Instructors and class cover for your studio

Avana is studio booking software where your instructors have their own login, cover sorts itself out and each instructor's hours are ready every month. As long as you teach alone, you need none of this. Once a second instructor joins, that changes fast. Who teaches which class, who covers when someone is ill, and how many classes did everyone teach this month? Those questions come up every week in a team, and you'd rather never answer them by hand again.

What an instructor schedule should do

A good timetable shows who teaches every class, to you and to your members. Instructors mostly want their own classes, with who is coming and anything worth knowing about a member, like an injury or a pregnancy. What they don't need is your revenue or your members' payments.

So make sure each instructor has their own login and that you can decide per person what they see. A shared password for the whole team seems handy until someone leaves or changes something by mistake. In Avana's online class schedule, every class shows its instructor, and instructors see only their own classes by default.

Arranging cover without a group chat

At many studios it goes like this: an instructor wakes up with a temperature and posts in the team group chat. Then the waiting starts. Someone replies late, two people say yes at once, or nobody sees it in time. Meanwhile you still don't know whether to cancel the class.

It works better when the request only reaches people who can actually do it, and the first to say yes gets the class there and then. In Avana the instructor taps I can't teach this class. The other instructors who aren't teaching at that time get an email. Whoever taps I'll take it first is put on the class, and anyone who taps later sees it's already been taken. If nobody is free, you hear about it at once and either choose someone yourself or cancel the class.

Tracking instructor hours and pay

Instructors get paid in different ways. One gets a set fee per class, another an hourly rate, and sometimes it depends on how many members came. Agree it clearly up front and put it in writing, even with someone you've known for years. Self-employed instructors usually send you an invoice, and you want to check it quickly.

Avana counts each instructor's classes, hours and attendance every month. A cancelled class doesn't count, and a class someone stepped in for is credited to whoever actually taught it. Give an instructor a rate and you also see what's due. Only you see the rates, so colleagues never see each other's pay. Paying people stays with you: Avana doesn't run payroll, it gives you the overview as a file for Excel or your bookkeeper.

Who sees what in your team

The bigger your team, the more it matters that not everyone sees everything. Members' health details are sensitive and belong only with the people who teach or help members. Your figures belong with you and your bookkeeper. That's fair to your members, and it fits UK GDPR.

In Avana you give each team member a role. An instructor sees the timetable and the members in class. The front desk handles members, classes and payments. Studio Max adds the manager, who can do almost everything, and the bookkeeper, who only sees payments, insights and instructor hours. How you keep the rest of your members' details is covered under member management.

How it works for each type of studio

At a yoga studio each teacher often has their own style, so cover for yin is a different person from cover for vinyasa. A dance school has teachers by style and age group, and wants parents to see who's teaching. At a bootcamp or HYROX gym, coaches often change from day to day. And a reformer studio with a packed evening timetable never wants to lose a class for lack of an instructor.

The same things help everywhere: a profile per instructor on your studio page, a timetable where each instructor sees their own classes, cover found with one request, and hours that count themselves.

What Avana does for you

Avana keeps your instructors in the same system as your timetable, your class packs and your memberships. Cover shows on your page straight away, members see who's teaching, and every instructor's hours add up as you go. Cover and instructor hours come with every plan. How many instructors each plan includes is in the pricing above.