Audience: Riding school owners, equestrian centre managers and solo instructors
Overview
Riding School Management is Horsify's booking and day-to-day operations toolkit for riding schools, equestrian centres and independent coaches. It gives you an appointment book for lessons and facility hire, online booking through your own club site, instructor profiles and availability, school horse records with workload tracking, client profiles, lesson packages, gift vouchers, e-signature waivers, lesson enquiries and student progress tracking — all in one place.
This article is the map of the whole feature set. Each section tells you where a tool lives, what it does, and which detailed guide to read next.
Subscription
Two plans include the riding school tools:
| Plan | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Instructor | $15/month | A coach teaching on their own — one instructor profile (you), lesson bookings, clients, availability, horses, facilities, waivers, packages, gift vouchers, student progress, payments and your own booking page. |
| Riding School | $39/month | A school with a team — everything in Instructor, plus unlimited instructors, the Booking Hours page for school-horse bookings, and a riding school site set up for you when you subscribe. Includes all Premium features (email marketing, member management and the rest). |
Most of the toolkit — school horses, facilities, waivers, lesson packages, gift vouchers and student progress — is on both plans. The practical question is whether you teach on your own or with a team.
Both are standalone plans — you don't need a Basic or Premium subscription first — and both come with a 60-day free trial. Online payments from clients cost 2.5% + 30c per transaction, all-in (Stripe's card processing included), or the Riding School plan can connect your own Stripe account and pay Horsify nothing per transaction. Manage your plan under Organiser → Finances → Subscription.
Club Site Premium ($59/month plus a one-off setup fee) also includes the riding school tools, alongside a full club website. The $10 Club Site plan does not.
On the Instructor plan the same pages appear with first-person labels (Your Bookings, Your Clients, Your Profile, Your Horses, Your Facilities, Your Waivers), and Booking Hours and Staff Roster are hidden. See Instructor Tier - Solo Instructor Guide for the differences.
Where to find everything
On horsify.com.au, open the Organiser menu and expand Riding School. It has one row per area, in order: Bookings, Clients, Instructors, Staff Roster, School Horses, Facilities and Programs & Packages. The other pages of an area are tabs under its page title: Enquiries, Progress and Waivers under Clients, Booking Hours under Instructors, the Day Sheet under School Horses, and Packages and Gift Vouchers under Programs & Packages. The curriculum opens from Progress, and your riding school page settings are under Organiser → Settings → Riding School. On a phone, tap the menu button, scroll to the Organiser heading and expand Riding School — the phone menu carries the same items.
On your own club site, the same rows sit directly under Organiser (no submenu), alongside Dashboard, Manage Site, Analytics, Club Site & Theme, Messages and Settings.
The Organiser Dashboard has an Events / Bookings switch beside its Quick Access tiles. The Bookings view — the default for riding schools — shows a New Booking tile and one tile for each row of the Riding School menu (Bookings, Clients, Instructors, Staff Roster, School Horses, Facilities, Programs & Packages), a New Enquiries panel, and your upcoming, recent or all bookings with the amount owing on each. The tiles and the menu are built from the same list, so they always match.
Instructors who have a Horsify account also get My day in their profile menu (see Instructors below).
Menu not showing? The Riding School menu appears once your organisation has a Riding School or Instructor subscription. Clubs on another plan that have riding school features added must also bring their riding school page online (the Your riding school page card under Settings) before the menu appears.
Help while you work
Every riding school page has a ? beside its heading. It opens the help article for that page in a new tab, so you don't have to come looking for it — on the Bookings page it opens this article, on Booking Hours it opens Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours, and so on.
Getting set up: Riding School Page Settings
Organiser → Settings → Riding School (Riding School Page Settings) is where you manage your public riding school presence and define what you sell.
- Your riding school page card — shows your public page's state (Live, Draft, Not set up or Offline) with its address and Edit / View / Publish actions. If you don't yet have a club site, its Enable Riding School Site button sets one up for you (site address, default theme and starter pages) and shows a Getting Started Checklist: theme, instructors added, lesson types configured, payment processing set up, and pointing your Google Business Profile at your Horsify site. Take bookings offline (under More options) turns the public pages off after a confirmation; your content and bookings are kept and you can bring it back online at any time.
- Riding School URL Slug and Riding School App Bar Title — your public address under horsify.com.au/riding-school/ and the title shown in the site header (blank uses your organisation name).
- Navigation Menu — Show "Book Now" button in navigation and Show "Our Instructors" link in navigation (both on by default).
- School Horse Charging — optionally charge an hourly rate when a client uses a school horse.
