A student management app for a private tutor: what it must have

The short answer: a student management app for a private tutor has to do six jobs: record a lesson in a few seconds from the phone, keep the students and parents in one place, calculate each student's debt and prepare a payment reminder, keep a history that can be corrected and exported, help with scheduling and cancellations, and protect the students' details. An app that does only part of that will leave you with a notebook or a spreadsheet on the side, and that is where the gaps start.

This guide goes through each of the jobs, explains what to check before choosing, and ends with a checklist you can use against any tool. In each section we also show how Teaching, the system we are building for private tutors, answers it, so you can compare for yourself.

The 6 things a private tutor's app must do

And there is a seventh job, which is not mandatory but makes a difference: helping new students find you.

1. Recording a lesson in seconds from the phone

Every management method breaks at the same point: the recording. If recording a lesson takes a minute and a half, it gets put off to the evening, and in the evening it is forgotten. What is forgotten is not charged.

What to check:

• Is today's date already filled in by default?
• Do the hours you usually teach at appear as buttons, with no typing?
• Is the price set by itself according to the type of lesson, or do you have to type it each time?
• A lesson with two students: does the app understand by itself that it is a group lesson at a different price?

How it works in Teaching: the "Register lesson" screen opens on today's date. You choose a quick hour (buttons that you define in settings) or "another hour", and mark the students from the class columns. One student marked? It is a private lesson. Two or more? A group lesson. The rate is derived from the number of participants, so nobody types a price. You press "Register the lesson" and that's it.

2. Students, classes and parents in one place

A private tutor does not talk to the student about money, they talk to the parent. So a student card without a parent's name and phone is half a card.

What to check:

• For each student: a name, a parent's name, a phone and an email.
• Grouping by classes, grades or groups, the way you think about your students.
• What happens to a student who left: is it deleted along with its history, or kept in an archive?
• Do you have to press "save", or is every change saved immediately?

How it works in Teaching: the "Classes" screen shows a column for each class and a card for each student, with a name, parent, phone and email. You can drag a student from class to class. Every change is saved immediately, with no save button, so nothing is lost when you move between the phone and the computer. A student with a history moves to the archive and is not deleted. For each student you can also choose the language of messages to the parent: Hebrew, English, Russian or Arabic.

3. Debt and collection with reminders

This is the part for which most tutors look for an app in the first place. The question "how much does each one owe me?" should get an answer in a second, without calculating.

What to check:

• A list of everyone who owes, with the amount and the number of lessons.
• A ready reminder message with the breakdown of lessons and the amount, that opens in WhatsApp, SMS or email.
• The ability to edit the wording of the message.
• Marking payment for particular lessons, not only "paid everything".

How it works in Teaching: in the "Collection" screen there is a card for each student with an open debt: the amount and the number of lessons. A tap on "WhatsApp" opens your WhatsApp with a ready message that includes the parent's name, the student's name, the list of lessons and the amount. The same goes for "SMS" and "email". The system does not send on your behalf: you see the message and press "send" yourself. You edit the wording for each channel in settings, and you can always restore the default. When the parent pays, "Mark payment" lets you choose the lessons that were paid and mark them as paid.

Teaching does not collect the money for you and does not issue receipts to parents. The parent pays you directly, in the way you agreed.

How to build a complete collection routine, from payment dates to what to do when a parent does not answer, is explained in the guide collecting payment for private lessons.

4. History, editing a price and export

Life is not as tidy as a table. A lesson was shortened, you gave a discount, a lesson was cancelled after it was paid, a parent paid and then asked to cancel. A good app lets you correct all of these without breaking the calculation.

What to check:

• A history for each student, with a filter by month and a summary of what was paid and what was not.
• Editing the price of a single lesson, which overrides the regular rate.
• Cancelling a lesson that stays in the history and is not deleted.
• Export to Excel, for the accountant or for a backup.
• A rate change: what happens to old lessons that have not been paid yet?

How it works in Teaching: in the "History" screen you choose a class and a student and see all the lessons, with a summary of paid and unpaid and a filter by month. From there you can "Edit price", "Cancel payment" and "Cancel lesson". A lesson that was cancelled stays in the history as "cancelled" and is not charged, and if it was already paid, the amount is kept as credit. We went through it in a lesson cancelled after it was paid.

"Export to Excel" creates a right-to-left file with the date, time, student, class, parent, phone, lesson type, rate, status and payment date. And when you change a rate in settings, new lessons are recorded at the new rate, lessons that were paid or whose price was edited by hand do not change, and you choose whether lessons not yet paid stay at the old rate or move to the new one.

Anyone who works with a spreadsheet today and is considering a move can read tracking student payments in Excel - and when to move to an app.

5. Self-scheduling: a calendar, cancellations and make-ups

A tutor with 15 regular students is, without noticing, running a small timetable. Every cancellation, swap and make-up lesson goes through their personal WhatsApp.

What to check:

• A fixed weekly lesson that is created in the calendar by itself, without entering it again every week.
• Cancellation rules that the app enforces: how many hours in advance, and what happens on a late cancellation.
• Free times that students can book themselves.
• Make-up lessons with a limit, so they do not eat the week.
• A way for a student to see their lessons without opening an account.

