Help for staff

Getting around the staff app

Where the menus are on a computer, a tablet and a phone, and how to find any page quickly.

Your Today page

What the Today page shows when you sign in, and how to get from it to the roll, the wrap-up and the classroom.

Marking the roll

Mark each student present, late, absent or excused, including every student in a group lesson.

Wrapping up a lesson

Write your lesson notes, the update for the family and the homework in one place, and save them together.

Lesson notes and files

Add notes and files to a lesson for staff only or for the family, see files the family added, and see the students' upcoming exams.

Marking homework

Find hand-ins waiting to be marked, check the AI first pass, give a grade and feedback, and return the work.

Group lessons

Book one lesson for several students, and how the roll, charges, rooms and pay work for a group.

Several tutors on one lesson

Add a second or third tutor to a lesson, such as a workshop or a large group, and pay each of them.

Quick tools

A drawer of everyday tools: timers, lists, notes, a calculator, a dictionary and a word counter.

Maths tools for staff

Use the maths tools in lessons, present them on a big screen, and send a picture to the lesson board.

Moving a lesson on the calendar

Drag a lesson to a new time, length or tutor, check what the change does, then save or undo it.

Booking and repeating lessons

Book a lesson from the calendar or the New lesson form, and make it repeat with every date checked first.

Your calendar on a phone

See your lessons on My calendar, and move one from your phone with the same check the centre calendar uses.

When lessons are managed in Teachworks

What changes while your centre keeps its lessons in Teachworks, and why the past lesson reminder asks you to mark them there.

Seeing your lessons in another calendar

Subscribe to your lessons from Google, Apple or Outlook calendar, and connect two-way sync where your centre has it.

The school exam calendar

Turn the exam notices families attach into your centre's calendar of school assessment dates, and see the busy weeks for revision sessions and staffing.

Asking for leave

Ask for time you cannot teach, whole days or part of a day, and see what happens to your lessons while the office decides.

Weekly group classes

Run a timetabled weekly class with a roster, a seat limit, term dates and a waitlist.

Cancelling one child's place in a group

Take one child out of one week of a group lesson, for the family or for the centre, without touching anyone else.

Letting families book lessons

Let parents book extra lessons, and trial lessons for new families, into open times under rules you set.

Answering booking requests

Choose whether families can book you, and accept or decline the lessons they ask for.

Finding a family

Search for a family by the family name, any parent's name, email or phone, or a child's name.

The family page

What each section of a family's page shows, and what you can change there.

Enrolment enquiries

Work through new enquiries, add one from a phone call, and turn an enquiry into a family.

Your enrolment form's questions

Choose which questions your public enrolment form asks, which are required, and add questions of your own.

Tutoring families, approvals and invite codes

Approve families who say they take tutoring with your centre, and make single-use invite codes that verify a family when they sign up.

Importing families and tutors from Teachworks

Bring your active families, students and tutors across from your own Teachworks account, with a preview first.

Importing from a spreadsheet

Create students, parents and tutors in bulk from a CSV file, or enrol whole families with Quick enrol.

Closing a child's account

Stop a student signing in, without deleting anything they did, and open the account again later if needed.

Moving every student up a year

Once a year, move every student up a school year in one go, with a preview, students who are repeating left alone, and an undo.

Family upgrades

What a tutoring family gets included, how to price extras, and how to add an upgrade to a family.

Custom fields and second contacts

Keep your own details on families, students and tutors, such as a pickup contact or a medical plan, and record a second parent or carer.

The tasks board

Share follow-ups with the office: give a task to a person or a role, set a due date, link it to a family and comment on it.

A student's own mobile and email

Keep a student's own mobile and email for emergency and operational notices only.

Tags and groups

Make your own labels for families and students, filter lists by them, save groups, and use them to choose who a Broadcast reaches.

Online enrolment agreements

Write the terms and consents families sign when they enrol, see who has signed, and print a signed copy.

Files on families, students and tutors

Attach signed forms, medical plans and reports to a family, a student or a tutor, and control who can open them.

Getting around the mailbox

Where your mail lives, what each folder is for, and how to read, archive, flag and file conversations.

Changing the mailbox layout

Put the reading pane on the right or below, fold the folders to icons, resize the list and read with nothing else on screen.

Writing and sending mail

Write a message, attach files, choose whether it is a promotion, and check it before it goes.

