Jan 02, 2019
The new year is upon us, and with the blank slate of 2019 ahead, it can only mean one thing—it’s resolution time. While the dry January folks are teetotaling and the gym-goers are dusting off their running shoes, we have a few ideas to help you focus on the health of your business. These six resolutions will help your tutoring business hit the ground running in 2019 (no exercise gear required), and set you up for success you can raise a toast to a year from now.
Set up auto-pay for clients
It’s a new year and the books are clean. Keep them that way by setting clients up for auto-pay. You’ll help ensure payments don’t get missed or forgotten, ensure steady cash flow to keep operations running smoothly, and avoid the administrative hassle of sending payment reminders and tacking late fees onto invoices. Clark’s tutoring software makes this process easy, saving authorized payment methods for your clients and billing them according to their tutoring package and payment schedule.
Lock your tutoring schedules in for the rest of the school year
Get organized early and stay that way through the end of the school year (it’ll be here before you know it). Confirm tutoring schedules with both clients and tutors to have a clear view of how many more clients you can take on to maximize your company’s billable hours. Clark’s brand new scheduling feature has both a tutor view (so your individual tutors can see and update their calendar on the go) and a company-wide view that lets admins and owners view all of their tutors’ workloads and availability at once.
Offer online sessions
Reach even more clients (and cut commute times for your tutors) by offering online sessions. These days, video conferencing software and online collaboration tools work well enough to almost mimic an in-person tutoring experience, and the increased flexibility of letting tutors work from anywhere can not only give your existing tutors more time, it can enable you to hire tutors with special expertise that might not be located in your immediate vicinity. Keep an eye out in the first part of this year for Clark’s new online session tool, which will make offering online sessions even easier by integrating with the rest of our tools.
Report on student progress
Commit to regularly reporting on student progress. Tracking and communicating student progress in real-time is key to retaining students in a competitive industry. Clark’s session reporting tool is easy to use, with a mobile-friendly interface that lets tutors fill it out on the go. It provides a template for confirming, rating, and recapping sessions that ensures reports are always thorough and consistent, and it sends reports automatically with your name and logo on them, so communications are always timely and on-brand. Make sure that tutors are reporting on social and emotional progress as well as academic. Sharing insights into accomplishments and obstacles related to the interpersonal skills and general well-being of students reminds parents how invested you are in their overall growth and long-term success—not just a single subject, project, or test.
Start sending notifications to clients
Avoid missed sessions or late payments by sending simple reminders to your clients. Regular, branded communications keep your company and their commitments top of mind, and can help make sure that appointments and payments don’t slip through the cracks. One of our customers decreased their late payments from 75% to 0% after using Clark invoicing and payment reminders. Clark lets you automate and customize these notifications, so your messages to client always look and sound like you, go out when you need them to, and reach the clients who need to see them.
Plan your summer bootcamps
Avoid a seasonal slowdown by planning your summer tutoring bootcamps now. Hourly sessions can dip once students are out of the schoolyear routine, and maintaining a consistent weekly session schedule can be hard—between vacations, camps, and other commitments, every week of summer break can look different than the next. Organize and publicize your summer bootcamps early to get them on your clients’ radar and booked up as soon as possible. Clark’s scheduling, billing, and client-facing marketing tools make planning and managing sign-ups for these focused
Take advantage of the new year energy to set yourself up for success in the twelve months to come. Whatever business resolutions you’re making in 2019, Clark can help.
