A step-by-step walkthrough for a new riding school setting up on Horsify — from subscription and venue, through instructors, horses and booking hours, to taking your first online booking and tracking student progress.
This is the practical "what do I set up, and in what order" guide. For a feature-by-feature overview see Riding School Management; for deeper dives see Instructor Management System, Venue Facilities and Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours.
Who this is for
Riding schools, equestrian centres, and independent coaches who take lesson bookings, facility hire, and manage students. It assumes you already have (or are creating) a Horsify organisation and that you are an organisation admin.
Once your subscription is active, everything lives under the Organiser menu in the top navigation — most of it inside the Organiser → Riding School submenu.
How the pieces fit together
Everything hangs off your Organisation. The mental model — and the order things depend on each other — looks like this:
Organisation (your business)
│
├─ Riding School subscription ............... unlocks the whole module (Step 1)
├─ Public riding-school site (landing + Book Now) . your public shopfront (Step 2)
├─ Payments (Stripe) ........................ so clients can pay online (Step 3)
│
├─ Venue ................................... your physical location (Step 4)
│ └─ Facilities (arenas, round yards) ..... what gets booked (Step 5)
│ ├─ Rate cards ...................... facility-hire pricing
│ └─ Availability windows ............ when each arena is open
│
├─ Booking Hours ........................... when a coach isn't named (Step 6)
├─ Lesson Types ............................ what you teach + pricing (Step 7)
│
├─ Instructors ............................. who teaches (Step 8)
│ ├─ Availability ........................ their teaching times
│ ├─ Lesson types ........................ what each coach takes
│ └─ Rates + deposits .................... under by-instructor pricing
│
├─ School Horses ........................... horses used in lessons (Step 9)
│ └─ Workload limits + suitability
│
├─ Waivers ................................. liability sign-off (Step 10)
├─ Curriculum (optional) ................... skills framework (Step 11)
│
├─ Bookings ................................ online + manual (Step 12)
│ └─ Reminders, calendar, enquiries
└─ Clients + Student Progress .............. your students (Step 13)The rule that catches most new schools: online bookings will not switch on until you have a venue your organisation owns with at least one active, bookable facility (Steps 4–5). Until then the Bookings page shows a "Set up your venue to take online bookings" banner instead of your booking link.
The quick way: guided setup
A new riding school is taken to guided setup the first time it opens the organiser dashboard, and any school can open it from Organiser → Settings → Riding School → Guided setup. It asks how you operate — what you offer, how riders book, your lessons, hours and arena, your coaches, and your policies — and then creates the matching lesson types, booking hours, arena and hire rates, instructors, a starter waiver and lesson reminders in one go. That covers Steps 5–8 and 10 below, plus the booking settings in Step 7.
- Every price is an example for your country. Change it on the spot or later.
- It shows you exactly what it will create before you confirm.
- It only adds what is missing. Run it again whenever you like: anything you already have — a lesson type with the same name, a coach with the same email, your booking hours — is left exactly as it is.
- You still need a plan (Step 1), your public site (Step 2), Stripe for card payments (Step 3) and a venue address (Step 4 — guided setup asks for it if you have none).
The steps below remain the full reference for each area.
Setup at a glance
| # | Step | Where | Required to take online bookings? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Subscribe to a riding-school plan | Organiser → Subscription | Yes — unlocks everything |
| 2 | Enable your public riding-school site | Organiser → Settings → Riding School | Yes — publishes your public pages |
| 3 | Connect Stripe | Organisation profile → Edit → Payment Integration | Strongly recommended — for online card payments |
| 4 | Create your venue | Setup banner on the Bookings page | Yes |
| 5 | Add facilities + rate cards + availability | Venue editor + Facilities page | Yes (at least one bookable facility) |
| 6 | Set your booking hours | Organiser → Riding School → Instructors → Booking Hours | Recommended (defaults to 7 am – 6 pm) |
| 7 | Create your lesson types | Organiser → Settings → Riding School | Yes for lessons |
| 8 | Add instructors (availability + lesson types) | Organiser → Riding School → Instructors | Yes for lessons |
| 9 | Add your school horses | Organiser → Riding School → School Horses | Optional (recommended) |
| 10 | Create your waivers | Organiser → Riding School → Clients → Waivers | Optional (strongly recommended) |
| 11 | Set up your curriculum | Organiser → Riding School → Clients → Progress → Manage curriculum | Optional |
| 12 | Go live and take bookings | Book Now / Bookings | — |
| 13 | Manage clients and track progress | Clients / Clients → Progress | — |
Finding your way around. The Riding School menu has one row for each part of the school. Pages that belong together are tabs along the top of the page: Clients holds Enquiries, Progress and Waivers; Instructors holds Booking Hours; School Horses holds the Day Sheet; Programs & Packages holds Packages and Gift Vouchers. So "Clients → Waivers" below means the Waivers tab of the Clients page.
Before you start: plans, access and roles
Subscription plans
Riding-school features are unlocked by your organisation's subscription. Any of these grants access:
| Plan | Price | Best for | Instructors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instructor | $15 / month, no setup fee | A single independent coach | 1 (you) |
| Riding School | $39 / month, no setup fee | A school employing instructors | Unlimited |
| Club Site Premium | $59 / month + $299 setup | Larger centres wanting a full branded website | Unlimited |
The $10 Club Site plan (a club website for smaller clubs) does not include the riding-school tools, facility hire or your own Stripe account — a school that wants a full website as well needs Club Site Premium.
