp, two weeks	Course fee, paid once	120
Registration on joining	One-off	25
Kit	One-off	30

Avoid charging per session attended for regular groups. It sounds fair, but it turns every missed session into lost income and every register mistake into an argument. A monthly fee pays for a place in the group, and the place is held whether or not the learner comes that week.

Decide as well what happens when someone joins partway through a month. Alderbrook takes the registration and kit fees on joining, and anyone who joins in the last ten days of a month starts paying the monthly fee from the 1st. The rule is simple to explain at the front desk, and families who join late in the month get a few free sessions to settle in.

A weekly routine that catches drop-offs

Pick a day and a person. At Alderbrook the office manager does it every Monday morning, and for 16 groups it takes, for example, about twenty minutes.

1. Look at last week's attendance for each group and list every learner absent from two sessions in a row.
2. Next to each name, note whether the family is up to date with fees.
3. Call the families on the list. Ask about the child first, such as an injury or a clash with school, and leave money for later in the call if it comes up at all.
4. Write what you learned on the learner's record, with the date.
5. Pass anyone absent for three weeks to the owner, who decides whether to offer a different group or close the place.

In a typical week Alderbrook's list might have nine names. Most turn out to be holidays or a cold. One or two are real problems, and those families get a call from the head coach as well.

Late payers, handled the same way every month

Most late payment is forgetting, and a clear routine fixes most of it. Set one due day for monthly fees and print it on every invoice. Give families a voucher with your bank details so paying by transfer needs no phone call. Issue a receipt for every payment, including cash, so that "I paid already" can be checked in a minute.

For families who struggle, agree a concession or a payment plan in writing and have it approved by whoever owns the money. Informal "pay when you can" deals are the ones nobody remembers six months later. Sibling discounts belong in the same place. Make them a written rule and apply it to every family who qualifies.

Missed sessions and refunds

Write a short policy and give it to families when they join. Alderbrook's fits on one card:

• The monthly fee holds the learner's place in the group.
• A missed session can be made up in another group the same month if there is room.
• A medical absence of more than two weeks pauses the fee until the learner returns.
• Holiday camp fees are refunded only before the second day of the camp.

Your rules may be different. Whatever they are, the front desk should give the same answer to every family, and the owner should not make exceptions in the car park.

What SkoolBro does for you here

SkoolBro keeps the register and the fee book in one place. It uses school words, so each training group is a section and each sport is a subject. Groups that pay the same monthly fee sit under one grade, because fee structures are set per grade. Alderbrook gives Swimming and Football a grade each, with its own fee structure, and sets up the holiday camp as a grade of its own with a fee charged once. Its two sites are campuses.

Coaches mark attendance per group on a phone. If the signal drops at the pool, the register saves offline and goes through once the phone is back online. Parents of anyone marked absent hear about it that day, by email and through the app. The attendance report shows each day by grade, so the Monday routine starts from one screen.

On the fee side, you set up fee heads (swimming, football, registration, kit) and fee structures that are charged monthly or once. SkoolBro creates the month's invoices from them, with approved concessions such as sibling discounts already taken off. Each invoice has a printable voucher with your bank details. The front desk records each payment with its method, whether that is cash, a bank transfer, a card, a mobile wallet or a cheque, and SkoolBro issues a receipt for it. Adjustments handle one-off corrections to a family's account, and the fees by month report shows what was billed and what was collected each month.

You can also ask the AI assistant questions such as "Which learners at the pool missed two sessions this week?" or "Which families still owe October's fee?" It reads your records and cannot change them. There is more on that in AI for academy owners.

A few parts stay manual for now. Online fee payment by parents is not part of SkoolBro yet. Each new invoice triggers an email and an in-app notice to parents showing what is due and by when. The printable voucher stays with you to print or hand over, and chasing overdue fees is still your call. Absence notices and announcements travel by email and in the app, and text messages and WhatsApp will come later. The phone calls in the weekly routine stay with your staff. If you are still deciding how to set up the academy as a whole, start with what to set up first, and for many small fee-paying batches see tuition fee collection.

Questions

Should parents pay for sessions their child missed?

Decide once and write it down. Many academies treat the monthly fee as payment for a place and offer make-up sessions, while short courses paid once have a cut-off for refunds. The front desk should then give every family the same answer.

Do parents hear from SkoolBro when their child misses a session?

Yes. When an instructor marks a learner absent, the parents get a notice the same day by email and in the app.

Can SkoolBro send fee reminders by text message or WhatsApp?

Not yet. Notices go by email and in the app today, and text messages and WhatsApp are coming. Each invoice has a printable voucher with your bank details for families who pay by transfer.

How do I set up a sibling discount?

Set it up as a concession. A concession needs approval before it applies, and once approved it is taken off that learner's invoices.