Tuition Centre Booking System: Attendance Recorded, Package Balance Without the Counting

Ilmu Gemilang Tuition Centre in Ampang runs with three tutors — Ms Aini teaches Math, Mr Razak teaches Bahasa Melayu, Ms Farah teaches English. One evening a parent messages the owner, Puan Zaleha, on WhatsApp: "how many times did my son attend this month?" She has to scroll back through the class group chat looking for the day he wrote "ok coming" — because all she ever recorded was the intent to come, not whether he actually showed up to class.

Coach Aqil runs swim lessons in Melaka and sells a package of 10 sessions for RM400. He tracks it on a folded paper list in his bag, crossing off one mark each time a student shows up. One day the list gets splashed by pool water, half the ink smears, and he ends up guessing how many sessions each family has left — handing out a free extra session to one student because he isn't sure of the real balance.

Bijak Pandai Tuition Centre in Kuantan has four tutors, and bookings arrive through WhatsApp, phone calls, and walk-ins. At month-end, billing runs per session actually attended, not a flat monthly fee — so the owner has to ask all four tutors individually "how many times did this student come," because there is no single record of attendance anywhere.

Why this keeps happening

First: tuition classes are usually billed per session a student actually attends, not a flat monthly fee — so attendance is not a nice-to-have, it is the number that becomes the invoice. But most booking tools only record the intent to come (the booking itself), not whether the student actually showed up.

Second: prepaid session packages — buy 10, use them over several months — do not fit an ordinary booking list that treats every session as a separate, one-off matter. Someone has to keep a separate tally, and that tally is usually paper or memory, the way Coach Aqil's list was.

Third: once there is more than one tutor, bookings arrive through several channels at once, with no single place to count how many sessions a student has used, or how many they actually attended.

Fourth: attendance records that live in a paper list or one tutor's memory disappear the moment that tutor goes on long leave or quits.

What owners try instead

Most common: a paper list or a notebook, one row per student, a cross mark for each attendance. Quick to read at a glance, but if the paper gets wet or lost, the record disappears with it — exactly what happened to Coach Aqil.

Some use a WhatsApp group for each class. "Are you coming today" and attendance confirmations get mixed in with everything else, and when a parent asks a month later, the answer is buried deep in the thread.

Others step up to a spreadsheet, one column per session, an "A" for attended. This works fine while one person updates it, but it breaks down once more than one tutor has to edit the same file, or once there are enough students with packages starting on different dates that nobody can keep the columns straight.

How attendance and session balances should work

First principle: every TempahKu booking already carries its own way to record attendance. A student's booking confirmation email carries a QR code. A tutor opens the Scan QR menu on the dashboard, taps Start Scan, and scans that code when the student arrives. What happens next depends on a setting the owner chooses under Settings → Business Info: a scan can mark the booking Complete immediately, or — with the "Scan records arrival only" option — a scan just marks the student as "Arrived", and the tutor clicks Complete themselves once the class ends. The second option suits longer classes better, since a class does not necessarily finish the moment a student walks in. If the camera fails or a student has no QR code, a booking can still be marked complete manually from the All Bookings page. The customer profile then counts how many sessions that student attended this month and last — sessions that were scanned or marked Complete, so a centre that never uses the camera still gets the number — broken down by the child's name when several siblings share one phone number.

Second principle: for prepaid session packages, turn on the "Enable Customer Packages" switch under Menu → Account & Settings → Settings → Business Info → Add-on Modules. Once it is on, you can sell a package (say, 10 swim sessions) from the Packages page, and each time a student comes, open their customer profile and tap "Use 1" — the balance goes down and stays visible to everyone, not just the tutor who sold that package. To be honest about how this works: the deduction is not automatic on QR scan — it is one extra tap after class — but the balance is at least stored somewhere permanent, not on a paper list that can get splashed and lost.

Third principle: with more than one tutor, you can set Staff Booking Mode to "Customer picks a staff member when booking", so a student or parent can choose the tutor they already know at booking time. Then tick "Services they do" for each tutor under Settings → Staff: tick Math for Ms Aini alone and the booking page offers only her for that subject. A parent can no longer pick Mr Razak for a Math class when he only teaches Bahasa Melayu — a booking naming the wrong tutor is refused, not merely hidden. A tutor with nothing ticked stays available for every subject.

Fourth principle: school holidays and public holidays can be blocked directly from the Closed Dates setting — import Malaysia's public holiday list in one tap (covering roughly the next 18 months) or add individual dates by hand. Once a date is blocked, the public booking page hides it immediately — students cannot even try to book a day the centre is closed.

Fifth principle: students or parents can look up and cancel their own bookings through /mybooking, using their phone number — no need to WhatsApp the owner just to cancel. Worth noting: rescheduling still means cancelling first and booking a fresh slot — there is no single button to change the time directly.

When it helps most

It matters most for tuition centres with more than one tutor and enough students that nobody can hold them all in their head — especially when the monthly bill depends on real attendance rather than a flat fee.

It also helps solo coaches selling session packages — swimming, music, private tuition — who need one trustworthy place for each student's remaining balance, instead of a paper list that can get wet, lost, or miscounted.

On the other hand, if you are a single tutor, every class is one-on-one, and you have fewer than ten students, paper and memory genuinely still work — setting up QR scanning and packages may feel like more effort than it saves. The same goes if you want parents to enrol once for a whole term: in TempahKu every week is still a separate booking, so a weekly class has to be booked week by week.

In short

A tuition centre's real problem is usually not that bookings fail to come in — it is that attendance and session balances only ever exist in one tutor's head or a paper list that can get wet and lost. TempahKu records attendance directly on every booking through QR scan check-in, counts it month by month on the customer profile, keeps prepaid session balances in one place everyone can see, and hides school-holiday dates from the booking page automatically. It also offers only the tutors who really teach that subject, so parents cannot pick the wrong one — and "how many times did my son attend this month" no longer means an hour of scrolling WhatsApp.