All riding-school plans come with a free trial — 60 days on Instructor and Riding School, and on Club Site Premium 6 months free while the launch offer runs (until 1 November 2026), 60 days after that. The $299 Club Site Premium setup fee is waived when you start on a trial, so a new club normally pays nothing up front. Every plan includes unlimited bookings, clients, facility hire, waivers and student progress.
Online payments cost 2.5% + 30c per transaction, all-in — Stripe's card processing is included rather than added on top. Domestic cards; international cards cost more to process. Or, on the Riding School and Club Site Premium plans, connect your own Stripe account and Horsify takes nothing per transaction — you keep your own Stripe rates and payout schedule.
Instructor plan vs Riding School plan. They use the same screens. The Instructor plan is a solo mode: your instructor profile is created for you automatically when the plan activates, you are capped at one instructor, and the menus read in the first person ("Your Bookings", "Your Clients", "Your Profile"). The Riding School plan lets you add unlimited instructor records. See Instructor plan vs Riding School plan at the end, and the Instructor Tier - Solo Instructor Guide article.
Subscriptions are managed from Organiser → Finances → Subscription. On the Instructor and Riding School plans the Organiser → Riding School menu appears as soon as your subscription is active. On Club Site Premium (or a riding-school add-on to another plan) the menu appears once you also enable your riding-school site in Step 2.
Who can do what
| Role | Can do |
|---|---|
| Organisation Admin | Everything in this guide. Settings, instructors, school horses, facilities and waivers all require organisation-admin rights |
| Organiser Contributor | Can take and manage bookings and clients (these need organisation membership, not admin), but cannot reach the setup screens — a contributor has to be made an organisation admin to set the module up |
"Organisation admin" here means the admin flag on your membership of that organisation — not a global role. Whoever created the organisation has it; they can grant it to others.
Tip: name your organisation correctly before connecting Stripe — your Stripe account and public pages inherit the organisation name.
Step 2 — Enable your public riding-school site
Your public site is what visitors see: a branded landing page, an instructor list, and the Book Now booking pages.
Go to: Organiser → Settings, then the Riding School tab. The same tab strip sits above every settings page (Organisation, Communications, Templates, Riding School, Store), so you can move between them without going back to the menu.
- Click Enable Riding School Site. In one step this gives you a web address, switches on your club site, applies a default theme, and seeds a starter set of pages — a riding-school landing page plus Our Instructors and Book a Lesson pages. Each of those steps is skipped if you've already done it: an organisation with an existing themed club site keeps its address and theme. You then customise the content in the page builder.
- Review and set:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Your riding school page card | Shows whether your public page is live, in draft or offline, with Edit / View / Publish actions. Take bookings offline (under More options) is the master off-switch for your public riding-school pages; Bring bookings online turns them back on |
| Riding School URL Slug | A short web address for your riding school page — lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens only |
| Riding School App Bar Title | Custom title shown in your site's navigation bar. Blank shows your organisation name on your public club site, and "Riding School" in the organiser menu |
| Show "Book Now" button in navigation | Shows the public Book Now button on every page |
| Show "Our Instructors" link in navigation | Shows the public instructor list link |
| Charge for School Horse Usage + hourly rate | If on, an hourly school-horse fee is added as a separate line item when a booking includes a school horse |
| Let clients hire your facilities online | Adds the Facility hire option to Book Now and your booking widgets. Turn it off if your arenas are for lessons only — lessons are then booked without a facility, so arena availability stops narrowing your lesson times |
| Let clients book without choosing an instructor | Clients pick a lesson type and a time from your booking hours (Step 6) and you allocate the coach afterwards. Leave it off and they choose a bookable instructor and book against that instructor's own availability |
| Only offer a time when a coach who teaches that lesson is working | Appears once the setting above is on. Use it when only some coaches are trained for a lesson type — see Step 8b |
| Show next availability from | Minimum booking notice: clients booking online are only offered times this far ahead. Staff booking on a client's behalf are never restricted |
| Let clients reschedule their own lessons + notice period | Inside the notice window clients are told to contact you instead |
| How lessons are priced | By instructor, or by lesson type — see Step 7 |
- Lesson Types are also managed on this page — covered in Step 7.
Two addresses, one site. The settings page shows "Your club site address" — your branded public website (the address to give riders and to point your own website's Book Now button at). The URL slug below it is a separate, shorter address for the landing page itself. Change your club site's address, theme, pages and navigation under Club Site & Theme.
Editing your public page content. The hero image, wording and content blocks are not on the settings page — click Manage pages to open the club-site page builder and edit the riding-school landing page there.
The Getting Started Checklist. After enabling, the settings page shows a five-item checklist — theme configured, instructors added, lesson types configured, payment processing set up, and pointing your Google Business Profile at your new site. (Your web address, site status and page publishing aren't on the list because the Your riding school page card above shows them live.) Work through it; it mirrors this guide.
Don't skip the Google Business Profile step. If your Google listing's Website field still points at Facebook, searches for your school's name land there instead of on your booking page.
Step 3 — Connect Stripe (so you can get paid online)
Online card payments run through Stripe. One Stripe connection serves your whole organisation — bookings, events, store and memberships all share it.
