Scheduling Software for In-Home Tutors
Tutoring enquiries do not arrive evenly. They arrive the week report cards go home, the month before exams, and the first fortnight of term — and always while you are sitting at someone’s kitchen table with a student. Cartoply answers them for you.
The parent is the buyer. The student is the client.
Almost everything awkward about tutoring admin comes from that split. The person paying you has not sat in the room, is working from a report card and a worried conversation, and often cannot tell you precisely what the problem is. The person you actually teach may not want a tutor at all. So the first contact carries a lot of weight, and it usually happens by phone, at four in the afternoon, while you are mid-session with someone else.
The timing makes it worse. Tutoring demand is spiky in a way that is completely predictable and still catches everyone out: report cards, mock results, the run-up to exams, the start of term. In those weeks a parent messages four tutors in an evening and books whoever replies first. If you get back to them the next morning, the slot is gone, and you never find out you lost it.
Then there is the geography. School catchments sprawl, and a family that lives twenty minutes past the school your other students attend does not feel far away on a map. It is far away at five thirty on a Tuesday. The bookings that quietly wreck a week are the ones accepted before anyone thought about the drive — and an hour in the car for a one-hour session halves your rate without anyone noticing.
What Cartoply does for a travelling tutor
A paid assessment filters the enquiry
Put a price on your assessment or first session and connect Stripe or PayPal. The payment is authorised before the slot confirms and captured only once the slot is genuinely secured, so if two families book the same time nobody is charged for the one that lost. A parent who has paid has stopped shopping around, and they are home when you arrive. Charging requires running Cartoply as an organisation of one — see the FAQ below.
A travel radius shaped like a catchment
Set the area you will genuinely drive to as a radius around home, a list of ZIP codes, or a shape you draw on a map. Drawing it is usually the honest option, because the area a tutor covers follows school catchments and main roads rather than a neat circle. Families outside it simply see no availability, so you never have to walk back a booking you already accepted.
Intake that tells you what to bring
Up to ten questions per session type, including a photo upload for a marked paper or a page of the textbook. Ask the subject, the grade or year, the exam board or curriculum, what specifically the student is struggling with, whether they have had a tutor before, who will be home, and whether there is a quiet place to work. You arrive knowing whether this is exam technique or a gap from three years ago.
Capacity limits that survive exam season
Give each session type its own length, price and drive-time buffer, enforced in both directions so the next bookable slot already accounts for you getting there. Set a minimum notice so nothing lands while you are driving, a maximum number of sessions per day so a Saturday in May does not become seven, and a booking horizon so nobody reserves you for a date past the exam.
Reschedules without the message thread
Every confirmation email carries a link the parent can use to cancel or move the session themselves, respecting a cutoff you set per session type. They pick from times you are actually free instead of proposing three that do not work. Inside the cutoff they are told to contact you directly, so a late change still gets a human answer rather than an automatic one.
One calendar, plus reminders
Connect Google Calendar or Outlook and Cartoply reads it live, so your standing students, your own classes and anything else already booked block those times. Confirmations and reminders go out automatically, which matters most for the family that booked an assessment three weeks ago during the panic after a report card and has half forgotten about it.
How tutors actually use it
Solo tutors teaching evenings
Your regular students are already arranged directly with their families and sit in your calendar. Cartoply covers the part you cannot handle while teaching: the new enquiry, the paid assessment, the one-off exam-prep session, the catch-up after a missed week. One link in your directory listing, your school noticeboard advert and your email signature, and the reply is instant at four in the afternoon.
The free plan lets you publish one session type without paying anything. Charging for sessions and drawing a travel radius both require an organisation of one, which is $7/month.
Tutors who are already full
When you have no space, the booking page works better as a filter than a funnel. Publish only the paid assessment, cap the booking horizon, and let the enquiries serious enough to pay come through while everyone else self-selects out. You stop losing evenings to replying to families you could never fit in, and you keep a record of who asked when a slot does open.
Small tutoring agencies
With several tutors covering different subjects and different parts of a city, an organisation lets each tutor hold their own availability and their own area. Enquiries route to whoever covers that address, and answer-based specialisations narrow the pool further — a Higher Maths enquiry only reaches the tutors who teach it. Assignment rotates to whichever eligible tutor was assigned least recently, so the work spreads. Seats are $7 each per month, or $28 a month for four.
See it set up for a tutoring round
We will configure a paid assessment, your subject and level questions, and a travel radius around the catchments you already work in — in 15 minutes.
Book a 15-minute demoHow to set up online booking for your tutoring
About thirty minutes, and most of it is deciding what an assessment should cost and which catchments you are honestly willing to drive to on a school night.
