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Automatic monthly billing for bookable lessons

How to bill families automatically each month for a bookable lesson — what they pay at booking, what Stripe charges afterwards, and why the amount changes month to month.

Written by Abdullah Al-Hussein

When someone books a one-to-one lesson through your booking page, Teach 'n Go can hand the months that follow to Stripe, so the family is charged automatically. You set nothing up per student and per month — the schedule is built from the fees Teach 'n Go has already generated for that lesson.

This is not the same as the manual Stripe subscription setup. There you create the product in Stripe yourself and paste a price ID and subscription ID into Teach 'n Go. Here nothing is pasted anywhere, and it only applies to lessons booked through your public booking page.

Your school may use different names for students, teachers and lessons. If you don't see the settings below, ask your admin to check your permissions.

Before you start

Three things need to be in place, and the third is the one schools miss:

  • Stripe connected — your publishable and secret keys saved in your Stripe settings

  • Stripe subscriptions switched on — the toggle below the transaction fee section on the same page

  • A Stripe webhook — this is how Teach 'n Go hears about each monthly payment

Without the webhook, Stripe still charges the family but nothing is recorded at your end. The fee stays unpaid and no receipt is created. Setting it up is a one-off job for your whole school, and the steps are in How to set up Stripe subscriptions.

Turning it on

Automatic billing is set per bookable lesson, so you can have some lessons billing monthly and others taking a single payment at the time of booking.

  1. Go to School settings → Booking and edit the bookable lesson.

  2. Tick Bill this lesson automatically each month.

  3. Save.

The tick box only appears once Stripe is connected and subscriptions are switched on. If you can't see it, that is why.

What the family pays at booking

They pay for the current month there and then — the lessons falling in the month they book in. They do not pay for the whole term up front.

If all their lessons start next month, the booking takes the first one, so a booking always involves a real payment rather than completing with nothing charged.

Their card is saved at checkout, because Stripe needs a card on file to charge the months that follow.

What Stripe charges afterwards

Stripe raises one invoice per month, for the exact total of that month's lessons. The amount comes from the fees Teach 'n Go generated, so it follows your schedule rather than a fixed figure.

That means the charge changes from month to month, and it should:

  • A month with five lessons — costs more than a month with four

  • A month with no lessons — is billed as zero, so a term break charges nothing

  • The last month — ends the schedule, and no further invoices are raised

When each invoice is paid, the matching fee is marked as paid in Teach 'n Go and a receipt is generated, the same as any other payment.

The billing day

Every month bills on the same day, which is the 1st unless you ask us to change it. It can be any day from the 1st to the 28th, so that the date exists in February.

Scheduled fees stop showing as outstanding

Once a month has been handed to Stripe, its fee no longer appears as outstanding anywhere in Teach 'n Go — not in fee chasing, not in the portal's pay-now, and not on a payment link.

This is deliberate. Without it you would be chasing a family for October while Stripe was already collecting it, and they could pay the same month twice.

Stopping or changing a schedule

To stop a family being billed, cancel their schedule in Stripe. Any months it had not yet billed go back to being outstanding fees in Teach 'n Go, so you can collect them another way.

Unticking the option on a lesson does not stop schedules that already exist. It stops new ones being created for future bookings. Anything already running in Stripe keeps billing until you cancel it there.

To change what a family pays, change it in Stripe. Editing the fee in Teach 'n Go does not change what Stripe charges.

There is no way for a family to update their own card yet. If a card expires or is replaced, contact us and we will help you sort it out.

If you would rather set subscriptions up per student by hand, see How to set up Stripe subscriptions.

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