Go to: your organisation's profile page → Edit Organisation → Payment Integration section → Connect Stripe. A dialog offers two options:
- Set up Stripe Connect with Horsify (recommended) — creates a new Stripe Express account for your organisation, with the fastest setup.
- I already have my own Stripe Account — links your existing Stripe account instead.
Notes:
- On the Connect path your Stripe business name is taken from your Horsify organisation name, so make sure the organisation is named correctly first. Linking your own existing account keeps that account's own business name.
- Until you finish Stripe's onboarding, the account cannot take charges. Charging switches on automatically once Stripe confirms your details.
- After it's connected, manage payments, refunds and payouts at Organiser → Payments.
What happens without Stripe? Clients can still book — but online card payment is not offered at checkout (bookings fall back to cash-on-the-day or bank transfer), and the "Generate payment link" option on manual bookings does nothing. Connect Stripe before you go live if you want to be paid up front.
See Stripe Account Management for the full guide.
Step 4 — Create your venue
Horsify models your location as a Venue, and the bookable spaces inside it (arenas, round yards) as Facilities. Online bookings need a venue owned by your organisation with at least one active, bookable facility.
Easiest path (recommended): on Organiser → Riding School → Bookings (the banner also appears on the instructor edit form) you'll see a "Set up your venue to take online bookings" banner. Click Create venue, enter your venue's name and address (an address search can auto-fill it), and save. This creates a venue owned by your organisation and automatically adds a default bookable facility called "Main Arena" — so you finish Steps 4 and 5 in one go.
If you already own a venue but it has no bookable facility, the same banner instead reads "Add a bookable facility" with an Edit venue button that takes you to the venue editor. This is the state you land in if your venue was originally created for events.
Two ways an organisation is connected to a venue:
- Owned — you created it for your organisation (the normal case). This is what the setup banner does.
- Managed — you request management rights over an existing shared venue, which a Horsify admin approves. Managed venues can host facilities, but only owned venues are offered for online booking and school horses — prefer the owned path via the setup banner.
Once the venue exists, open it again via Edit venue to change details or add more facilities. That button appears on the setup banner and on the Facilities page only while you have no bookable facility yet — once you're set up, reach the venue editor from your venue's own page (or bookmark /admin/venues/{venue-id}/edit).
Step 5 — Add your facilities (arenas) and their pricing
Facilities are created in the venue editor, then configured (pricing, availability) on the Facilities page. There is no "add facility" button on the Facilities page — it's a management console for facilities that already exist.
5a. Create the facility
Go to: the venue editor (via Edit venue) → Facilities Management → Add Facility.
| Field | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Facility type | Yes | Indoor Arena, Covered Arena, Outdoor Arena, Cross Country Course, Showjumping Arena, Dressage Arena, Round Yard, Wash Bay, Other |
| Name | Yes | e.g. "Indoor Arena 1" |
| Description | No | Up to 1000 characters |
| Bookable | — | On by default. Labelled "Bookable (show in location dropdown for events)", but it does more than that: leave it ticked or the facility can't be hired or picked for lessons, and it won't count towards your online-booking readiness |
| Lessons at the same time | — | How many bookings this space can hold at once (default 1, up to 20). Raise it for a large arena that runs two lessons side by side |
| Display order | No | Controls ordering |
| Active | — | Edit only; on by default |
Photos are set at the venue level, not per facility — the venue editor takes a logo image and a map image.
5b. Configure pricing and availability
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Facilities.
Each bookable facility shows three tabs:
- Availability Settings (the tab you land on) — set Weekly Hours (recurring windows by day of week) and Block Out specific dates and times (with a reason, e.g. maintenance). Public facility hire only offers times inside these windows — a facility with no availability set cannot be hired online.
- Rate Cards — set the hire price. Rate card name and hourly rate are required; half-day (4 hrs) and full-day (8 hrs) rates are optional. You can add multiple rate cards scoped to days of the week, times, or a season, with a priority order. A facility with no rate card can't be hired online at all.
- Booking Calendar — a read-only view of what's booked. Click a booking to see its details; change it from Organiser → Riding School → Bookings.
Facility-hire durations. Online, clients pick one of three options: Hourly (30-minute slots, up to 4 hours), Half Day (a 4-hour block) or Full Day (an 8-hour block). For half and full days a date search shows the next available slots. Booking manually as an organiser ignores the facility's availability windows — you can book any time of day — but the same three brackets still apply (under 4 hours is hourly, 4 to 8 is half day, 8 or more is full day).
The readiness gate: an owned venue with at least one active, bookable facility. Meet it and the "Set up your venue" banner disappears. Your public Book Now link — ready to copy onto your own website — is on the riding school settings page (Step 2), not here.
Step 6 — Set your booking hours
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Instructors, then the Booking Hours tab.
These are the days and times clients can book online without naming a coach — a horse-only booking, and (if you allow it) a lesson booked without choosing an instructor.
- Toggle each day open or closed, and add one or more time windows per day (multiple windows let you close for lunch, for example). Copy to all days copies your first open day to the rest.
- Every open day needs at least one window, and each window's end must be after its start.
- If you never save any hours, these bookings default to 7:00 AM – 6:00 PM every day. The page pre-fills a Monday–Saturday 9–5 suggestion to start from; nothing applies until you press Save Booking Hours. Once saved, your schedule takes over — including any day you left closed, so check all seven days before your first save.
