Lesson Lineup

Guide for independent music teachers

How to handle last-minute lesson cancellations.

The 8am text is not the problem. The problem is deciding the fee for the eleventh time this term, under time pressure, with the parent waiting. Decide it once instead.

Give every absence a pre-decided answer

There are only so many ways a lesson fails to happen: cancelled in good time, cancelled on the morning, no-show, teacher-cancelled. Each one needs exactly two answers — is it billable, and does it issue a make-up credit? — and those answers should exist before the term starts, not be negotiated per text message. In Lesson Lineup each attendance status carries its own billable answer, so marking the register is applying the policy: pick the status that describes what happened and the money follows.

Trade refunds for make-up credits

A refund returns the money and ends the relationship for that week. A make-up credit keeps the revenue and gives the family a path back — a future lesson to book, use, or let expire. The statuses that should issue credits issue them on marking, and the ledger tracks each credit from issued to booked to consumed or expired, so "I think we still had one coming" is answered by arithmetic rather than memory.

The usual split: cancellations with enough notice earn a credit, late ones are charged without one, teacher cancellations are always made good. Your boundary hours will differ — the point is that they are written down somewhere the parent has seen.

The morning-of script

When the text arrives: mark the lesson with the matching status, and reply with the sentence your policy already contains — "that's inside the 24-hour window, so the lesson is charged; there's no make-up credit for this one." No deliberation, no apology tour, no 8am economics. Exceptions stay possible — the status is chosen per lesson, so a genuine emergency gets a different status — but an exception is visibly an exception, which is what keeps the rule a rule.

Questions

Should I charge for a lesson cancelled on the morning?

Whatever your policy says — the point is that the policy, not the morning, decides. Mark the lesson with that status and the charge follows the answer you set up once.

What is a make-up credit and when should I offer one?

A promise of a future lesson instead of a refund: it keeps the revenue and gives the family a path back. Offer it for cancellations with enough notice; charge without credit for late ones.

What about genuine emergencies?

The status is chosen per lesson at marking time, so the policy is the default, not a straitjacket — an exception is marked with a different status, and the ledger records what actually happened.

The paperwork this needs

None of the above works unless the parent has seen the policy before the cancellation. Both templates below are free, full text on the page, no signup: