Prepaid tutoring packages: the two promises that drift apart by March
Packages are good business for a tutor — cash up front, committed students, fewer awkward per-session payments. They also create a quiet bookkeeping problem: the day a family prepays eighteen hours, you've made a promise measured in hours while your bank account records a promise measured in dollars. Sessions happen weekly, the two promises drift, and by spring most tutors are guessing. The guess has two expensive failure modes, and they point in opposite directions.
Failure one: teaching unpaid hours
The package ran out three sessions ago and nobody noticed — not the family, not you. You're now donating your most limited inventory, and the longer it runs the more awkward the catch-up conversation becomes, because the family genuinely believed they were paid up. The fix is a running countdown per student: hours purchased minus hours taught = hours left, checked at logging time, not at invoicing time. With a warning level — say, two hours — the renewal conversation happens while there's still package left, which turns it from a bill into a courtesy: "Emma has an hour and a half left; want me to hold Thursdays for the next block?"
Failure two: the invoice that never quite goes out
Pay-as-you-go families drift the other way. A missed transfer in April, a busy May, and by June a family owes for five sessions across two subjects — reconstructed, if you're lucky, from a scroll through texts. Money truth per family is one subtraction: billed (every session at its rate) minus paid (every payment logged) = balance. Positive means an invoice to send. Negative means prepaid credit — which is exactly what a package is, and it's normal. Keeping both signs visible in one column is the whole trick; hiding credits makes packages look like debts, and hiding debts makes them disappear.
| Student | Prepaid hrs | Hrs left | Billed | Paid | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A. Chen | 18 | 0.5 — renew | $963 | $990 | −$28 |
| H. Doyle | 6 | 2.0 — soon | $210 | $330 | −$120 |
| I. Vasquez | — | — | $315 | $140 | $175 — invoice |
The log that feeds both answers
Both countdowns run off the same ten-second record: date, student, subject, hours — priced at the student's rate, with a per-session override for the realities (a sibling discount, a summer rate, a half session). From that one log, hours-left and balances compute themselves, and two bonus numbers appear free: your true average hourly across the practice — the number that should anchor your next rate decision — and each student's share of your teaching load, which tells you who the practice actually depends on. (This mechanic is identical for music lessons, coaching, and any per-session practice sold in blocks.)
A session log, the package countdown, and honest family balances
The Tutoring Business Kit is this article as a workbook: a session log with per-row rate overrides, a roster where hours left count down per package (amber at your warn level, red once you're teaching unpaid hours), balances that net billed against paid, and a dashboard that names the week's admin — the mainstay, the renew call, and the invoice to send. Pure formulas, no macros, Excel & Google Sheets.
Set it up before the fall roster fills
List the roster with rates and any open packages, log sessions as they happen, and record payments when they land. The renewal calls and invoices then name themselves. To be clear about this note's boundary: it describes record keeping, not tax, legal, or business advice — package terms, refund policies, and 1099/tax handling belong to you and your tax professional.