33 terms you will meet in contracts, software demos, and parent emails, each explained the way you would across a kitchen table. Every entry has its own anchor, so you can link a colleague straight to a definition.
The two ways a US business can classify the people it pays: independent contractors (who get a 1099 form) or employees (who get a W-2). The choice is a legal test about control and independence, not a preference, and misclassifying tutors is one of the most expensive mistakes a tutoring business can make.
A payment pulled directly from a bank account instead of charged to a card. It clears in days rather than seconds, but it is much cheaper: Stripe's ACH rate is 0.8% capped at $5 per transaction, versus roughly 3% uncapped for cards, which is real money on a $1,500 package.
Charging a family's saved payment method automatically when an installment or renewal comes due, instead of chasing them for it. Good autopay runs on a schedule, retries failed charges safely, and knows that a bank debit needs days to clear before it counts as paid.
The recurring windows when an educator can actually be booked, as opposed to their calendar of booked sessions. Availability is what a booking system checks before offering a slot to a parent, and keeping it current is what prevents the double-booked Tuesday.
Customer relationship management: the system of record for every family you are talking to, from first inquiry to enrolled student. For a tutoring business it is the answer to "who called last week, what did we say, and who was supposed to follow up?"
The named stages a prospective family moves through on the way to becoming a client, such as inquiry, consult scheduled, trial session, enrolled. Seeing every lead laid out by stage tells you where prospects stall and what this month's enrollments will look like.
A single group class visit paid for on its own, without buying a package or committing to the full series. Drop-in pricing lets a hesitant family try a class once, which is often how package buyers start.
A state-run school choice account that holds public education money a family can direct to approved uses, and tutoring is commonly one of them. Getting that money requires becoming an approved vendor with each state program and invoicing through its disbursement platform. Not the same thing as a Coverdell ESA from a bank.
Adding a student to a group class or program. Enrollment can be open to anyone, by invitation only, or restricted to families who hold a package, and which of those a class uses changes how you market it.
Treating the family, not the individual student, as the unit that owns payments, packages, and history. When the account is the family, two siblings can draw from one purchase and one saved card, and nobody has to reconstruct which child's invoice covered what.
Software pricing that takes a fixed percentage of the revenue you collect instead of a monthly subscription. You pay nothing in slow months and more in strong ones, and there is no per-tutor charge to think about before hiring. Gigpie charges a flat 2% of collections.
One session, several students, one educator. Group classes have a capacity, their own pricing (per seat or per package hour), and an enrollment list, which makes them a different scheduling object from a one-on-one session, not just a bigger one.
The running count of hours remaining on a family's package. Every completed session deducts from it, and the most common email a tutoring business gets is some version of a parent asking what that number currently is. A visible, always-current balance makes the question answer itself.
Splitting one package purchase into several scheduled payments with their own due dates. The family gets a manageable monthly number, you get the full commitment up front, and the system's job is tracking which installments are paid, due, or overdue without a spreadsheet.
The questionnaire a family completes when they start: student details, goals, availability, and anything an educator should know before the first session. Sending it automatically after purchase, rather than by remembering to, is the difference between forms that come back and forms that don't.
A cancellation inside the window where you can no longer fill the slot, commonly 24 hours. Most businesses treat it like a used session because the educator's time is already spent. Whatever your window is, it only works if it is written down and enforced the same way for everyone.
A family that has shown interest but not yet enrolled: a form fill, a phone call, a text to your business number. Leads are where revenue starts, and the operational question is always the same: does every one get a fast reply and a next step, or do some quietly evaporate?
A replacement session offered when the original was cancelled under whatever policy you set. Makeups are goodwill with a cost: every one is educator time you pay for again, so a clear policy on who qualifies matters more than generosity in the moment.
Moving your business data (families, students, schedules, packages, payment history) from one platform to another. It is the single biggest reason owners stay on software they have outgrown, and the first thing to check is what your current tool lets you export.
The written rules for what happens when someone misses a session without cancelling. The detail that matters is who absorbs the cost: in Gigpie, a student no-show still uses the family's package hour and still pays the educator, while an educator no-show reverses both.
A scheduled session that does not yet have an educator assigned, published to a claim list where qualified educators pick it up. It turns coverage scrambles (a resignation, a sick week, a new enrollment surge) into something the team resolves without a group text thread.
A block of prepaid session hours sold at once, such as 20 hours of algebra tutoring. Packages smooth your cash flow and commit the family, in exchange for the obligation to track a balance honestly and deliver every hour that was paid for.
A logged-in page where parents book sessions, see the schedule, check their hour balance, and pay, without emailing you for any of it. Every question a portal answers on its own is one you do not answer by hand at 9pm.
A file summarizing what each educator earned over a pay period, generated from delivered sessions and rates, formatted for your payroll processor. In Gigpie this is a CSV handoff (including a Justworks timecard format); the platform computes the numbers and your processor moves the money.
Software pricing that charges per tutor, educator, or admin account each month. It is predictable, but it quietly taxes growth: hiring your ninth tutor raises your software bill before that tutor has taught an hour. The alternative models are flat monthly fees and percentage-of-revenue.
What your management software keeps from the payments it processes for you. Gigpie's is a flat 2% of what you collect, with no monthly subscription and no per-seat charges, so the fee is zero until real revenue moves.
The educator's written record of what happened in a session: what was covered, how the student did, what comes next. Notes parents can actually read are retention insurance, because a family that can see progress has a reason to keep paying for it.
A standing appointment created once and repeated on a rule, such as every Tuesday and Thursday at 4pm until June. A real series can be edited as a whole or as single occurrences, which is what separates it from forty sessions pasted in by hand.
Permission from families (and where required, from students) before an online session is recorded. Recording laws differ by state, and some require every participant to agree, so businesses that record collect consent in writing at enrollment rather than assuming.
One package's hours available to every student in the family: buy 20 hours, and either sibling's session draws from the same pool. It matches how parents already think about the money, and it eliminates the end-of-term puzzle of two children's leftover half-packages.
Stripe's setup for platforms, where your business connects its own Stripe account and family payments settle directly to your bank. You own the payment relationship and payout schedule; the software platform never holds your money on the way through.
In the full sense: booked sessions appear on an educator's Google or Outlook calendar, and changes made in either calendar flow back to the other continuously. Gigpie does the first half plus a conflict check that reads the external calendar's busy times at booking; an edit made only in Google after booking is not watched continuously. Worth asking any vendor which half they mean.
How much of what was purchased actually gets used, such as the share of paid package hours delivered before expiry. Low utilization looks like free money and is actually churn in progress: families sitting on unused hours are families about to ask for a refund instead of a renewal.
Tell us and we will add it. Or see how these pieces fit together in practice.
