Should you ask students to prepay?

Eight lessons billed one at a time are eight invoices, eight reminders and eight chances for a payment to be late. The same eight lessons sold as a package are one decision, made once, before any of them happen.

That is the case for prepayment, and it is a strong one. But a package is not just a discount — it changes what you owe the student, and teachers who skip that part end up with obligations they cannot see.

What a package actually does

Three effects, in order of how much they matter:

It removes the collection problem. Money arrives before the work, so the awkward conversation never occurs. For most teachers this is worth more than the revenue smoothing.

It changes commitment. A student who has paid for eight lessons attends eight lessons. Prepayment converts a weekly decision into a single decision, and the attendance difference is not subtle — this is the real reason packages reduce cancellations, not the discount.

It steadies income. Not because you earn more, but because you learn about a gap in advance. A student who does not renew tells you a month before the calendar goes quiet.

What it costs you

Set against that, honestly:

• You owe lessons you have not taught. Money in the account is not money earned. Spend it as though it were and a run of make-ups in a slow month becomes a genuine problem.
• Refunds get complicated. Someone will move, or stop, with credit left. Decide the answer now, not then.
• A discount is permanent. Discount a package by 10% and you have cut your rate by 10% for every student who takes it, forever. That may be a fine trade for the admin you save — but make it deliberately, from the floor you worked out when you set your rate.

Sizing the package

The instinct is to sell as many lessons as possible. Resist it: bigger packages carry bigger obligations and more refund risk, and past a certain size they simply stop selling.

Four to ten covers almost everyone. Start a new student on the smallest size — a first package is a trial of you as much as the reverse, and a small one is a much easier yes.

Rules worth setting in advance

Four decisions, made once, prevent nearly every dispute a package can generate:

1. Does the credit expire? Some limit is reasonable — a term, six months — otherwise you carry obligations indefinitely. Say it up front and be generous about extending it for a real reason.
2. Are unused lessons refundable? The fair default is to refund unused credit at your standard single-lesson rate, so the discount is only earned by using the package. Write that sentence down before anyone asks.
3. How do cancellations interact? A late cancellation should consume a lesson from the package exactly as it would bill a single lesson. Otherwise prepaying quietly buys immunity from your cancellation policy.
4. What happens when it runs out? The renewal moment is the one that decides whether a student continues. It should never arrive as a surprise mid-lesson.

Tracking it without a spreadsheet

A package needs one number to be visible to both sides at all times: lessons remaining. If you keep it in your head, you will lose lessons. If you keep it in a spreadsheet, you will lose the spreadsheet.

What makes tracking reliable is that consuming credit is not a separate act of bookkeeping — teaching the lesson is what draws it down. When the record updates itself, the balance is always current, the student can see it too, and the renewal conversation starts one lesson before the credit runs out rather than one lesson after.

That is how memore handles a bundle: a payment posts as credit, each completed lesson draws against it, and both sides see the same remaining number. The mechanics are in how lesson bundles are billed.

So: should you?

Offer packages if you teach regular, recurring lessons to students who have already had a few — that is where the commitment effect and the admin saving are both real.

Do not push them on a first lesson, on irregular or drop-in students, or on anyone hesitant enough that the size of the payment is itself the obstacle. For those, a single lesson paid promptly is worth more than a package that never quite gets bought.

And whichever you offer, state the terms before the money moves. Almost every argument about a package is an argument about something nobody wrote down.