These hours don't apply to a lesson booked with a named instructor, or to facility hire. A named instructor's lessons follow that instructor's own availability (Step 8), and facility hire follows the facility's availability settings (Step 5b) — neither consults this page. Horses have their own workload limits (Step 9), which further trim the times offered, and a lesson booked without naming a coach is additionally only offered while somebody is rostered on to teach it.
On the Instructor plan this menu item is hidden — solo instructors set their times under their own availability instead.
Full walkthrough: see Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours.
Step 7 — Create your lesson types
▶ Watch: Setting up lessons, pricing and instructors (2:30)
Go to: Organiser → Settings → Riding School → Lesson Types → Add Lesson Type.
Lesson types define what you teach — create as many as you like (Private Lesson, Group Lesson, Beginner Assessment, Jump Clinic, etc.).
| Field | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Lesson Type Name | Yes | e.g. "Private Lesson (30 min)" |
| Description | No | |
| Lesson Duration (minutes) | Yes | Actual teaching time |
| Blocked Duration (minutes) | Yes | Total time reserved on the calendar, including setup and turnaround |
| Base Price inc GST ($) | No* | Used depending on pricing mode below |
| Display Order | No | Where it sits in your lists |
| Who it's for / Riding level / Offering type | No | Finder tags used by your public lesson finder. Each defaults to Auto, which reads the lesson type's name — the hint under the box shows what Auto resolved to, so set one explicitly only when Auto gets it wrong |
| Allow Group Bookings | — | Turn on for group lessons |
| Maximum Group Size | If group | Minimum 2 |
| Active (visible for bookings) | — | Edit only; untick to retire a lesson type without deleting it |
Choose your lesson pricing mode
On the same page, under Lesson Pricing, pick how lessons are priced:
- By instructor (the default) — each lesson is charged at the assigned instructor's rate for that lesson type (Step 8). This is where deposits and pay-in-full rules apply.
- By lesson type — every lesson is charged the lesson type's base price at checkout, regardless of instructor. Recommended if clients book by horse before an instructor is allocated.
Always give each lesson type a base price, even under by-instructor pricing. The base price is the fallback when no instructor rate applies — a lesson type with no base price shows a warning that public bookings without an instructor will be free.
Step 8 — Add your instructors
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Instructors → Add Instructor.
8a. Create the profile
| Field | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| First name / Last name | Yes | |
| Yes | Also used to link or invite their login (see below) | |
| Phone | No | |
| Biography | No | Shown on the public profile |
| Profile photo | No | JPG/PNG/WEBP, up to 25 MB |
| Employment type | Yes | Full Time / Part Time / Casual / Contractor — pre-filled as Part Time |
| Commission (%) | No | For your own records — nothing is calculated from it |
| Active | — | On by default. Turn it off and the coach disappears from your own booking forms too |
| Bookable Online | — | On by default — new instructors can be booked straight away |
| Display order | No | Where they sit in your instructor list |
| Calendar colour | No | Their colour on the bookings calendar |
| Send Horsify sign-up invite | — | Create only; ticked by default |
| Use the club's booking hours as their availability | — | Create only; ticked by default when you have booking hours — seeds a starting availability so the instructor is bookable immediately |
Giving an instructor their own login. If the email matches an existing Horsify account, the instructor is linked to it automatically. Otherwise, leaving Send Horsify sign-up invite ticked emails them an invitation; when they accept, their login is linked. A linked instructor gets My day, where they run their teaching day, manage their availability and subscribe to a personal calendar feed (see The instructor's own view).
8b. Choose which lessons each coach takes
Open the instructor → Edit and scroll to the lesson types section. There's a row per lesson type, so create your lesson types first — Step 7. What the rows do depends on the pricing mode you chose in Step 7.
A new coach takes every lesson type. That's the starting point in both modes: a coach with nothing recorded is treated as teaching everything, priced at the lesson type's base price and counted towards every lesson type's slots. You remove what they aren't trained for rather than building the list up.
Under by-lesson-type pricing the section is called Lesson types, and each row has one button: Remove for a lesson this coach takes, Add for one they don't.
- The first removal is the moment the list gets written down — Horsify records every other lesson type for that coach, then takes the one you removed off it. If that fails part-way the coach is put back to taking everything, rather than left with half a list.
- The last lesson type can't be removed. An empty list reads as "takes every lesson", the opposite of what you'd mean. To stop a coach being booked online, turn off Bookable Online instead.
Under by-instructor pricing the section is called Lesson types & rates, and each row has a Set Rate button instead. Setting a rate is what records that the coach takes that lesson type:
- Price (inc. GST) — the charge for that lesson type.
- Requires Full Payment Upfront — client pays the whole price at booking (overrides deposit settings).
- Requires Deposit — choose Percentage or Fixed Amount and the value; the balance is collected later.
- Active — untick to retire a rate; an inactive rate doesn't count as the coach taking that lesson type.
Deposit and pay-in-full rules only apply under by-instructor pricing. Under by-lesson-type pricing, the lesson type's base price is charged instead.
If only some coaches are trained for a lesson type, turn on Only offer a time when a coach who teaches that lesson is working (Step 2) — then set each coach's lesson types before you rely on it. A lesson type no coach has been given yet keeps offering every rostered coach, so it never quietly disappears from your booking page.