- Lesson Pricing — price lessons by instructor (each instructor's own rate for the lesson type; the default) or by lesson type (one flat price per lesson type regardless of instructor).
- Lesson Types — the menu of what you offer: name, description, lesson duration and the time it blocks in the diary, price, whether it allows group bookings and the maximum participants, and whether it's active. Every booking is made against a lesson type, so set these up first.
The landing page's own content (hero, text, which blocks appear) is built in the club site page builder using the standard content blocks; the settings page tells you which page slug to edit. See Riding School Setup Guide (End to End) for a start-to-finish walkthrough.
Bookings: the appointment book
Organiser → Riding School → Bookings is your diary for lessons and facility hire.
- Calendar View (the default) shows every booking across instructors in Day, Week, Work Week, Month and Timeline views. Filter by instructor or status, colour by status or by instructor, tick Staff view for one column per instructor, and use Block out time to close the whole school for a period (a clinic, a public holiday) — blocked time is hidden from the client booking pages and shown to your team as a dashed diary block. Click a booking to Confirm, Complete, Cancel, refund a payment (see Refunds below) or open its details.
- List View shows bookings for a date range (today plus seven days by default) with a status filter, and per-row actions: view, Confirm a pending booking, Approve or Reject a client's cancellation request (approving cancels the lesson but refunds nothing — if the client paid, make the refund from the booking's card or from Payments, see Refunds below), Mark as Paid (amount, method — Cash, Bank Transfer, Cheque, EFTPOS, Other — date and notes), Edit and Cancel (with a reason).
- New Booking offers Book Lesson or Facility Hire.
Booking a lesson for a client: choose the client (or Add New Client on the spot), the instructor (or leave the instructor to be assigned later), the lesson type — which sets the duration and price — then pick from the instructor's Available Times, or tick Manually create lesson (overrides validation) to enter any date and time. Optionally choose the arena, a school horse (or Client using own horse), the maximum participants for a group lesson, client-visible and staff-only notes, pay from a client's lesson package, tick Generate Payment Link to email a secure Stripe payment link, and make the booking recurring (weekly or fortnightly, up to 52 occurrences, choosing what to do when a time isn't free). If the client has no signed waiver, one is emailed to them automatically when the booking is created.
Booking details show the who/what/when, group participants, add-ons, notes, the payment position (price, paid, owing, and a Send Payment Reminder button), reminder history, and any cancellation request awaiting your decision.
Booking statuses are Pending, Confirmed, Checked In, Completed, Cancelled, No Show, Waitlisted and Pending Cancellation. Bookings made online with an instructor lesson, or paid online, start as Pending until you (or the instructor) confirm them; clients are told they'll get an email once confirmed. When a client cancels a confirmed booking themselves it becomes Pending Cancellation for you to approve or reject.
Online booking for clients
▶ Watch: Booking a riding lesson (1:03)
▶ Watch: Checking your upcoming lesson (1:10)
With the landing page enabled, clients book from your club site's Book Now page, which asks What would you like to book? and offers, as you have them: Lessons (choose an instructor), Packages (buy a block of lessons outright), Programs & events (your upcoming events), Trail & horse rides (choose a school horse first; the instructor is assigned by you later) and Facility hire (choose a facility). A row only appears when there is something in it. Each booking flow is a short wizard — lesson type, date and time, contact details — that adds the booking to the cart, and the client pays at checkout. Visitors who aren't signed in are asked to sign in or create an account at the details step, then carry on where they left off. Deposits or full-payment-upfront rules come from the instructor's lesson rates. If online booking isn't set up yet, the page points visitors to the lesson enquiry form instead.
Signed-in clients see their bookings under My Lessons (profile menu → My lessons), with Upcoming, Past, Cancelled and Packages tabs. From there they can open the details, request a cancellation, or Book again from a past lesson. If you tick Let clients reschedule their own lessons online (Settings → Riding School → Online Lesson Bookings), they can also Reschedule an upcoming lesson to another available time — same lesson and coach, with your booking rules applied — up to the cut-off you choose; inside the cut-off they're asked to contact you instead. Without the setting they see no Reschedule button. They don't pay from there.
Which times a client is offered depends on which flow they use — see Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours for the three separate schedules (booking hours for horse-first bookings, instructor availability for lessons, facility availability for hire).
Instructors
Organiser → Riding School → Instructors lists your teaching staff with their employment type, commission and Active status; Add Instructor creates a profile.
- Profile — name, email, phone, biography (shown publicly), photo, employment type (Full Time, Part Time, Casual, Contractor), commission %, Active, Bookable Online, display order and calendar colour.
