Package Billing FAQs: Tracking Package Balances Efficiently

If you sell packages of lessons/hours to your clients, you can easily track package balances in the Package Balances table. This table shows useful information related to the packages you sell, including the number of lessons/hours that have been purchased, scheduled, unscheduled, user, unused and overused. Any overages are indicated in red, making it easy to identify which clients to bill for additional packages.

If your company is larger, or if you sell a significant number of packages, you may want a more automated solution to keep track of package balances.

In this fourth article in our Package Billing FAQ series, we’ll answer the following question: “How do I track package balances without having to check the Package Balances table all the time?”

What Is Package Billing And Why Is Tracking So Important?

Package billing is one of Teachworks’ non-hourly billing methods. With this billing method, you generate a package invoice for a specific number of lessons/hours of a particular service. When a package invoice is created for a client, a corresponding record is added to the Package Balances table. As lessons are scheduled and completed in the calendar, the remaining balance is updated automatically.

Tracking package balances is essential for package billing since it allows you to know when it’s time to generate another invoice to top up your clients’ packages.

For more information about the package billing method, visit our knowledge base: Package Billing Method

The Solution to the FAQ:

In addition to the Package Balances table, Teachworks offers the features below that can help to speed up the process of tracking/managing package balances. You can enable one or a combination of them according to your specific requirements:

• Seeing a package balance when scheduling lessons
• The Package Balance Alerts Add-on
• The Package Balance Validation Add-on

In the sections below, we’ll look at each option in more detail.

1. Seeing a package balance when scheduling lessons

If you’ve set a student’s billing method on their profile to “Package”, you’ll be able to see how many package lessons/hours they have available when you schedule a new lesson. This balance appears in brackets after the package service.

This method reduces the need to check the Package Balances table before scheduling additional lessons for a student. It’s also useful if your teachers manage their own schedules, since they will have the information readily available at the time of scheduling.

2. The Package Balance Alerts Add-on

The Package Balance Alerts Add-on allows you to send email alerts to your company and/or clients when their unused package lessons or hours reach a specified level. 

Receiving an email each time a client’s package is running low makes it quick and easy to take action right away and generate another package invoice for them. If you would like to learn more about this add-on, you may want to visit our knowledge base: Package Balance Alerts Add-on

If you’re looking for a self service option for your clients, you can use the Package Balance Alerts Add-on in combination with our Stripe Integration and Package Purchases Add-on. This will allow you to include a purchase link in your package balance alert email to allow your clients to purchase additional lessons/hours. If you would like to learn more, you can find more information here: Package Purchases Add-on

3. The Package Balance Validation Add-on

The Package Validation Add-on allows you to prevent administrators and teachers from scheduling more lessons/hours than a student has available in their package. You can also choose a warning option, allowing scheduling with a heads-up. 

Being alerted or prevented from scheduling lessons makes it obvious when students are out of package lessons/hours and allows you to take action quickly. 

For more information about this add-on, visit our knowledge base: Package Balance Validation Add-on

This concludes our Package Billing FAQs series and we hope that these articles have given you a better understanding of our Package Billing Method and how you can use it for your tutoring business.

You can access the other articles in this series below:

• Package Billing FAQs: How To Transfer Package Lessons Between Packages
• Package Billing FAQs: Using A Combination Of Package And Hourly Billing
• Package Billing FAQs: Past Lessons Reducing New Package Balance

If you have any more questions, you can visit our knowledge base or send our support team a message!

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