Undo send and Schedule send

Take a message back in the seconds after you send it, or choose a time for it to go.

Mail that needs a reply

The Needs reply view lists mail from families that you have not answered yet, oldest first.

Snooze and follow-up reminders

Hide a conversation until you can deal with it, or have it come back if nobody replies.

Mail templates

Start a message from a template, save your own, and share templates with everyone at your centre.

Filing mail automatically with rules

Mail rules file new messages by sender, subject or attachment: move to a folder, archive, flag or mark as read.

Mailbox keyboard shortcuts and search

Move through your mail with the keyboard, and search by sender, recipient, subject, attachments and more.

Draft with AI and Summarise

Let AI draft a reply or summarise a long conversation. Names and contact details are replaced before anything is sent.

Answering family messages from the portal

Messages families send through the parent portal arrive in your mailbox's Family support folder and are answered in the portal.

Forward shortcuts

Set up one-tap forward buttons, such as "send to accounts", for everyone at your centre.

Sending a broadcast

Send one message by email or text to many parents, tutors or students, as a promotion or as an operational notice.

Unsubscribes and bounces

See which email addresses and phone numbers your centre will not send to, and why, and lift a suppression when it is right to.

Notices in the app

Show a broadcast inside the app as a notice for parents, students or staff, and end it when it is no longer needed.

The message log

See every email and text the portal sent for your centre, and whether each one went.

The team inbox

Read and answer your centre's shared emails, texts, calls, voicemails and portal messages together in one list.

Assigning, comments and passing to a tutor

Share the work in the team inbox: assign conversations, leave comments for colleagues, mention them, link the family and pass a message to a tutor.

Setting up the team inbox

Connect your centre's Microsoft 365 mailboxes, choose the contact inbox, and decide who sees each inbox.

Making and taking calls

Use the dialler on any staff page, see what each call cost, and how unanswered calls become voicemails.

The call coach

During a call, see suggested replies and search your centre's own articles on prices, hours and policies.

Your notifications

Where your alerts appear, choose which ones you get by email, text or in the app, and turn on phone notifications.

Choosing how your centre charges families

Pick one of the four ways families pay, answer the GST question and set how much notice families get before a change.

Setting your cancellation rules

Decide when a cancellation is free, when a late fee applies, when the whole lesson is charged, and how long a makeup lasts.

Family balances and the ledger

Every charge, payment and credit is a line on the family's ledger. Lines are never edited; mistakes are corrected with a new line.

Recording a manual adjustment

Add a one-off charge, a goodwill credit or a write-down to a family's account, with a reason the family sees.

Sending invoices and recording payments

Check the weekly drafts, send them, and record a payment made outside the portal.

Credit notes and voiding an invoice

Reduce what an issued invoice asks for with a credit note, or void an invoice that should never have been sent.

Overdue invoices and failed payments

Where to find invoices past their due date and families whose bank debit failed.

Cancelling a lesson for a family

Record a cancellation a family asked for (for example on the phone), or cancel as the centre, and read the family the cost before you confirm.

Held late fees and makeups

A late cancellation fee waits for a set number of days and clears if the child attends a makeup in that time.

Selling lesson packs

Sell a block of lesson credits to a family, handle pack requests and refunds, and know what happens when credits run out.

Running a prepaid account for families

How the prepaid account works, the warning floor and the deposit bonus ladder.

Moving across from Teachworks

Hold all family charging until a start date, and keep lessons read only here while Teachworks still manages them.

Setting up online payments

Open your centre's payments account so families can pay invoices and top up by direct debit from their bank account.

Giving a sibling discount

Take a percentage off lessons for families with more than one child having lessons in the same week.

Invoice prefix, footer and late fee

Put your own prefix and footer on invoices, and optionally add a one-off late fee to invoices left unpaid.

Making promo codes

Create codes for a free trial lesson or money off lessons or a pack, and see how each code is used.

Split payers: when someone else pays

Let a grandparent, a second parent, an employer or a funding body pay all or part of a family's invoices.

Running a pay run

Build a pay run from completed lessons, check it, approve it, then export it to Xero or download it.

Setting pay rates

Give each tutor a base hourly rate, add subject or year level premiums, and change rates from a date.

