Metered monthly billing: charge for lessons delivered, not hours promised

The traditional way to sell private tutoring is prepaid monthly hours: the family pays for the month upfront, and everyone hopes the month goes as planned. It rarely does. A student gets sick, a holiday lands mid-month, a teacher travels — and suddenly you're negotiating refunds, carrying hours over, or quietly absorbing the loss. The billing model itself creates the disputes.

Academies Hub replaces prepaid hours with metered monthly plans: the plan defines what a month covers, but students are billed for the lessons actually delivered. Nothing is owed for teaching that never happened.

A plan is a ceiling, not a prepayment

A metered plan sets a monthly session allowance — say, twelve lessons a month at a fixed rate per lesson. Each delivered lesson is charged at that rate as it happens, and the allowance caps how many sessions a month can be billed. A month with eight lessons produces a bill for eight lessons; there is no unused balance to argue about and no hours to carry over.

A billing month that matches each student

Billing doesn't run on a calendar month that treats a student who joined on the 28th like one who joined on the 1st. Each student's billing month starts on their own subscription date, in your academy's time zone, and renews on that same anniversary. Every period produces a clear statement of the lessons taken and the amount owed — so 'what am I paying for this month?' always has a precise answer.

Fair absence rules, built in

Absence handling is where most billing disputes are born, so the rules are explicit and enforced by the platform, not by memory. Teachers simply report the lesson outcome; the billing consequences follow on their own.

• Excused absences are forgiven — never billed, automatically
• Unexcused absences and no-shows are billed: the teacher showed up and the slot was reserved
• Lessons your academy cancels are never billed
• Complimentary (free) lessons are recorded without charging the student — and their value stays visible in your analytics

Change plans without spreadsheet math

Students' needs change mid-month — more sessions before an exam, fewer during travel season. On Academies Hub you switch the student's plan at any point in the cycle: the old plan closes with a prorated settlement, the new one starts immediately, and you choose whether the renewal date carries over or resets. No manual arithmetic, no 'we'll fix it next month'.

Everything lands in one financial ledger

Every lesson charge, payment, adjustment, refund, and write-off is a line in the student's account ledger — the same ledger that powers revenue analytics and payment approvals. When a parent questions a bill, you read the statement together instead of reconstructing the month from chat history.