Tutor & Music Teacher Lesson Tracker
This tutor lesson tracker records every lesson you teach, applies your own no-show and late-cancellation rules, and works out what your hourly rate really needs to be.
Teaching privately is two jobs: the teaching and the collecting, and the second one is the one that gets skipped. Prepaid blocks run down at different speeds, a cancellation on Tuesday may or may not be chargeable under your own policy, and the rate on your price list is not the rate you are left with once prep, travel and unpaid weeks are counted.
What is in it
- Seven linked tabs: Start Here, Students, Lessons, Packages, Rates and Policy, Week Planner and Month by Month.
- Students — 40 rows. Lessons — 400 rows. Packages — 60 rows for prepaid blocks, which run down as the lessons are taught.
- Rates and Policy — your two rules written as numbers: what a no-show costs and what a late cancellation costs. Every charge and credit in the file follows from those two cells.
- Week Planner — half-hour slots across seven days, so the teaching week is laid out rather than remembered.
- Month by Month — 24 months of lessons taught, income and what is still outstanding per student.
- Four charts that read themselves, plus the filled example workbook and the same file completely blank.
Who it is for
Private tutors, music and instrument teachers, and coaches who teach one to one and collect the money themselves. It suits anyone who teaches in blocks or takes payment up front, because the Packages tab is built for prepaid lessons rather than treating every lesson as a separate invoice. Subject is only a column, so it does not care whether you teach piano, physics or driving theory.
The worked example
The file arrives filled in with five students, eighteen lessons and three prepaid blocks. Nothing is blank, so you can see exactly how every column behaves — how a late cancellation is charged, how a no-show is charged, how a prepaid block runs down — before you type over any of it.
The number the example is really built around is on the Rates and Policy tab. Eighteen taught hours turns out to be a thirty-one hour week once prep, travel and the messages on a Sunday are counted. Add teaching 38 weeks a year rather than 52, and tax coming off everything invoiced, and the teacher charging $41.67 an hour actually needs $67.64 to end up where she thinks she already is.
How it works
Compatible with Microsoft Excel 2016 or newer on Windows or Mac, Google Sheets, and LibreOffice. No macros, no add-ons, no account to create, nothing to install.
The download has two workbooks: one with the example above already filled in, so you can see what every column expects, and the same file completely blank for your own figures. A plain-English guide comes as a PDF. Buy it on Etsy — $9
Sold through my Etsy shop, ThePlainLedger, so the download, the payment and the buyer protection are all handled by Etsy.
Questions people actually ask
What does this work out that my diary does not?
It works out what your hourly rate has to be once the unpaid work and the unpaid weeks are counted. In the worked example eighteen taught hours is a thirty-one hour week, and once you teach 38 weeks a year rather than 52 and take tax off, the teacher charging $41.67 an hour needs $67.64. A diary tells you which lessons happened; this tells you what they were worth.
Is this for music teachers or for academic tutors?
Both — the file does not care what you teach, only that lessons are booked, taught or missed, and paid for. Music teachers, instrument teachers, academic tutors and coaches all use the same three tabs: Students, Lessons and Packages. Subject is just a column you type into.
I have never written down a cancellation policy.
Put in the policy you would like to have and the file will show you what it would have been worth. Rates and Policy asks two questions only: what a no-show costs and what a late cancellation costs. Set both to zero and it still shows you every lesson that did not happen and what the empty slot was worth.
Do I need Excel to use it?
No — it is built as .xlsx but opens in Google Sheets and LibreOffice as well. For Google Sheets use File, then Import, then Upload, and choose Replace spreadsheet; the formulas carry over. Excel 2016 or newer works on both Windows and Mac.
Does it send invoices or connect to my calendar?
No — it connects to nothing and sends nothing; it never logs in to a diary, a bank or a payment app, and your students' details stay in a file on your own computer. You type each lesson in after you teach it. It also cannot tell you which prepaid package an individual lesson was drawn from — it tracks the block, not the lesson-by-lesson draw-down.
Need it built around your business?
This file assumes one-to-one lessons, a rate set per lesson, and that you take the money yourself. If your teaching runs differently — small groups of three or four sharing a slot, monthly packages or subscriptions instead of a rate per lesson, or a school where several teachers split the fee — I can rebuild the same arithmetic around the way your lessons and payments actually work.
All other templates are listed on the Excel & Google Sheets Templates page.