Instructor Management System

Overview

Instructors are the people who teach your lessons. In Horsify each instructor has a profile (name, contact details, bio, photo, qualifications), a set of lesson rates, and — most importantly — an availability schedule that decides when clients can book them.

Instructor management is part of the riding-school toolset, so it is available on the Riding School plan, the Club Site plan, and (for a single instructor) the Instructor plan. See Instructor Tier - Solo Instructor Guide if you are a solo coach.

The one thing to remember: an instructor with no availability cannot be booked — not online, and not by you from the Bookings page. Horsify offers lesson times only inside the windows you set on the instructor's availability calendar. Your organisation's Booking Hours do not fill the gap for instructor-led lessons.

Who Uses This

Riding school administrators

• Add and edit instructor profiles, qualifications and photos
• Set each instructor's weekly availability and block out leave
• Set lesson rates and deposit rules per instructor
• Choose which instructors can be booked online, and in what order they appear
• Give instructors their own Horsify login so they can see their bookings

Instructors

• Use the Instructor Dashboard to see their bookings, manage their own availability, and subscribe to a personal calendar feed

Clients

• Browse your public Our Instructors page and book a lesson with a specific instructor

Where to Find It

Organiser → Riding School → Instructors (/riding-school/instructors).

The Instructors page lists your active instructors as cards showing name, bio, contact details, employment type and commission, with View Details and Edit buttons.

On the Instructor plan the same page is called Your Profile and holds your single instructor record.

If you belong to more than one organisation, a Select Organisation dropdown appears at the top of the page — pick the riding school you want to manage.

Adding an Instructor

1. Go to Organiser → Riding School → Instructors and click Add Instructor.
2. Fill in the Basic Information:
   • First Name and Last Name (required)
   • Email (required) — also used to link or invite their Horsify login (see below)
   • Phone
   • Biography — shown on their public profile
   • Profile Photo — JPG, PNG or WEBP (up to 25 MB; large images are resized automatically). The photo uploads once the profile is saved.
3. Choose whether to Send Horsify sign-up invite (ticked by default — see Giving an instructor a login).
4. Choose whether to Use the club's booking hours as their availability (see Availability below).
5. Fill in the Employment Details:
   • Employment Type (required): Full Time, Part Time, Casual or Contractor. Defaults to Part Time.
   • Commission (%) — for your own records; Horsify does not calculate payouts from it.
6. Check the Settings:
   • Active — the instructor is currently on your team (on by default)
   • Bookable Online — clients can pick this instructor when booking online (on by default)
   • Display Order — lower numbers appear first on the public instructor list and in booking dropdowns
   • Calendar Colour — the colour used for this instructor's lessons on your booking calendar. Leave it on Automatic to have Horsify assign one.
7. Click Add Instructor.

Qualifications and lesson rates are added after the profile is saved — open the instructor again in edit mode.

Giving an instructor a login

An instructor does not need a Horsify account to be listed, booked or scheduled — you can run everything on their behalf. A login is only needed if they want to use the Instructor Dashboard themselves.

• If the email you enter already belongs to a Horsify account, the instructor is linked to it automatically and added to your organisation as a member with the Instructor role.
• Otherwise, leaving Send Horsify sign-up invite ticked emails them a sign-up link. When they accept it (or later sign in with that email), their login is linked to the profile.
• If you untick the invite, you can send one later from your organisation's Members page.

Once linked, the instructor sees an Instructor Dashboard entry in their profile menu (the avatar at the top right) whenever your organisation is the one selected.

Availability

Availability lives on the instructor's detail page: from the Instructors list click View Details (/riding-school/instructors/{id}). The Availability Calendar panel has two tabs.

Starting point: copy your booking hours

When you add an instructor, Horsify offers to use the club's booking hours as their availability if you have booking hours set up (see Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours). This copies each booking-hour window into the instructor's weekly schedule as a one-off starting point — later changes to your booking hours do not flow through, and you can fine-tune the copy afterwards. If you have no booking hours yet, the form warns you that no availability will be set and the instructor cannot be booked until you add their hours.

After saving, a message confirms whether availability was seeded or still needs to be set.

Calendar View

A week-by-week calendar (Day, Week, Work Week and timeline views are available) showing:

• Available for Booking — green blocks
• Blocked / Unavailable — red blocks
• One-Off Session — dashed outline (a slot for a single date rather than every week)

To add a slot, click an empty time on the calendar (it pre-fills a 45-minute slot from that time) or click Quick Add (pre-fills 8 am–1 pm on the next weekday). In the Add Availability Slot dialog:

• Date — for a one-off slot, the specific date; for a repeating slot, the date sets which weekday it repeats on
• Venue and Facility — optional. Leave blank to make the instructor available at all venues/facilities. If you set them, that slot only applies when a lesson is booked at that venue or arena. Where several slots overlap, a facility-specific slot wins over a venue-wide slot, which wins over a general one.
• Start Time and End Time
• Availability Type — Available for Booking or Blocked / Unavailable. Blocked slots take a Reason for Unavailability (e.g. Annual Leave, Training).
• Repeat Weekly — tick this to make the slot recur every week on that weekday at the same time. Leave it unticked for a one-off slot on that date only.

Click Save Availability. Click any existing block to edit or Delete it.

Block Dates (the red button) blocks out a whole run of days in one go — ideal for holidays, leave or events. Choose the From and To dates (from today onwards, up to a year), optionally narrow the Time Window (it defaults to all day), add a Reason, and save. Horsify creates one blocked entry per day and skips any day that already has an identical block. Each day can later be deleted individually from the calendar.