- Send Horsify sign-up invite (on by default when adding) — the instructor gets a sign-up link, or is linked automatically if they already have a Horsify account. This is what unlocks My day for them.
- Use the club's booking hours as their availability (when adding) — copies your Booking Hours into their weekly schedule as a starting point. An instructor with no availability cannot be booked, so either tick this or set their hours next.
- Availability — on the instructor's detail page: a Calendar View where you drag to create weekly or one-off available slots, block out time, or Block Dates for holidays and leave, and a List View of the weekly schedule. Slots can be limited to a venue or facility.
- Qualifications — name, issuing organisation, certificate number, date obtained, expiry and notes; the public instructor listing shows current qualifications.
- Lesson Rates — the price (inc. GST) for each lesson type, with optional Requires Deposit (percentage or fixed) or Requires Full Payment Upfront.
My day (profile menu → My day) gives each instructor their own view, built for a phone at the arena: the Day (today's lessons with check in, no show, complete, a lesson note and horse allocation), the Week (their roster shifts and timesheets, if they're on the roster), a Calendar of just their lessons with a Calendar Feed — a private link to subscribe in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook, which can be regenerated or revoked — and their Availability editor. Confirming, moving and cancelling lessons stay with the office. (Until September 2026 this was the Instructor Dashboard; its old address still works.)
See Instructor Management System and Syncing Your Instructor Calendar to Apple Calendar.
School Horses
Organiser → Riding School → School Horses holds the horses used for lessons.
Each horse card shows its status, whether it's available, any current injury, this week's workload against its limits, when farrier, worming, dental and vet care are next due, and its suitability. Add Horse / Edit records:
- Horse Information — stable name, sex, date of birth, breed, colour and photo.
- Suitability & Restrictions — Suitable For Level (Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, All Levels), minimum and maximum rider age, maximum rider weight, and which lesson types the horse may be used for.
- Workload Management — Max Hours Per Day and Max Hours Per Week; the horse drops out of online availability once it would exceed them.
- Notes & Care Instructions — temperament, handling notes, feeding notes, and a public Horse Description (about 300 words) shown on your site.
- Availability — Status (Active, Retired, Spelling, Inactive, In Training), Available for Lessons, Bookable Online and an unavailability reason. A horse can be booked online only when it is Active, Available for Lessons and Bookable Online.
The horse's detail page adds vaccination records, maintenance reminders and its feed plan. Delete removes a horse permanently if it has never been booked; a horse with any bookings is set to Inactive and made unavailable instead, so your history stays intact — the confirmation tells you which will happen.
Facilities and facility hire
Organiser → Riding School → Facilities shows each bookable facility on your venue with three tabs: Availability Settings (weekly hours and blocked dates), Rate Cards (hourly, half-day and full-day prices, with optional day, time-of-day and seasonal conditions) and a read-only Booking Calendar. Clients hire facilities online by the hour, half day or full day, and you can book on their behalf via Bookings → New Booking → Facility Hire.
See Facilities and Facility Hire for the full guide, and Venue Facilities for adding facilities to your venue.
Booking Hours
Organiser → Riding School → Instructors → Booking Hours sets the weekly window for online bookings where the client doesn't name a coach — the horse-first flow, and lessons booked without choosing an instructor if you have that turned on. A lesson booked with a named instructor follows that instructor's own availability instead, and facility hire follows the facility's. Until you save this page, those bookings default to 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM every day.
See Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours.
Clients
Organiser → Riding School → Clients is your list of the people who take lessons.
- Search by name, email or phone; filter All, Active, Inactive or Pending Waiver; switch between cards and a table; and Export CSV of the filtered list.
- Each client has riding details (experience level, preferred lesson type, weight, height, medical conditions, dietary requirements, special needs), guardians and emergency contacts, and a Horsify account link once they've accepted an invitation.
- Per-client actions: Add alert (a Warning or Info banner your team sees), Waiver history (including Send waiver request), Lesson packages (sell and track), view/edit details and edit contact details. Contact details are locked once the client manages their own Horsify account.
- New clients are created from the booking forms (Add New Client); giving an email address sends them an invitation (valid 30 days) to create their Horsify account for online booking. Clients who book online are added automatically.
See Client Management.
Lesson Packages
Organiser → Riding School → Programs & Packages → Packages sells blocks of lessons at a set price — for example a 10-lesson group block.
