The four lists
- Students: name, subject, rate, who pays (student or parent), and status. This is your register and your price list in one.
- Sessions: date, minutes, topic, homework. Written same-day, this list becomes your progress evidence, your billing source and your memory.
- Agreements: the rate as agreed, the cancellation policy as shown at sign-up. When a dispute starts, you want a dated line, not a recollection.
- Money: what was charged, what was paid, what is still owed, per student. The unpaid column is the one that pays for the record-keeping.
What to skip
- CRM features. You have twelve students, not twelve thousand; a pipeline stage called 'discovery call' is a costume.
- Detailed lesson plans archived forever. The topic and the homework line are enough; the plan lived its life during the lesson.
- Time-tracking apps. The session row already holds the minutes; a second tool measuring the same hour is a subscription with no job.
- Anything that needs a login to answer 'what does this family owe me'.
The tax angle, briefly
- Your session log is your income evidence: dates, amounts, totals. Most tax systems want exactly that shape.
- Keep the payment records (transfers, receipts) beside the log, not inside your head or your chat history.
- Expenses count too: materials, travel, the platform fees. A simple 'money out' list beside the 'money in' one is usually enough for a sole tutor.
- This is record-keeping, not tax advice - your local rules decide the details, your lists make them answerable.
Making it survive the term
- Fix one weekly slot for admin and defend it like a lesson slot - it pays like one.
- Write the session row before you close the laptop, while the homework you set is still true.
- Once a month, read the summary out loud: sessions, income, unpaid. Numbers you say become numbers you act on.
- At term end, archive a copy and start the next term's file clean. A year in one file is history; a term is a tool.
The free tool for this
There is no calculator that answers this one honestly, so here is the free set: eight calculators for rates, quotes, invoices, splits, prices and fees. They run in the page and send nothing anywhere.
If you would rather not build it yourself
Tutor OS keeps all four lists in one file - students, sessions, agreements and money - with the fee maths and the unpaid count done for you. Tutor OS is $19. See it on the shop, and there is a plain page about it here: what it holds.
Questions people actually ask
How long should I keep tutoring records?
Long enough for your tax authority and any dispute window - commonly several years. Since it is one small file, keeping it costs nothing.
Should records live with the parent or with me?
Yours. You can share a progress summary whenever asked, but the billing and session history is your business's memory, and it should live in your house.
Read next
How to keep track of tutoring sessions and payments, How do I ask a parent to pay for tutoring lessons?.