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Family Portal Settings

These settings control the Family Portal -- the area where guardians and students log in to pay invoices and manage their own upcoming private lessons. To access them, go to Settings > Family Portal.

Everything on this page autosaves -- there's no separate save button.

Portal​

Enable the family portal turns portal login on or off for your whole school. It's on by default.

When turned off, families who try to log in see a message that the online portal isn't available, along with your school's contact information. This only blocks logins -- emailed invoice and payment-method links keep working either way, so families can still pay and update their card without the portal itself.

Self-Service​

Two toggles control whether families can manage their own private lessons from the portal, both on by default:

  • Allow rescheduling -- families can move their own upcoming private lessons to a new time
  • Allow cancellations -- families can cancel their own upcoming private lessons

Turning either off removes the corresponding button from the portal. Group classes are never included -- self-service only ever applies to private lessons.

Notice Required​

Reschedule notice and Cancellation notice set how much advance notice (in hours) a family needs before their lesson to make a change. Both default to 24 hours. Once a lesson falls inside the notice window, its Reschedule or Cancel button disables with a tooltip explaining why.

Booking Window​

Book up to [N] days ahead caps how far in advance a family can reschedule into. The default is 31 days -- families can't move a lesson to a date further out than that.

Frequency Limits​

Two counters cap how often a family can make changes, both 0 (no limit) by default:

  • Max reschedules per lesson -- how many times the same lesson can be rescheduled
  • Max changes per student, per period -- a combined cap on reschedules and cancellations for one student

Reset period determines how the per-student counter resets: Calendar month or Billing cycle.

When a Family Cancels​

Cancellation outcome decides what happens to a lesson a family cancels themselves:

  • Forfeit the lesson -- the lesson is simply cancelled with nothing owed back
  • Issue a make-up credit -- the student receives a make-up credit for the lesson, honoring their max make-up credit cap if one is set. Once a student is at their cap, cancellations forfeit instead, even with this option selected.

Notifications​

Notify staff of changes sends an email/notification to the lesson's instructor and an admin whenever a family reschedules or cancels through the portal. It's on by default -- turn it off if you'd rather staff check the calendar directly. When a cancellation issues a make-up credit, the Make-up Credit Issued notification (see Notification Preferences) is gated by this same toggle -- turning it off silences both notifications for portal cancellations.

Best Practices​

  • Keep notice periods realistic. 24 hours is a reasonable default, but tighten it if late reschedules disrupt your instructors' schedules.
  • Use frequency limits for chronic reschedulers. A per-student cap keeps one family's schedule changes from crowding out an instructor's availability.
  • Decide your cancellation policy before turning self-service on. Forfeiting vs. issuing a make-up credit is a real policy choice -- make it deliberately rather than leaving the default.
  • Leave staff notifications on unless your team checks the calendar frequently enough to catch changes on their own.