List View

The Weekly Availability Schedule shows the instructor's repeating weekly slots grouped by day, Monday to Sunday. Click Add Time Slot to add a weekly slot by choosing the Day of Week, Start Time, End Time, optional Venue/Facility, and whether the instructor is Available for bookings during this time (untick it, and add a reason, to create a weekly blocked window). Slots can be deleted here; to change one, delete it and add it again, or edit it from the Calendar View. One-off slots and blocked dates only appear on the Calendar View.

How availability drives bookings

• Online booking offers clients only the times that fall inside an instructor's available windows for the day, minus any blocked windows and existing bookings.
• The same rule applies when you create a booking yourself on the Bookings page — Horsify will refuse a time the instructor has not been made available for.
• Blocked entries override available ones for the same time.
• Instructors with their own login can manage their own availability from the Availability tab of the Instructor Dashboard.

Example week: five repeating slots (Mon–Fri, 9 am–5 pm), a repeating Tuesday 6–9 pm slot scoped to your indoor arena, plus a Block Dates entry for the two weeks the instructor is on leave.

Availability by text message

If your organisation has its own Horsify SMS number (set up under Communication Settings), an instructor whose profile phone number matches the phone they text from can adjust availability by SMS — for example OFF tomorrow 2-5pm, AVAIL Tue 9-12, REPEAT OFF Mon 2-5pm, or HELP for the full list. Each command gets a confirmation reply with an UNDO code, and the instructor's detail page shows an SMS Command History panel listing every command received.

Qualifications

Open the instructor in edit mode (Edit on the list or detail page) and scroll to Qualifications → Add Qualification. Record:

• Qualification Name (required) — e.g. EA Level 1 Coach, NCAS Level 2, Pony Club Instructor Certificate, First Aid, Working with Children Check
• Issuing Organisation, Certificate Number, Date Obtained, Expiry Date, Notes

Qualifications with an expiry date show a Valid or Expired badge, and current (non-expired) qualifications are shown on the instructor's public card.

Qualifications can be added but not edited or deleted, and certificate documents cannot be attached. Check the details before you save one — correcting a typo isn't possible from this screen.

Lesson Rates and Deposits

Lesson rates set what each instructor charges for each of your lesson types (create lesson types first under Riding School Landing Page Settings → Lesson Types). Rates apply when your school's lesson pricing mode is By instructor (the default); under By lesson type, the lesson type's base price is used instead.

Open the instructor in edit mode and scroll to Lesson Rates. You'll see one row per lesson type. Click Set Rate (or Edit) and complete:

• Price (inc. GST) — required. Lesson prices are entered inclusive of GST; enter the figure you want the client to pay. (The hint under the field currently says "10% GST", which is the Australian rate — New Zealand schools should read it as their own rate.)
• Active — untick to keep the rate on file without offering it for new bookings
• Requires Full Payment Upfront — the whole price is charged at booking (this overrides deposit settings)
• Requires Deposit — a partial payment at booking with the balance collected after the lesson. Choose a Deposit Type of Percentage (1–99%) or Fixed Amount, and the amount.

Click Save Rate. Rates can be deleted with the Delete button on the row.

Example: Senior instructor — Private Lesson $90, Group Lesson $55; Junior instructor — Private Lesson $70, Group Lesson $45.

Instructor Dashboard

Instructors with a linked login open the Instructor Dashboard (/riding-school/instructor-dashboard) from their profile menu. It has four tabs:

• My Bookings — upcoming lessons, with Confirm, Complete and Cancel actions
• Calendar View — their lessons on a calendar
• Availability — the same availability calendar described above, for their own profile
• Calendar Feed — a private iCal/ICS link so their lessons appear in Apple Calendar, Google Calendar or Outlook. See Syncing Your Instructor Calendar to Apple Calendar for step-by-step instructions.

If the dashboard says "You are not registered as an instructor", the signed-in account isn't linked to an instructor profile at the currently selected organisation — check the profile's email matches their login, and that the right organisation is selected.

Public Instructor Listing

When your riding-school landing page is enabled, your site gets an Our Instructors page (/public-instructors) showing every instructor who is Active and Bookable Online, in Display Order — photo, bio, up to two current qualifications, and a Book a Lesson button that starts an online booking with that instructor pre-selected. You can hide the link from your site's navigation with Show "Our Instructors" link in navigation under Riding School Landing Page Settings.

Managing Instructor Status

• Bookable Online off — the instructor disappears from online booking and the public listing, but you can still book them from the Bookings page.
• Active off — the instructor is no longer part of your team: they are removed from the Instructors list, booking dropdowns and the public listing, and their calendar feed stops working. Their record and booking history are kept. Note: because inactive instructors are hidden from the Instructors list, reactivating one currently means opening their edit page directly by link — keep the link if you may need it.
• Delete Instructor (edit page) — deactivates the instructor, ends their employment on today's date, unlinks their login and removes them from online booking, while preserving historical bookings.

Related Articles

• Riding School Setup Guide (End to End) — where instructors fit in your overall setup
• Setting Your Riding School Booking Hours — the organisation-wide hours you can copy into a new instructor's schedule
• Syncing Your Instructor Calendar to Apple Calendar — the personal calendar feed
• Instructor Tier - Solo Instructor Guide — running Horsify as a single instructor
• Client Management — the clients your instructors teach\n\n---\n\nSource: wiki/features/INSTRUCTOR_MANAGEMENT.md \nLast synced: 2026-09-07 12:45:39 UTC