Building a timetable in September is the easy bit. The hard part comes afterwards: a student whose football training moves to Tuesdays, a teacher who is off sick, half term landing a week differently from last year, and three cancelled lessons that "still need making up". Without a system, the owner keeps all of that in their head. That works until the day it doesn't, and it is usually a parent who points it out.
Building a music lesson timetable in five steps
Whether you schedule in Musicdott, in another tool or on paper, doing it in this order saves a lot of reshuffling.
- 1
Map out availability first
Which teacher can teach when, and which rooms do you have? That is your playing field. Without it you end up juggling individual requests from parents before you know what is actually possible.
- 2
Enter the school holidays
Do this before you schedule anything. You immediately know how many teaching weeks your year has, which you need for setting termly or monthly fees.
- 3
Schedule weekly lesson series
One series per student: same day, same time, same teacher. Fill the slots everyone wants (straight after school) first, and offer the quieter times to adults and home-educated students.
- 4
Leave room for make-ups
A completely full timetable has nowhere to put a missed lesson. A few free slots per teacher per week save you a lot of awkward conversations.
- 5
Write down your cancellation policy
How much notice must a student give? How many lessons per year do you make up, and within what period? Put it in your terms so you are not negotiating it every time.
Weekly lesson series instead of one-off appointments
Music lessons are almost always weekly at the same time. So in Musicdott you don't book individual appointments; you create a lesson series: every Tuesday at 4pm, thirty minutes, with this teacher in this room, starting on this date. The individual lessons are generated from that series, skipping the holidays and closure days you entered once for the year. If something changes for a single week, you change only that lesson. When a student stops, the series gets an end date and the lesson history stays in theirstudent record.
If you accidentally put two students with the same teacher at the same time, you get a warning. That check also works when you pick a date outside the week you are currently viewing, so you don't discover a double booking on the day itself.
Make-up lessons without a spreadsheet
Make-up lessons quietly eat time in every music school. A lesson is cancelled, you promise to make it up, and three weeks later nobody remembers whether it happened. In Musicdott you mark a cancelled lesson as one to be made up. It goes onto a separate make-up list, colour-coded by how long it has been waiting: green for up to two weeks, orange up to a month and red after that.
For every open make-up lesson you see suggested free slots with the same teacher over the next two weeks, at the same lesson length. Musicdott takes into account the teacher's availability, existing lessons, weekly series, holidays and rooms, and picks the slots closest to the original lesson time on each day. You choose one and the make-up lesson is in the timetable. One condition: the teacher needs to have entered their availability. If you want to think through your policy first, it helps to readpredictability as strength: a clear, consistent rule is kinder to everyone than case-by-case exceptions.
What is included, and what comes with the Manager add-on?
| Feature | Every plan | With Manager (€19.95/month) |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly lesson series, holidays, rooms | Yes | Yes |
| Double-booking warning | Yes | Yes |
| Make-up lessons with suggested slots | Yes | Yes |
| iCal calendar feed and email reminder the day before | Yes | Yes |
| Teacher off sick: cancel a whole day and email the students | Lesson by lesson | In one go |
| Online trial-lesson booking on your own website | No | Yes |
| Teacher hours per month, month closing, CSV export | No | Yes |
Trial lessons booked through your website use the same availability as the timetable, so a visitor can only choose a slot that is genuinely free. More on the Manager page, and on adding trial-lesson booking to your existing school website with one line of code on thetrial lessons and chat page.
Students, parents and teachers know where they stand
Your school's timetable is available as an iCal subscription for Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook. It is a one-way feed: you make changes in Musicdott and they appear in the calendar. Students with an email address get a reminder the day before their lesson. Parents see the schedule in their own parent login, with one login covering siblings. Teachers see their own timetable, and the owner sees the whole school.
What Musicdott's scheduling doesn't do
To be straightforward about it: there is no drag-and-drop calendar for moving lessons around, and no two-way sync with Google Calendar. Musicdott is built around individual weekly lessons, not large group classes with termly registration. If your school runs mainly on group courses, choirs or ensembles, compare a few tools before deciding; our buyer's checklist helps.
More than a timetable
Scheduling keeps a school running, but it doesn't help students improve. In Musicdott the same lesson in the timetable opens the lesson content, the lesson notes and the practice log, so what happens between lessons is visible too. See how that works on the practice trackingpage. Teaching on your own? Have a look at software for music teachers.
Plans start at €29.95 a month excluding VAT for 1 teacher and 25 students, with the first month free and monthly cancellation. Details on the pricing page.