8c. Set availability
Go to: the instructor's detail page (click their name in the list) → Availability. There are two views:
- Calendar View (the default) — drag to add slots, use Quick Add, mark one-off sessions, and use Block Dates for holidays or leave.
- List View — add recurring weekly teaching slots (day of week + start/end time).
A slot can optionally be scoped to a specific venue or facility; more specific slots take priority (facility, then venue, then general).
Availability is not optional. An instructor with no availability cannot be booked online — the booking system offers only their available times, minus blocked dates and existing bookings. If you skipped the booking-hours seeding option at creation, set their hours here before expecting bookings.
On a day the instructor is on the staff roster, their rostered shift is used instead of their standing weekly availability.
8d. Qualifications
On the instructor's edit form, use Add Qualification to record certifications, first aid, WWCC and the like — name (required), issuing organisation, certificate number, dates and notes.
Qualifications can currently only be added — there is no way to edit or delete one once saved, and certificate documents can't be uploaded. Double-check before saving.
Step 9 — Add your school horses
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → School Horses → Add Horse. You need an owned venue first (Step 4) — horses are attached to it automatically.
Each school horse is created from the details you enter on the form:
| Field | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Horse name (stable name) | Yes | Set when you create the horse; can't be changed afterwards |
| Sex | Yes | Mare / Stallion / Gelding / Unknown — create only |
| Date of birth, Breed, Colour | No | Create only |
| Horse image | No | |
| Suitable For Level | Yes | Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced / All Levels / N/A |
| Min / Max rider age, Max rider weight (kg) | No | For safe allocation |
| Allowed lesson types | No | Empty means all lesson types |
| Max Hours Per Day | Yes | Default 4 — workload cap |
| Max Hours Per Week | Yes | Default 20 — workload cap |
| Temperament / Handling notes / Feeding notes | No | |
| Horse description | No | Shown on your public page |
| Status | Yes | Active / Retired / Spelling / Inactive / In Training |
| Available for Lessons / Bookable Online | — | Both on by default |
| Unavailability reason | No | Shown when the horse is marked unavailable |
Statuses and bookability. All your horses appear on your public page whatever their status (so visitors see your full string), but only horses that are Active, Available for Lessons and Bookable Online can be booked — others show as not currently bookable.
Workload protection. The max-hours limits are enforced live at booking time — a horse that would exceed its daily or weekly cap is automatically removed from those time slots, so you can't accidentally overwork a horse.
Deleting a horse. If a horse has never been part of a booking, it's removed permanently. If it has any bookings (past or future), it's deactivated instead so your history is preserved. The confirmation message tells you which happened.
Step 10 — Create your waivers
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Clients, then the Waivers tab → New Waiver Template.
| Field | Required | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Template name | Yes | |
| Description | No | |
| Waiver type | Yes | General Liability / Photo Release / Medical Consent / Equipment Use / Other |
| Waiver content | Yes | Formatted (HTML) content supported |
| Requires annual renewal | — | On |
| Requires guardian signature for minors | — | On |
| Active | — | On |
Sending a waiver. From Organiser → Riding School → Clients, open a client's Waiver history and click Send waiver request. The client gets an email with a private signing link, valid for 14 days. No login is needed to sign. (When a waiver is requested during a booking instead, the dialog also shows a QR code you can hold up for them to scan.)
Signing. The client types their full legal name, draws their signature in a signature box (finger, stylus or mouse), and ticks the agreement box. Each signing is timestamped, and the exact wording and version signed are stored with it. For minors, a parent or guardian signs and their relationship is recorded.
Waiver status is tracked per client: the Clients page (Step 13) can filter to clients with a pending waiver.
Waivers can be deactivated but not deleted, so your signed history always has its template.
Step 11 — Set up your curriculum (optional)
If you want to track student skill development, set up a skills framework first.
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Clients, then the Progress tab → Manage curriculum. The "set up a curriculum" prompt on a student's page leads there too.
- Click Seed default curriculum to create a ready-made "Learn to Ride" framework — six levels (Lead Rein → Off the Lead → Walk & Trot → Canter → Introduction to Jumping → Improver) with skills grouped by category. It's a generic starting point that you adapt.
- Or build your own: add levels, then skills under each level, each tagged with a category (Safety & horse care, Riding & flatwork, Jumping, Stable management, Theory, General).
- Levels and skills can be renamed and deleted; new ones are added to the end of the list (there is no drag-to-reorder). A skill or level can't be deleted once students have been assessed against it — rename it instead.
You can have several frameworks; the most recently seeded one becomes the default.
See Tracking Student Progress for the full guide.
Step 12 — Go live: taking bookings
With Steps 1–8 done (subscription, site, venue + bookable facility, lesson types, at least one bookable instructor with availability), you can take bookings.
Your booking link. Once you're booking-ready, the riding school settings page (Step 2) shows a "Your Book Now link" card — the public address to point the Book Now button on your own website at, with a copy button and a ready-to-paste embed snippet.
Embedding booking on your own website. The same card has an "Embed booking on your website" section that puts the booking flow itself on your site, so riders can see what you offer and choose a time without leaving it. Two steps:
-
Add your website address (e.g.
www.yourschool.com.au). Browsers only show the widget on websites you've listed — this is the step people miss, and the symptom is an empty box where the widget should be. Both thewwwand bare versions of the address work from one entry. You can list up to ten websites (a staging site, a second domain). - Paste the code into an "embed", "custom HTML" or "code" block on your site. Choose Button that opens a pop-up (a Book now button that opens the flow in a window over your page) or Booking page inside your page (the flow shown inline on a dedicated page; it grows as riders move through the steps). Either way the code is a real link underneath, so it still works if the visitor has scripts blocked.