- 1
Create your Cartoply account
Sign up free — no credit card required. Every new account gets 14 days with the paid features switched on so you can test the whole flow before deciding.
- 2
Create an organisation with only you in it
Charging for a session requires an organisation booking page, so create one and stay the only member. That is one seat at $7/month, and it is also what unlocks the travel radius and removes the one-event-type limit.
- 3
Connect your calendar
Connect Google Calendar or Outlook so your existing students, your own teaching commitments and family time block those slots automatically and stay blocked as they change.
- 4
Connect Stripe or PayPal
Complete the entire Stripe onboarding form in one sitting. A half-finished Connect account looks connected in the dashboard but cannot take payments, and you will only discover it when a parent tries to pay for an assessment.
- 5
Set your travel radius
Choose a distance around your home, list the ZIP codes you serve, or draw the shape that matches the school catchments you already work in. Addresses outside it see no availability at all.
- 6
Create your session types
A paid assessment or first session, plus any one-offs you offer — exam preparation, a homework catch-up, a half-term intensive. Give each one its own duration, price, minimum notice, drive-time buffer and daily cap.
- 7
Add your intake questions and publish
Subject, grade level, exam board, the specific difficulty, previous tutoring, who will be home, quiet workspace. Then put the link in your listings and your signature, or embed the booking widget on your own site.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best scheduling software for a tutor?
It depends which problem you are solving. If you need full tutoring business management — recurring lesson scheduling, session tracking, invoicing parents, paying subcontracted tutors, and reporting — then TutorCruncher, Teachworks, Oases and TutorBird are built for exactly that and will serve you better than Cartoply. Cartoply is the front door. It is worth having if you travel to students and your real problems are enquiry response time, unpaid assessments that nobody turns up to, and getting booked outside the area you are willing to drive. Plenty of tutors run Cartoply for new enquiries and keep a tutoring platform for everything after the family signs up.
Can a parent book a recurring weekly slot, like every Wednesday at five?
No. This is the clearest limit of the product for tutoring and it is worth knowing before you sign up. Cartoply books one appointment at a time — there is no series, no repeat, no way for a parent to reserve the same time every week in a single action. Setting your weekly working hours is not the same thing: that only says when you are available, it does not create bookings. In practice the standing weekly slot is usually agreed in conversation with the family anyway, because it involves term dates and fees. If self-serve recurring booking is your main requirement, use a dedicated tutoring platform.
Can I sell a block of ten sessions upfront?
Not through Cartoply. There are no packages, session blocks, prepaid credits or family balances — a payment buys exactly one appointment, at the full price of that appointment. There are also no deposits or part-payments. Tutors who sell blocks generally invoice for them separately and use Cartoply only for the paid assessment and one-off sessions, which are the bookings that benefit most from being paid upfront anyway.
Why do I need an organisation if I tutor on my own?
Because prices and travel radiuses are attached to organisation booking pages, not personal ones. A personal page rejects any price, and a solo account cannot create its own territory. The workaround is simple: create an organisation and leave yourself as the only member. That is one seat at $7 a month, and it turns on the price field, the travel radius, and unlimited session types instead of the free plan’s one. Money still goes straight to your own connected Stripe or PayPal account — Cartoply never holds it. The word organisation is unfortunate for a solo tutor; read it as the switch that turns on the paid features.
Can a parent book both their children in one booking?
No — each child is a separate appointment. If a parent wants an hour for one child and an hour for another, they book two consecutive slots, and each one carries its own intake answers, which is genuinely useful because the two students rarely need the same thing. It does mean a sibling enquiry takes two passes through the booking page, and if you charge for the assessment it will be charged twice. Some tutors handle this by publishing a longer session type for households with two students and pricing it accordingly.
What should I ask on the booking form?
Enough to prepare, and no more. The questions that repay themselves are subject, grade or year, exam board or curriculum, what the student is finding hard in their own words or the parent’s, whether they have been tutored before, who will be home during the session, and whether there is a quiet place to work. A photo upload for a marked paper is often worth more than any of them. Be careful with anything sensitive: if a diagnosed learning difference is relevant to how you teach, an optional free-text question is reasonable, but say clearly that it is optional and that a short conversation is usually better than a text box. A booking form is not a confidential record, and a parent should not feel obliged to type a diagnosis into one to secure a slot.
Stop losing enquiries to whoever replied first
Start free. No credit card required.
Set your assessment price, draw the area you will drive to, and let parents book the slots you actually have free.
14-day free trial — no credit card required. $7/seat/month after that.