Changing many pay rates and automatic rises

Raise many tutors' base rates at once, or set milestones that raise a tutor's rate on a birthday, after a number of lessons or after months with your centre.

Loyalty bonuses for tutors

Pay a one-off bonus when a tutor reaches a milestone, such as a year with your centre or 500 lessons taught.

Your pay and pay statements

For tutors: see what you are owed, read your pay statement for each pay run, and raise a question about a line.

Writing a document

Make a text document, format it, add tables, pictures, equations and footnotes, and get back an earlier version.

Page setup, contents and downloading

Set margins and borders, add a table of contents, find words, print, and download as Word or PDF.

Worksheets and answer keys

Mark the answers in a worksheet, add space to write, and hand out a student copy with the answers left blank.

Making a worksheet with AI

Describe a worksheet in a sentence and get a draft with the answers marked, or make an easier or harder copy.

Spreadsheets

Make a spreadsheet, use formulas, and open or save Excel and CSV files.

Mark book tools in spreadsheets

Add drop-down lists, tick boxes and colour scales to a spreadsheet, and keep them when you save to Excel.

Making slides

Build a slide deck, present it with speaker notes, and open or save PowerPoint files.

Using the whiteboard

Write and draw on the whiteboard with the pen, shapes, ruler, text, equations, graphs and pictures.

Whiteboard pages and the Students panel

Bring everyone to your page, give each student a page of their own, and watch their work live.

Sharing a document

Choose who can see or edit a document, whiteboard, spreadsheet, deck or design, and why parents are added when you share with a child.

My files and the Team library

Where to keep files, who can see each space, and how to share a file with a student.

The Design Studio

Make flyers, posters, social posts and certificates in your centre's brand, from a template or with Magic design.

QR codes and class certificates

Put a QR code to your enrolment form on a flyer, see how many enquiries it brought, and print a certificate for every student in a class.

Centre details, staying on brand and downloads

Link a text box to your opening hours or prices so it stays up to date, keep designs on brand, and download for print or the web.

Teaching an online lesson

Join your online lesson, check your camera, let students in and run the lesson.

Tools in the online classroom

Mute and camera, reactions and raised hands, polls, captions and screen sharing in an online lesson or staff meeting.

Ending an online lesson and confirming the roll

End the lesson for everyone, then confirm the roll the classroom filled in from who was connected.

Staff meetings

Start or schedule a video meeting with your staff, share an agenda and a whiteboard, and run it as host.

Meeting notes

Let the meeting take notes from what is said, edit the draft, share it, or keep a meeting confidential.

Switching on home tutoring

Turn on lessons at students' homes, choose when a tutor sees a family's address, and set where you travel.

Home visit rules and the code of conduct

Write your centre's own rules for lessons in homes, decide how each one works, and ask families to accept your code of conduct.

The address book and who sees an address

Add a family's visit address and home notes, and understand exactly who can see them and when.

A tutor's home visit day

Tell the family you are on your way, check in and out, report a lesson that cannot start, and get help quietly.

Travel pay, travel fees and spacing for home lessons

Pay tutors for getting to a home, charge families a travel fee, and set a shortest visit and a gap between visits.

Matching tutors by distance for home lessons

Tutors enter the suburb they live in, and Find a tutor and cover suggestions rank who is closest to a family's home.

Letting families keep their own home details

Let families add their address, access notes and photos, send day-before reminders, and give them a first-visit checklist.

Doing your training

Find the training your centre requires, work through interactive lessons, pass the test and get your certificate.

Live training sessions

Inductions, workshops and shadowing sessions: answer an invitation, join on the day, and for admins, schedule one and mark who came.

Managing your centre's training

Give staff training with templates and rules, see who is behind, manage subject clearances, and choose booking checks, paid time and reminder emails.

A subject test for job applicants

Send a tutor applicant a one-time link to a subject test before you hire, and read their result.

The setup checklist

The five stages that get a new centre ready to open, what each step needs and which steps you can leave for later.

Turning features on

See every feature your centre can use in one place, whether it is on, and turn it on yourself or ask XTutio.

Your centre's details, branding and safety contacts

Set your centre's name, ABN, time zone, logo and colours, web address, safety alert contacts and two-step sign-in rule.

Campuses and opening hours

Add your campuses, set each one's opening hours, and switch a campus off when it closes.