Riders choose a lesson or a facility hire time inside the widget. Every booking is made with a Horsify account, and signing in can't happen inside another website, so at the details step the widget opens their choice on Horsify in a new tab, where they sign in (or create an account) and pay. Packages, programs and horse rides open on Horsify in a new tab straight from the widget. Preview the widget opens /embed/book/{your-slug} so you can see what riders will see.
Online (self-service) bookings
Your public front door is the Book Now page. Visitors are asked "What would you like to book?" and see only what you actually offer:
- Lessons → choose an instructor, lesson type and time slot → pay. Lesson bookings are created as requests (Pending) — even after online payment — and are confirmed by you in the appointment book, which is when the client gets their confirmation.
- Packages → buy a block of lessons outright. A purchase, not a time slot, so this row doesn't depend on anyone's availability.
- Programs & events → your upcoming events, for term programs, holiday workshops and clinics that you run as events rather than as lessons.
- Trail & horse rides → book by horse, using your booking hours (Step 6). These also stay Pending until you confirm, since an instructor still needs to be allocated.
- Facility hire → pick a facility, duration and time → book. Facility bookings confirm immediately.
- If nothing is bookable yet, visitors get a Send an enquiry button instead (see Enquiries).
Bookings are made with a Horsify account. A visitor who isn't signed in is asked to sign in or create an account at the details step, and comes straight back to the time they picked.
What determines the slots a client sees depends on what they're booking — the three flows use three different schedules:
| Booking type | Base schedule used | Then narrowed by |
|---|---|---|
| Lesson (named instructor) | That instructor's availability (Step 8) | Existing bookings, blocked dates, lesson turnaround time |
| Horse only ("trail & horse rides") | Your Booking Hours (Step 6) | Horse availability and workload limits, existing bookings |
| Lesson, no coach named | Your Booking Hours (Step 6) | Whether any bookable instructor is free then — and, optionally, whether they teach that lesson type |
| Facility hire | That facility's availability settings (Step 5b) | Existing bookings, rate card |
Only instructors marked Bookable Online appear publicly. Your own manual booking form is different — it lists every Active coach, so you can still book a coach the school teaches with but doesn't sell online.
Signed-in clients with lesson-package credits (see Lesson packages and gift vouchers) can pay for a lesson with a package credit instead of a card.
Manual (admin) bookings
Create bookings on behalf of clients — for phone bookings, walk-ins and regulars.
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Bookings → New Booking → Book Lesson (or Facility Hire).
- Pick the client (or Add New Client — name, email, phone; see Step 13), an instructor (or "Generic instructor (assign later)"), a lesson type, and a time slot from their availability. As an organiser you can also manually enter any date and time, overriding availability.
- Optionally add a facility, a school horse (or tick "Client using own horse"), and client/staff notes.
- Generate Payment Link emails the client a secure Stripe link to pay (requires Stripe, Step 3).
- Recurring bookings — tick Make booking recurring, choose Each week or Each fortnight and the number of occurrences (up to 52). All occurrences are created as Pending bookings; confirm each as it's paid or agreed. You can choose what happens when a time in the series is unavailable: skip it, find the next available time, or flag it for follow-up.
Booking statuses
Bookings move through Pending → Confirmed → Completed, plus Cancelled, No Show, and Pending Cancellation (the client asked to cancel a confirmed booking and is awaiting your approval). From the Bookings list you can Confirm, Cancel, Mark as Paid (recording a cash, bank transfer, cheque, EFTPOS or other payment), and approve or reject cancellation requests. Approving a cancellation refunds nothing by itself; to refund, click the booking in the calendar and use Refund (card payments, returned through Stripe) or Record refund (cash and bank transfer, which you return yourself). Instructors check riders in and mark lessons complete from My day.
Opening a booking shows its full detail — payment summary (amount paid and owing), a Send Payment Reminder button, reminder history, notes, and for group lessons the participant roster.
The booking calendar
The Bookings page has List and Calendar views, and opens on the calendar: colour-coded bookings filterable by instructor and status. Click a booking to open it.
Group lessons
Mark a lesson type as Allow Group Bookings with a maximum group size (Step 7). Each rider in a group lesson books the same slot and gets their own booking — the slot stays available to more riders until it reaches the maximum. The booking detail page shows the roster ("3 of 6 places taken").
Step 13 — Manage clients and track progress
Clients
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Clients.
- Clients are created through the booking flow — there's no separate "add client" button. Use Add New Client when making a booking (Step 12); you enter name, email, phone. For a child, enter the parent/guardian's contact details.
- Creating a client sends them an invitation email (valid 30 days) to set up their own Horsify login. Once they confirm their account they can book online themselves — and from that point their name, email and phone are theirs to manage; you can view but no longer edit them.
- The list supports card or table view, filters (All / Active / Inactive / Pending Waiver), search, and Export CSV.
- Each client card offers: Edit Details (experience level, preferred lesson type, weight, height, medical conditions, dietary requirements, special needs), Waiver history (and sending waiver requests — Step 10), Lesson packages (balances and recording a package sale), and Add alert for flags staff should see.