Create a package with a name, description and lesson type, then one or more block sizes — each with its own number of lessons, total price, validity in days and whether that size is on sale online. The page shows the per-lesson price for each. Packages sell two ways: online, where the client buys through your Book Now page or riding school page and pays on your own Stripe account (credits appear once the payment lands), and at the front desk from the Clients page (Lesson packages → Sell a package → Record sale), which adds the credits immediately while you collect payment however the client is paying. The client's remaining credits ("x of y left") and expiry are shown there, and when booking a lesson (yourself or the client online) you can pay with the lesson package, which uses one credit and takes no payment. Cancelling a package-paid lesson returns the credit. Deactivate a package to stop selling it — blocks already sold keep working.
See Lesson Packages for the full walkthrough, including validity periods, the lesson-type rule, what editing a package does (and doesn't do) to blocks already sold, and troubleshooting.
Gift Vouchers
Organiser → Riding School → Programs & Packages → Gift Vouchers issues and tracks vouchers.
Issue Voucher takes a value and validity in days, optional recipient and purchaser names and emails, and a message; Horsify generates a unique code. Filter by Active, Fully redeemed, Expired or Cancelled, see the remaining balance on each, and Cancel a voucher that's still active. Vouchers can't yet be bought by clients online or entered at checkout, so redeem them by hand: apply the value when you take payment (for example via Mark as Paid) and keep the voucher list up to date.
Waivers
Organiser → Riding School → Clients → Waivers manages your waiver templates.
Create a template with a name, description, type (General Liability, Photo Release, Medical Consent, Equipment Use, Other), the waiver text, and whether it requires annual renewal and a guardian signature for minors. An active template is emailed automatically to a client without a signed waiver when you create their booking, and you can send it any time from the client's Waiver history. The client opens a secure link, reads the waiver, types their full legal name and signs on screen (a parent or guardian signs for a minor); the signature is time-stamped and recorded. Use the Pending Waiver filter on the Clients page to see who's outstanding.
Enquiries
Organiser → Riding School → Clients → Enquiries is the inbox for the Riding Lesson Enquiry form on your club site (name, contact details, rider's age, riding experience, own horse, lesson type of interest, preferred days and times, questions).
New enquiries are highlighted as unread and counted on the Organiser Dashboard; View opens the details and Reply by Email opens a reply in your own email program. Enquiries are read/unread only — there's no further pipeline, so follow up by creating the client and booking when they're ready.
Lesson waitlists
When a group lesson is full it doesn't vanish from your public booking wizard — it is shown as a full slot with a Join the waitlist option, along with how many riders are already waiting. Riders see their waitlisted lessons above the upcoming list on My Lessons, and can leave the queue there.
When a place frees up — someone cancels, or a checkout hold lapses — Horsify tells the waiting riders itself, within a few minutes. Two rules matter:
- Being notified does not reserve the place. The first rider to book gets it, and the message says so.
- Each rider is told about an opening at most once. If as many riders are notified as there are free places and none of them books, the rest of the queue is not notified in their place — they wait for the next opening.
Organisation admins can read the whole waitlist for their school through the organiser API.
Student Progress and Curriculum
Organiser → Riding School → Clients → Progress → Manage curriculum defines your skills framework — levels, and the skills within each — or seeds a ready-made Learn to Ride curriculum you can edit.
Organiser → Riding School → Clients → Progress lists your students; open one to mark each skill Not started, Introduced, Developing, Competent or Mastered, and Certify level when they've reached it. Riders see the same picture (and their badges) under My Progress.
See Tracking Student Progress.
Refunds
Refund a booking from its card in the appointment book: click the booking and use the refund button, which shows the amount that can still be refunded.
- Paid by card online — Refund sends the money back to the client's card through Stripe. You can refund part of the amount, and the reason you give is recorded in the booking's staff notes.
- Paid by cash, bank transfer or another offline method — Record refund keeps the record straight, but Horsify can't send the money back: return it the same way you took it.
- Paid from a lesson package or program enrolment — there is no money to refund. Cancelling the lesson gives the lesson credit back instead.
A card payment for a completed or cancelled lesson can also be refunded from Payments. Both places count the same refunded amount, so between them they can never refund more than the client paid. Approving a client's cancellation request refunds nothing by itself: the confirmation tells you how much the client paid, and you refund it here.
Related Features
- Riding School Setup Guide (End to End)
- Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours
- Facilities and Facility Hire
- Instructor Management System
- Client Management
- Tracking Student Progress
- Instructor Tier - Solo Instructor Guide
- Instructor Tier vs Riding School - Feature Comparison\n\n---\n\nSource:
wiki/features/RIDING_SCHOOL_MANAGEMENT.md\nLast synced: 2026-10-06 06:11:12 UTC