Website for a driving school, with lessons booked against the car
Two things have to line up before a lesson can happen, an instructor and a car, and a diary written by hand only ever tracks one of them. Meanwhile the pupils, who are seventeen, arrange everything by text at hours of the day when nobody is anywhere near a diary.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.
A week between the tests
None of this is teaching. It is the hour a day that goes on keeping a calendar honest.
Three texts before nine on a Sunday
One wants to move Tuesday to Wednesday, one has picked up a shift and cannot do the week at all, and one is asking whether there is anything going on Saturday. All three land on a phone that is also your own phone, and all three have to be carried into a calendar you are nowhere near.
By Monday one of them has been missed, and it is always the one who turns up anyway.
The instructor is here, the car is not
You run three instructors and two cars, and for an hour on Thursday afternoon that means a lesson which cannot happen however it looks on paper. Somebody has the manual out doing motorway hours, and the automatic is solid because half your pupils will only learn in the automatic.
A name and a time is all the diary shows. It does not show which car, and the car is what decides whether the lesson is real.
Who has hours left
Blocks are bought up front, ten hours at a time, and after that they live in a notebook, a spreadsheet or an instructor's memory. Somebody has three left, somebody has none and has had two lessons regardless, and somebody paid in March and has not been seen since.
None of it is written down in one place, so the question of who has hours left is answered by whoever happens to know.
Four things that keep the diary honest
Picked for a school where the constraint is never demand, it is instructors and cars.
Instructors and cars are both resources
Put the three instructors in as staff and the two cars in as equipment, then tie each type of lesson to what it requires. A manual hour can only be booked when a manual car and somebody who teaches in it are open at the same time.
That single rule removes an entire category of lesson: the one that looked fine in the diary and was never possible.
Pupils book a lesson, not a request
The pupil chooses what the lesson is, a standard hour, a double, motorway work, a mock test, and then sees the times long enough to hold it. A two hour lesson is offered where two hours exist and nowhere else.
What they end up with is a real appointment against a real instructor, made without a text message and without anybody having to answer one.
Moving a lesson without messaging you
Every booking has a link of its own, so a pupil whose shift pattern has changed moves their own Thursday and the hour drops straight back into the diary as available.
An hour handed back on a Sunday night gets taken by somebody who has been waiting. An hour handed back by text on Thursday morning is an hour you spend sitting in a car park.
Every pupil in one register
Each pupil is a record with their lessons and their history attached: what has been booked, what has been taken, which instructor they are with and which car they learn in.
So who is due a lesson, who has gone quiet since March and who is close to booking a test are all questions answered by looking in one place instead of asking three people.
The lesson list, as it can be set out
Names and prices are yours. What matters is that a single hour and a ten hour block are separate lines with separate prices.
Categories keep the manual list, the automatic list and the courses apart, each with prices of its own.
What driving schools want to know
Yes, once the cars are set up as resources. Each type of lesson is tied to the car it needs, so an automatic hour is only offered when the automatic and an instructor for it are both open.
They are the age group most likely to. A seventeen year old will book an hour at eleven at night from a phone and would never ring an office during the day to arrange the same thing.
A block is a service with its own fixed price, listed next to single lessons, and each pupil sits in the register with what they have booked and taken attached to their name rather than in an instructor's notebook.
Take them out of the schedule for those days and every hour that depended on them disappears from the site at once. Nothing at all can be booked against an instructor who is not there.
The old site is imported, so the areas you cover and the way you describe the school carry over. Anything missing is written from a short description, and you edit it by clicking pencils on the page itself.
There are four, from €49 to €199 a month plus VAT. Each of them runs the site on your own domain with SSL, hosting, nightly backups and support included.
More trades
- Garages and MOT centresBooking per ramp and mechanic, with reminders.
- Tyre fittersFifteen minute slots and tyre storage as a plan.
- Car valeting and detailingPackages per car size, paid at booking.
- Hair salonsBooking per chair and treatment length.
- BarbersA booking that takes ten seconds on a phone.
- Nail salonsThe three week refill books itself.
- All trades
Get the lessons bookable
Say how many instructors and cars you run and what an hour costs, or point at the site you already have. The builder gives you back a first version with the lesson types, the blocks and a diary that knows which car is which.
The site runs on your own domain, with SSL, hosting and nightly backups in every plan. From €49 to €199 a month, excluding VAT.