See Client Management for the full guide.
Student progress
Once you have a curriculum (Step 11) and some clients:
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Clients, then the Progress tab, for the roster — each student's current level, progress percentage, and next review date where set. Open a student to reach their progress page.
- Assess each skill on a five-step ladder: Not started → Introduced → Developing → Competent → Mastered. Changes are saved immediately, with history kept.
- A level is achieved when every skill in it reaches Competent (or better). A Certify level button then appears — one click creates the signed-off record.
- Students see their own progress at My Progress, and parents/guardians see their children's progress there too.
See Tracking Student Progress for the full guide.
The Organiser Dashboard in Bookings mode
Your Organiser Dashboard has an Events / Bookings toggle (shown once you take lessons or hire out facilities online). Riding schools land on the Bookings view by default, and your choice is remembered per browser.
The Bookings view gives you a New Booking tile and one tile for each row of the Riding School menu — Bookings, Clients, Instructors, Staff Roster, School Horses, Facilities and Programs & Packages — plus Emails, Store, Invoices and Organisation, with a New Enquiries panel when any are waiting, and your upcoming bookings list. The tiles and the menu are built from the same list, so they always match. While enquiries are waiting, the Clients tile shows how many and opens on them.
The instructor's own view
Instructors with a linked login get My day in their profile menu — one page with up to four views, built for a phone at the arena gate:
- Day — today's lessons in order, where they check riders in, mark a no show, put riders on a horse, and complete a lesson with a note (typed or dictated). Confirming, moving and cancelling lessons stay with you in the appointment book.
- Week — their roster shifts and timesheets, if they're also on your staff roster.
- Calendar — their teaching calendar, with the Calendar Feed: a private calendar link to subscribe to in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook, so lessons appear alongside the rest of their diary. It can be regenerated or revoked at any time.
- Availability — they manage their own hours and blocked dates (no admin needed).
The Calendar and Availability views appear once the instructor is a member of your organisation, which linking their login does. Until September 2026 these were the four tabs of the Instructor Dashboard; its old address still works.
See My Day for the full guide, and Syncing Your Instructor Calendar to Apple Calendar for a step-by-step on the feed.
Lesson packages and gift vouchers
Lesson packages
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Programs & Packages, then the Packages tab → New Package.
A package is a block of lessons at a set price — e.g. "10-Lesson Group Block". Fields: package name, description, lesson category (Group Lesson, Private Lesson or Clinic), an optional Restrict to specific lesson types list, display order, and one or more block sizes — each with its own lesson count, total price, validity in days and a Sell this size online tick. So one package can be offered as a single, a four and an eight rather than as three near-identical packages. Each row shows its effective per-lesson price.
Leave the restrict list unticked and the package covers any lesson type in that category — so a credit bought against a cheap short lesson would pay for a dearer long one. Tick the lesson types you want it limited to if that matters to you.
Selling a package, two ways:
- Online — tick Sell this size online and the block appears on your riding school page and in the Packages row of Book Now. The client pays through your own Stripe account and the credits appear once the payment lands.
- At the front desk — from Clients, open the client's Lesson packages dialog and Record sale. This adds the lesson credits immediately and records how the client paid — collect the money however they're paying; recording the sale doesn't charge them.
Redeeming: when a client with credits books a lesson (online or when you book for them), a "Pay with your lesson package" option appears — using it marks the booking paid and deducts one credit. When a client has several credits left, the booking form offers Book the whole block — one lesson per repeat, scheduled from the recurring-booking settings, until every credit is used.
See Lesson Packages for the full guide — validity periods, how the lesson category and restrict list work together, what happens to blocks already sold when you edit or withdraw a package, and troubleshooting.
Gift vouchers
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Programs & Packages, then the Gift Vouchers tab → Issue Gift Voucher.
Enter a value, validity in days, and optionally the recipient, purchaser and a personal message. A unique voucher code is generated automatically, and you can track each voucher's status (active, fully redeemed, expired, cancelled) and cancel unused ones.
Current limitation: there is no voucher-code box at online checkout yet. Use vouchers as tracked credit — when a client presents their code, apply it by marking their booking paid (or part-paid) and noting the voucher code.
Enquiries
Prospective clients who aren't ready to book (or can't yet) submit a riding lesson enquiry from your site's enquiry page — name, contact details, rider's age, riding experience, whether they have their own horse, lesson preferences, preferred days/times and a message.
Go to: Organiser → Riding School → Clients, then the Enquiries tab, to triage them.
New enquiries show an unread indicator (and a count on the dashboard's Clients tile, which opens on them). Opening one marks it read and offers Reply by Email. There's no convert-to-booking button — reply to agree on a time, then create the booking manually (Step 12).
Booking reminders and communications
Booking reminders are on by default: one reminder 24 hours before each booking, in the Horsify app or by email. Texting is available but opt-in.
Tune this at Organiser → Communication Settings → Booking Notifications: reminders on/off, whether to text clients who have a mobile number, your timezone, and a daily send window (quiet hours). Each client gets one message: a reminder goes to the Horsify app when they have notifications on, otherwise by text, otherwise by email; a confirmation goes by email with a calendar invite, and is texted only to clients with no email address. The card also shows your monthly SMS allowance and how much of it is used: Horsify sets it (Riding School and Club Site Premium include 200 texts a month across every reminder and notification; contact Horsify to change it). The Booking Notifications card appears once your organisation has riding-school access; on the same page, only the custom email sender address and the custom SMS number need a club website plan (Club Site or Club Site Premium). For the SMS number that means Club Site Premium, because the $10 Club Site plan doesn't include SMS.
