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Tutoring platform development

For owners of tutoring agencies and tuition centres who need tutor matching, lesson booking, packs and billing, lesson notes and tutor payouts designed around how their agency actually places and pays tutors rather than a generic appointment tool.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A tutoring agency sits between three parties who all want something different: parents who want the right tutor and proof that lessons are happening, tutors who want a full diary and prompt payment, and the agency itself, which carries the risk of unpaid packs and missed lessons.

  • Most agencies run this on a shared calendar, a messaging app, a spreadsheet of tutors with subjects and levels, and an invoicing app that knows nothing about lessons.
  • A parent buys a ten-lesson pack by bank transfer; the agency notes it in the spreadsheet; the tutor delivers eleven lessons before anyone notices the pack ran out.

Where it gets harder

Matching is done from memory.

  • The owner knows that one tutor is good with anxious GCSE maths students and another will only travel within two postcodes, but that knowledge is nowhere a coordinator can see.
  • Lesson notes come back as a text message to the parent, if at all, so when a parent asks what has been covered this term there is no answer.
  • At month end the owner builds payout statements for thirty tutors by hand, reconciling each lesson against what the parent paid and the agency's share.
  • Safeguarding check dates sit in a folder, and nobody is alerted when one is due for renewal.
  • A tutor who leaves takes the relationship with them because the agency never held the lesson history.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom tutoring platform build normally covers:

  • Tutor profiles with subjects Levels, teaching modes and travel areas, plus internal notes only coordinators see
  • A matching view Where a coordinator filters tutors against a student's subject, level, availability and location
  • Tutor availability and lesson booking in online or in-person mode With the video link or the address attached
  • Lesson packs and hourly billing Where a pack is bought up front and each delivered lesson redeems one credit, or lessons are billed per hour at the end of a period
  • Lesson notes and homework recorded By the tutor after each lesson and shared with the parent
  • Parent accounts linked to one or more students With the student seeing their own lessons and homework
  • Tutor payout statements That reconcile delivered lessons against the agency share
  • A safeguarding record per tutor holding check type Date and status, with renewal reminders

We begin by following three placements: a new family enquiring for a GCSE student, an existing family adding a second child, and a tutor joining the agency. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: enquire, match, trial lesson, book, deliver with notes, bill or redeem, pay out, and renew checks.

Deliberately out of scope

  • The agency's accounts ledger, contracts of employment or self-employment with tutors, and any claim about a tutor's suitability beyond what the agency records. The platform records the status of checks the agency has carried out
  • It does not perform them

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

An agency with sixty contracted tutors across three cities wants coordinators to match by travel area and availability, parents to buy packs that expire after a term, tutors to be paid on a different share depending on whether the agency or the tutor found the family, and safeguarding renewals to block bookings when overdue. The variable share and the booking block are what make it a custom project.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from following three placements through the agency
  • A scope document naming each stage from enquiry to payout and what is out of scope
  • Design of the matching view, the tutor diary, the lesson note and the parent view on phones first
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours, with role permissions and a log of who viewed each student record
  • Migration of tutors, families, open packs and lesson history from spreadsheets and the current tools, where relevant
  • Training for coordinators, tutors and the owner, with a written guide per role
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the tutor spreadsheet, the shared calendar, the invoicing app and the messaging history that holds lesson notes, with a named coordinator as contact.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Placement walk-throughs with the owner, a coordinator and two tutors; the scope document and milestone plan are agreed.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the matching view, the tutor diary, the lesson note form and the parent account, reviewed on the phones tutors and parents use.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: tutor profiles and matching first, then availability and booking, then packs and billing, then lesson notes and parent accounts, then payouts and safeguarding renewals.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    The agency runs a test month on sample families and tutors, including a pack running out, a cancelled lesson and a month-end payout run.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Changes from the review, particularly to share rules, cancellation handling and note templates, are made and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Tutors, families and open packs migrated and balances agreed, tutors invited in waves, launch timed at the start of a billing period.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The agency runs on the new platform; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Card payment providers for packs, hourly billing and parent top-ups
  • Video meeting tools that generate a lesson link for online lessons
  • Calendar feeds so tutors see lessons on their own devices
  • SMS and email providers for lesson reminders and note notifications
  • Accounting software for payout statements and agency revenue
  • Background-check providers where they offer a status interface, assessed per provider

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A sixty-tutor agency with variable payout shares

In this scoping scenario, an agency contracting sixty tutors across three cities wanted coordinators to match by subject, level, travel area and availability in one screen, parents to buy packs that expired at the end of a term, and tutors to be paid a different share depending on whether the family was introduced by the agency or brought in by the tutor. Overdue safeguarding renewals needed to prevent new bookings for that tutor until the record was updated.

The scope we would propose: a matching view with travel-area polygons and availability overlay, packs with expiry rules and expiry warnings to parents, a share rule per tutor-family relationship feeding the month-end payout statement, and a renewal status on each tutor that gates booking. The reason this needs a custom build is the share rule: appointment tools treat payout as one percentage per staff member, which is precisely the simplification this agency could not live with.

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of tutors, coordinators and active families
  • Online, in-person or both, and whether travel areas drive matching
  • Packs, hourly billing or both, and the expiry and refund rules
  • Payout share rules and how statements are reconciled
  • Parent and student account model, including families with several children
  • Safeguarding record fields, renewal reminders and booking gates
  • Volume of tutor, family, pack and lesson history to migrate
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Tutoring platform package

Tutor profiles, availability and lesson booking in online or in-person mode, lesson packs and hourly billing, lesson notes for parents, parent and student accounts, and tutor payout statements for agencies and tuition centres.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

When is a custom build better than the package?

When your matching, pack or payout rules break the assumptions of the tutoring platform package. During discovery we lay your three placements against the package and say plainly whether configuration covers them or whether, for example, your variable share rules need custom work.

How is this different from a tutor marketplace?

This build is for an agency with its own vetted tutor pool, where coordinators match and the agency bills and pays. An open marketplace where tutors register themselves and families choose is a different product with different trust and payment flows, covered by our tutor matching platform work.

Does the platform carry out safeguarding checks?

No. It records the type, date and status of checks the agency has carried out through its own processes, reminds the agency before renewal and can prevent bookings when a record is overdue. Responsibility for the checks themselves and for safeguarding policy stays with the agency.

Who can see a student's lesson notes?

The tutor who wrote them, the parents linked to that student, the student where the agency enables student accounts, and coordinators. Every view of a student record is logged, and access ends when a tutor is removed from a family.

Who owns the platform afterwards?

The agency does. Source code and data, including the lesson history that used to leave with the tutor, are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional, separately agreed and movable to another provider.

Get a project quote for tutoring platform software

Answer a few questions about your business, your current systems and what should change. We reply with a clear, competitive proposal.

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