Rooms, shared rooms and room occupancy

Add rooms to each campus, mark a room as shared, and see who is in every room now, through the day and across the week.

Floor plans and desk seating

Draw each campus with its rooms, desks and useful places, and let the portal seat every lesson at a desk.

Wall screens and the notice board

Put a campus's rooms on a TV in the foyer, choose what students' names look like, and post notices to the screens.

Connecting your services

Connect email, video, payments, Teachworks and other services, choose between your own account and the platform's, and test each connection.

Choosing your email domain

Pick the domain your centre's email and staff mailboxes use, add a new one, and check its DNS records.

Online lesson settings

Turn on the online classroom, choose how families come in, what parents may do, and whether lessons are recorded or noted.

Roles and permissions

What each staff role can do, how to change what a role can do at your centre, and how to give one person something extra or take something away.

Using your centre's own words

Rename student, tutor, lesson, centre, campus and family so the portal uses the words your centre uses.

Your centre's own subjects

Add subjects your centre teaches that are not on the standard list, and hide standard subjects you do not teach.

Sending events to other apps with webhooks

Send events such as new enquiries, bookings and payments to Zapier, Make, Slack or a spreadsheet as they happen.

Using the API

Make an API key so your website or another system can read your centre's data and send in enquiries.

Inviting staff

Add a tutor, admin or other staff member to your centre and email them a link to set their password.

Accounts that need a review

Sort out people who signed up themselves and tutors who were never set up, from one filtered list.

Inviting families and tutors

Send the families and tutors you imported a welcome email (and a text) in waves, edit what it says, see who has signed in, and set who answers parents' messages.

Family feedback and the Google review ask

Read how families feel, follow up unhappy answers, see lesson ratings by tutor, and optionally ask happy families for a Google review.

Re-enrolment for next term

Offer each family their usual time for next term with their progress review, see who has kept it, and book the lessons.

The waitlist

Keep families waiting for a full time, and offer a freed time to the family who has waited longest and suits it.

New families, win-back and loyalty

Watch each new family's first six weeks, send a personal note to families who stopped, and thank long-standing families with bonus credit.

The family referral offer

Run a refer-a-friend offer where both families get account credit, set its numbers, and check referrals that were flagged.

The tutor pulse

A short, anonymous check-in once a term for tutors and staff about the centre, with results shown only as totals.

Tutor referrals

Tutors and staff refer someone for a job, and earn a bonus once the new tutor has taught enough lessons.

Leavers and exit surveys

Record why a family leaves, ask a departing tutor why they are going, and see the reasons over time on the Leavers page.

Pack reminders, plan suggestions and free assessments

Remind parents when a pack is running low, show parents a priced suggestion when a child keeps reaching for something not on their plan, and offer a free first assessment.

The enquiry button for your website

Put an Enquire button on your own website that opens your enrolment form, with each enquiry marked From your website.

Last-minute openings

Find your tutors' open times in the coming days and offer them to suitable families, who can book with one tap.

Automations

Set up "when this happens, do that" rules, such as a task when an enquiry has waited a day, starting from ready-made recipes.

The centre overview

The owner's dashboard: what needs a decision, how the week is going, and a quick way to any admin page.

The owner's scorecard

The figures an owner watches in one place: families, revenue, attendance, seat use, enquiries and costs, each against last month.

End-of-term reports for parents

How the end-of-term report is drafted, edited by the tutor, approved and sent to parents, and the settings an admin chooses.

Writing termly progress reviews

Check, edit and approve the short review each student's parents get near the end of term.

Tutor retention

See how many of each tutor's students stayed, moved to another tutor or left the centre, with quiet flags worth a look.

Two-step sign-in

Set up a code from an authenticator app, keep your recovery codes safe, and what to do if you lose your phone.

Switching a staff sign-in off

Stop a staff member signing in, for example when they leave, without deleting anything, and switch them back on later.

View as another role

See the portal as a tutor, receptionist or another role would, to check what your team can see, without changing anything.

Reporting a safety concern as staff

How to use Report incident to log a safety, behaviour or wellbeing concern about a child, and what happens next.

Security alert emails for admins

The emails your centre's admins get about unusual sign-ins and sensitive changes, and what to do when one arrives.

Working with children checks and tutor compliance

Record and verify each tutor's working with children check, watch expiry dates, and check tutors booked in Teachworks.