The reminder timing (24 hours) and message templates are not editable in the app. You can always send a manual payment reminder from a booking's detail page, and see its reminder history there.
Your public pages and the rider's view
Once live, your public riding-school landing page shows your school, instructors, horses and lesson prices, with Book Now throughout:
Clients manage their side from their own account:
- My Lessons (profile menu → My lessons) — upcoming, past and cancelled lessons and their packages, with details, a cancel option, Book again on a past lesson, and Reschedule if you allow clients to move their own lessons (Settings → Riding School → Online Lesson Bookings). Cancelling a confirmed booking sends you a cancellation request to approve or reject.
- My Progress — their level, skills and mastery, updated as you assess them (Step 13). Parents see their children's progress here too.
Instructor plan vs Riding School plan
Both plans use the same pages, but they behave differently:
| Instructor plan ($15/mo) | Riding School plan ($39/mo) | |
|---|---|---|
| Instructors | Just you — your profile is created automatically; capped at 1 | Unlimited; add records for each staff member |
| Menu labels | First person ("Your Bookings", "Your Clients", "Your Profile", "Your Horses", "Your Facilities", "Your Waivers") | Standard ("Bookings", "Clients", "Instructors"…) |
| Booking Hours menu item | Hidden (use your own availability instead) | Shown |
| School horses, facility hire, waivers, clients, progress | Yes | Yes |
| Lesson packages, gift vouchers, enquiries | Yes | Yes |
A solo coach on the Instructor plan mostly just sets availability + rates and shares their booking link. A school on the Riding School plan additionally adds instructor records (optionally with their own logins) and coordinates multiple teaching calendars. See the Instructor Tier - Solo Instructor Guide for the solo walkthrough.
Where to find things in the menus
Which riding-school items you see depends on which site you're on, but both menus carry the same riding-school rows, one per area, in this order: Bookings, Clients, Instructors, Staff Roster, School Horses, Facilities and Programs & Packages. An area's other pages are tabs under its page title: Enquiries, Progress and Waivers under Clients; Booking Hours under Instructors; the Day Sheet under School Horses; Programs, Packages and Gift Vouchers under Programs & Packages. The curriculum opens from Progress.
-
On your club site (
{your-slug}.horsify.club), the Organiser menu opens with your Dashboard, Manage Site and Analytics, then the riding-school rows, and finishes with Club Site & Theme, Messages and Settings. This is the best menu to work from during setup. -
On the main Horsify site (
horsify.com.au), the riding-school rows sit under Organiser → Riding School, and the riding school page settings are the Riding School tab of Organiser → Settings.
Staff Roster sits beside Instructors because your organisation teaches: on a day you have rostered, the roster decides when each coach can teach. A club that rosters staff but runs no lessons finds it under Organiser → People instead.
On the Instructor plan, Booking Hours and Staff Roster are hidden, and the remaining rows take first-person labels (Your Bookings, Your Clients, Your Profile, Your Horses, Your Facilities).
The Organiser Dashboard's Bookings view also has a tile for each row, if you would rather work from there than the menu.
Quick reference — pages and routes
| Page | Route |
|---|---|
| Landing settings (enable site, lesson types, pricing mode) | /organiser/riding-school/{org-id}/landing-settings |
| Public site content (page builder) | /organiser/sites/{org-id}/pages |
| Public site | {your-slug}.horsify.club |
| Stripe Connect — payments & payouts tabs | /organiser/payments |
| Payment transactions dashboard | /organiser/payment-transactions |
| Venue editor (create facilities) | /admin/venues/{venue-id}/edit |
| Facilities console (rate cards, availability) | /riding-school/facilities |
| Booking hours | /riding-school/booking-hours |
| Instructors | /riding-school/instructors |
| My day (an instructor's or staff member's own view) | /riding-school/my-day |
| School horses | /riding-school/horses |
| Waivers | /riding-school/waivers |
| Lesson packages | /riding-school/packages |
| Gift vouchers | /riding-school/gift-vouchers |
| Staff roster & timesheets | /riding-school/roster |
| My day, Week view (staff shifts and timesheets) | /riding-school/my-day?view=week |
| Curriculum | /riding-school/curriculum |
| Student progress (roster) | /riding-school/progress |
| Bookings (list + calendar) | /riding-school/bookings |
| New booking / facility hire |
/riding-school/bookings/new · /riding-school/facility-hire/new
|
| Enquiries | /riding-school/enquiries |
| Communication settings (reminders) | /organiser/communication-settings |
| Public "Book Now" | /book-now |
| Public lesson / facility / horse booking |
/public-lesson-booking · /facility-booking · /public-horse-booking
|
| Public enquiry | /lesson-enquiry |
This guide reflects the riding-school module as currently implemented. If you spot a screen that behaves differently from what's described here, the app is authoritative — please flag it so this guide can be updated.\n\n---\n\nSource: wiki/features/RIDING_SCHOOL_SETUP_GUIDE.md \nLast synced: 2026-10-06 06:13:55 UTC