Lessons

Set up the program

Under Program, first set your vocabulary: disciplines, rider levels, and lesson kinds. Mark which horses are in the program with their disciplines and level, and give riders a level and disciplines on their person page.

Rider notes

The Rider card on a person's page also holds rider notes: goals, nerves, a horse they love, anything an instructor should know before the lesson. They show on every lesson the rider is in, under Rider notes, for staff and the instructors teaching it.

Rider notes are for staff and instructors only, and a lock marked "Staff & instructors only" sits beside them wherever they're written or shown. Riders, families, horse owners and vendors never see them, not even a parent looking at their own child's lesson, and they don't go out on calendar feeds or to a family's assistant.

A term

1. Create the term with its first and last week.
2. Instructors mark availability on the week grid, or paste their email into the assistant and let it set the blocks.
3. Families submit requests: discipline, kind, how many a week, and their preferred times in order. Requests arrive from the waiting list on your website or are entered by staff.
4. When the sheet is full enough, choose Propose the timetable.

The proposals

A proposal lists every lesson it placed and every request it couldn't, with the reason. A placement that crosses what the instructor said about their week under Schedule → Availability (on barns with the staff schedule) wears an instructor unavailable tag with the reason, such as "Maggie isn't available Tuesdays after 5 PM". The solver doesn't avoid those times, since it plans from the term's lesson availability; the tag is there so you can move that lesson or check with the instructor before applying.

Apply it and the lessons go on the calendar for the whole term; discard it and nothing changes. Each week, Propose horses suggests which horse each rider gets, weighing workload, disciplines, and level. Adjust any assignment, then apply.

Injured and sick horses

A horse marked injured or sick on its page isn't offered for lessons. Which horses could take this? and the assistant leave it out and say why ("injured since Oct 9"), and Propose horses never gives it to a rider. Its status today counts for the whole week you're scheduling, and once you set it back to healthy it's offered again right away. A rehabbing horse is still offered, with a note beside its name. Its lesson status (in the program, resting) stays as you set it.

You can still put an injured or sick horse on a lesson yourself: the horse picker says "injured since Oct 9" beside its name, and the lesson is saved with a warning. A lesson that already had the horse when it got hurt is flagged the same way, from this week on, rather than changed: a bandage mark on the Day, Week and Month calendars, a note on the lesson, and a line under Needs a look on the dashboard. Choose another horse, or leave it if you meant it.

Drafts until you publish

New lessons, and changes to lessons families can already see, wait until they're published (see Draft and publish). Applying a proposal makes its lessons as drafts, so you can look the whole timetable over first. Until a lesson is published, its family doesn't see it, nothing is charged, nobody is reminded, and no instructor shift is made for it; a moved lesson keeps its old time for the family, and a cancelled one stays on their calendar, until you publish. Marking a lesson completed, and the paid and charge overrides on a cancelled one, take effect at once.

When an instructor can't teach then

Saving a lesson, moving one on the calendar, or un-cancelling one checks each instructor's availability: their confirmed lesson availability for the term, and what they declared under Schedule → Availability, where unavailable times win. A lesson outside it is still saved, with a note naming the instructor and the time they gave ("Maggie isn't available Tuesdays after 3 PM"). An instructor who hasn't said anything about that day of the week is never flagged. Lesson availability counts the other way too: on the staff schedule, an instructor's confirmed lesson availability for a term counts as time they can work.

Cancelling a lesson

On a lesson, Cancel lesson asks why: The family cancelled (to begin with), No-show, or The barn's side (weather, a horse, an instructor). The lesson stays on the calendar struck through, and its page then shows a Cancelled card with the reason, which you can correct.

1. The family's charge: Credited or Charge kept, by the barn's lesson billing policy (see the Finance guide). The barn's own cancellations are always credited. The owner can switch it on any cancelled lesson; the charge is posted or credited back once, whichever way it goes.
2. Instructors (on barns with the staff schedule): Paid or Not paid, by the staffing policy, which goes by how close to the start it was cancelled, whatever the reason. A manager can switch it, say when the instructor was the one who called off. A paid cancellation keeps its lesson shift, labeled cancelled — paid, and its time counts as lesson time; the Schedule and time guide says how it reaches payroll.

What the family is charged and what the instructor is paid are separate questions: crediting a family back never changes an instructor's pay, and paying an instructor never charges a family.

Covers

An instructor who can't teach one lesson opens it and chooses Ask for a cover: from Any instructor who could teach it or Only one by name, with an optional note. Instructors who could take it get a notice, and the request is on Schedule → Requests with offered shifts and trades, where they Take it (or, when asked by name, Decline). A manager usually approves; the same setting as offered shifts decides. On approval the instructor on that lesson changes, a co-instructor stays, and the calendar and the lesson say Sam covering for Jane. The lesson time moves between their schedules too.

A cover is for that one lesson, even in a weekly series; the rest of the series keeps its instructor. Nobody can take a lesson while they teach another one then, or on approved time off; a time they said they can't work is a warning, not a refusal. Asking stops at the same cutoff as offering up a shift, and a request nobody took then expires. Cancelling, moving or re-staffing the lesson drops a request still open. The family isn't told about a cover; they see the new instructor on the lesson.

Staff changing an instructor on a lesson themselves are asked which it is: Covering for this lesson (it shows as a cover) or Change the instructor (the new one teaches it from now on).

The waiting list

Settings → Website embedding gives you a snippet to paste on your site. Requests from it land on the term's sheet marked as from the website.

Rolling a term over

Start the next term from the last one. Availability and requests carry over marked pending until an instructor or family confirms them, so what was entered fresh is never confused with what merely carried forward.

The lesson program is on the Program plan.