How it works in Teaching: all of this is in the "Studio" module, which is optional and off by default. Whoever does not turn it on sees no change. Whoever turns it on gets:

• A weekly lesson: you choose a student, a day and an hour, and the system creates the lessons for the next 12 weeks. A lesson enters the debt only after it has taken place.
• Cancellation rules: the default is a cancellation with no charge up to 24 hours before the lesson. A later cancellation stays charged, and you can always waive it from the calendar.
• Make-up tokens: a cancellation in time gives the student a token to book another lesson, with an expiry (default 30 days) and a maximum of open tokens (default 2).
• Free times: ranges of hours where students book by themselves, with a capacity for each hour.
• A personal link for each student: with no password. The student sees their lessons, cancels according to the rules, books a make-up and signs your participation terms.
• A lesson package: a set of lessons paid in advance, which covers the next lessons.

You can try all of this with a "test student", who is not counted in debts, in the export or in messages to parents. We wrote about the rules themselves in a private lesson cancellation policy and in booking online lessons.

6. Being found: a public profile and new students

Managing existing students well is half the work. The other half is that new students find you.

What to check:

• A public page that you can share with a link.
• Appearing in a search by area and subject.
• Control over what is shown, and above all: that your exact address is not shown.

How it works in Teaching: in the "Public profile" screen you turn on appearing in the portal, and fill in a short title, subjects, age groups, how you teach, a WhatsApp number for enquiries, an address and a radius. Parents and students search on teaching.co.il by address and subject, and get results by ranges of distance, not by address. Your exact address is never shown. Every profile has a permanent link that you can copy and share. Appearing in the portal is reserved for the Pro plan, and also for the free trial.

What to write in a profile so that it brings enquiries is in a private tutor profile that brings enquiries, and details on the portal are on the teachers page.

Privacy and information security about students

In a student management app sit the names of children, the phone numbers of parents and details about payments. This is personal information. The Protection of Privacy Law and its information security regulations deal with exactly this, and what exactly applies to you depends on the scope and the way you keep the information. On this question it is worth consulting a professional.

What you can check yourself in any app:

• Who sees the data? Each tutor's data should be separated from that of other tutors.
• What is shown to the public? If there is a public profile, what exactly can be seen in it?
• Links sent to students: what is in them?
• What happens when you leave? Can you export everything? Is the data deleted when you ask?

How it works in Teaching: each tutor's data is separated from that of other tutors even at the database level. The portal does not show your exact address, and the phone is revealed only on a tap. A student's personal link in the Studio contains only a random identifier, with no name, email or phone. When a subscription is cancelled the account moves to read-only, and viewing and export remain always available. Deleting an account locks it immediately, and after a short waiting period the data is deleted permanently. Invoices and payment records are kept as the law requires, without identifying details.

A few more small things that make a difference

• Works on the phone and the computer. You record from the phone between lessons, and go over the month on the computer in the evening.
• Installing on the home screen. Teaching opens in the browser, and you can install it on the device to open it with a tap, without typing an address.
• Dark mode for working in the evening.
• Language. The interface is available in Hebrew, English, Russian and Arabic.

Common mistakes when choosing an app

• Choosing by a list of features and not by the phone. Most recording happens between lessons, standing up. Try recording a real lesson from the phone on the first day, and you will know quickly whether it will hold.
• Choosing a general tool for booking appointments. A booking calendar knows when the lesson is, but does not know how much each parent owes. Without debt and collection, the notebook comes back.
• Moving the whole history in one day. There is no need. Start from this week's lessons, and close the old debts in parallel with the previous method.
• Not checking how you get out. Before you enter data, check that you can export it, even if you stop paying.

Moving in one week: how to start in Teaching

1. Sign up. You choose "Private tutor", enter an email and a password. A 30 day trial starts immediately, with no credit card.
2. Three opening steps. The name shown to parents and two rates, private and group. Then the name of the first class. You can leave the public profile for later.
3. Add students in the "Classes" screen: a name, a parent's name, a phone and an email. It is enough to start with this week's students.
4. Record today's lesson in the "Register lesson" screen.
5. At the end of the week open the "Collection" screen, see who owes how much, and send a first message.
6. Later, if you want, turn on a public profile or turn on the Studio.

A checklist for choosing a student management app

Copy the list and check each tool against it. Next to each item we marked how Teaching answers it.

The last rows are just as important. If you need the app to charge a credit card from the parent or to issue receipts, Teaching does not do that today, and it is worth knowing before you start.

How much it costs

Teaching has three plans:

• Free: up to 5 active students, with no card and no charge. Does not appear in the student portal.
• Basic: managing lessons, debts and collection, with no limit on students. Does not appear in the portal.
• Pro: everything in Basic, and in addition appearing in the student portal.

The prices are shown in the "My subscription" screen and include VAT. Sign-up starts with a 30 day trial on the Pro plan, with no credit card. Whoever does not enter a card moves to the free plan at the end of the trial, with no lock-out and without losing data. You can move between plans at any moment.

Written by the Teaching team · Updated on 14 October 2026. The information on the Protection of Privacy Law is general, was checked against Kol Zchut in October 2026, and is not legal advice.