Per session, per package,
per programme.
Every tutoring centre charges in one of three ways, and most charge in all three at once without having decided to. Pay per session bills each hour after it happens. A package sells a block of sessions in advance at a lower rate than one, with an expiry. A programme fee sells a place on a group course for a term or a month. They are not interchangeable: each one moves the money to a different point in time, changes what a cancellation costs, and changes who does the chasing.
The decision most centres never make is to stop offering pay-per-session beyond the first trial. It survives because it is easy to explain and because a family asks for it, and it costs the centre more than any other single policy: money after the work, every cancellation a conversation, every no-show a collection. Offer one trial session at the hourly rate, then packages.
The same month,
billed two ways.
As an illustration with round figures, take a centre teaching 200 one-to-one sessions a month at €40, paying tutors €25 an hour, and compare the month under pay-per-session invoicing with the same month under packages bought in advance:
The revenue is identical. The centre on packages has €3,000 in the bank at month end and no receivables; the centre invoicing per session is €1,000 short while it waits, is carrying €4,000 of unpaid work into next month, and will carry more next month than this one, because the gap compounds. Tutors are paid on time either way — they have to be — which is why the per-session centre feels permanently short and the package centre does not, on exactly the same business.
The number to watch is receivables as a share of monthly revenue. Above about half, the centre is lending its customers a month of tutoring at zero interest, and the shortfall is not a cash-flow problem to be managed; it is a billing model to be changed.
Ten sessions,
at the price of nine.
A package has three numbers: how many sessions, what discount against the single-session rate, and how long it lasts. Ten is the size most centres settle on, because it is roughly a term of weekly sessions and a sum a family can pay in one go; five suits a trial period or a family who is unsure; twenty suits exam preparation booked in the autumn for the spring. The discount is the price of the family's commitment and the centre's cash: ten for the price of nine is common, and it is a discount the centre can afford precisely because it is no longer chasing the money.
Price the single session first and honestly, at what a tutor's whole hour is worth, and let the package be the discount from it rather than the other way round. Families who compare will see the single rate; families who buy will take the package. The single rate is also what a late cancellation or a no-show costs under the policy, which makes the policy easy to state: a session missed without notice is a session deducted, at the value they already know.
Every package expires,
or it is a liability.
A package with no expiry date is money the centre has received for work it still owes, indefinitely. A family that bought twenty sessions in September, used twelve, and returns the following June with eight to claim is entitled to them, into a diary that has moved on and at a price that has since risen. Multiply by fifty families and the centre is carrying a liability it never counted. Expiry is not a trick; it is the term of the offer, and stated at purchase it is accepted without complaint. Three months for a ten-session package, six for twenty, and the school term as the natural unit for a centre that runs on terms.
Say what happens at expiry — unused sessions lapse — and apply it, with the same discretion you apply to the cancellation policy: the exception for a hospital stay is a gift, in writing, not a precedent. The renewal conversation happens two sessions before the package runs out, not after, which is the third article's subject.
For groups, a place on a course,
not a count of sessions.
Group programmes are not sold in sessions. A place on "higher-level maths, Tuesdays at six, twelve weeks" is one fee for the term, or a monthly fee for an ongoing course, and the family is buying the programme and its outcome rather than a number of hours. The invoice is simple — one line — and the cash arrives before the course starts. The risk moves to retention: a monthly fee is cancelled in one click, and a family that drifts stops paying quietly. Bill by the term where the programme has a natural end, monthly only where it genuinely does not, and never let a group fee become a per-session count, because the moment it does, absences become refund conversations again.
On SprintUp, packages, programmes and single sessions are products you define at your own prices; families pay through Stripe and the centre keeps 100% of the fee less Stripe's processing charge, because the platform takes 0%. Each family sees what they have bought and what is due in the portal, which is where the renewal conversation starts.