Booking models
The class model fits anything where several people join the same session at the same time and the limit is how many can fit. That limit does not belong to the class; it belongs to Tuesday at seven, which has twelve mats and one instructor who might be away next week. A timetable is a set of real sessions, each with its own places, its own instructor and its own history — which is why a cancelled Tuesday has to change one evening rather than a rule.
Build a timetable
Assign instructor and space
Set capacity and recurrence
Track participants and changes
Use it for group fitness, yoga and pilates, dance and martial arts, swimming lessons, workshops, cooking or pottery evenings, kids’ groups and any course that runs as a series of sessions. It suits a single instructor with one room and a studio with four rooms and a dozen teachers, and it holds up when the same class runs several times a week, when capacity differs by room, and when people book weeks ahead for a specific evening.
One customer with one practitioner for a private hour is the appointment model. Hiring the room itself, with nobody teaching, is resource booking. Something taken away and returned is rental, and nights are accommodation. If you find yourself creating a class with capacity one, you wanted an appointment.
Four things, and each of them is the difference between a full room and an argument at the door.
Yoga does not have twelve places. Tuesday at seven in the small studio has twelve, Thursday at nine in the hall has twenty-five, and the Saturday workshop has eight because of the equipment. Places are counted on each occurrence, so a busy evening fills and closes while the rest of the week stays open.
The schedule repeats, but one Tuesday falls on a holiday, one is moved an hour later and one is cancelled because the instructor is ill. Each of those changes exactly one session and leaves the pattern intact. A timetable that can only be edited as a rule forces you to choose between lying about one week and rebuilding the term.
A substitute instructor is sometimes fine and sometimes the reason half the room does not come. Sessions name their instructor, and replacing one is a deliberate act with a record, not a silent swap discovered at the door — which also means the people booked can be told before they arrive.
A place freed two hours before the session is worth nothing sitting in a database. A waiting list is what turns that into a full room, and it needs to be ordered, visible and acted on quickly, because the value of the empty mat falls to zero when the session starts.
Four steps: describe what repeats, generate what actually happens, then work the sessions.
Each class has a length, a level, an instructor who normally teaches it and the room it uses. Rooms carry their own capacity, so a class that moves to the hall for a month can take more people without anybody rewriting the class itself.
The weekly pattern produces dated sessions with places, and from that moment each session has its own life: it can be moved, cancelled, given a different instructor or capped lower because half the equipment is being repaired. The pattern stays the plan; the sessions are the truth.
Customers book a specific session, and the count of remaining places falls as they do. Staff book the same way for people who phone or turn up, so the room never has two versions of how full it is.
A register for the instructor, arrivals marked, no-shows recorded, late cancellations noted with the time they arrived. That record is what makes a decision about a class that is not working an argument about attendance rather than about impressions.
Three rules that keep a timetable honest when it gets busy.
Places are held per session and cannot be oversold, whether the booking comes from the website or from the desk. The thirteenth person is refused with the next session offered rather than added to a room with twelve mats.
Two classes cannot occupy one room, and one instructor cannot teach two rooms at seven. Both are verified when a session is scheduled, so a clash is a scheduling decision made in advance rather than a surprise on the evening.
Cancelling or moving a session touches that session only. Everyone booked on it can be notified, the rest of the term is untouched, and nobody has to rebuild a pattern to fix one week.
A full Tuesday with a drop-out, and an instructor away for a week.
Tuesday at seven fills by Sunday. The thirteenth request is refused and offered Thursday, and the person is added to the waiting list. On Tuesday afternoon somebody cancels, the first person on the list is contacted and the room is full again — which only happens because both the list and the free place are in the same system.
Four sessions need cover. Each one gets its substitute named on the session, and the people booked can be told in advance rather than finding out at the door. The class itself is unchanged, so when the instructor returns nothing has to be put back.
A class list is a working document about an evening, not a file about the people on it.
The session records who booked, who came and who did not. Injuries, medical conditions, progress and anything a participant told the instructor in confidence belong wherever your studio already keeps them, under its own rules — not accumulated on a booking because the class is physical.
Where you sell a block of sessions, Base can count what has been used. It does not hold funds, does not refund an unused pass, does not bill a membership monthly and does not decide what an expired pass is worth. That is your commercial decision, applied by you.
List the classes with their real lengths and the rooms they use, and give each room the capacity it genuinely has rather than the one you would like. Enter the instructors with the days they teach and the weeks they are away, and decide who may substitute for whom. Decide how far ahead sessions are published — a term, a month, six weeks — and how late somebody may cancel without cost. Decide whether you keep a waiting list and who works it. Then publish one week, watch what the desk has to correct, and publish the rest.
The session is the unit here. Anything measured in something other than places has its own model.
A one-to-one hour is an appointment, and hiring the studio with nobody teaching is a resource booking. Running either as a class of one hides the constraint that actually matters.
Monthly membership, door access, direct debits and pricing tiers are a different product. Base counts sessions and attendance; what somebody pays and when stays with the systems you already use for money.
A full session, a room already in use, an instructor teaching elsewhere or a request after the cut-off stops the booking. The previous state stands, the reason is plain, and the next session with places is offered instead.
Yes. In this class booking software, customers book a specific dated session online and staff book the same session for people who phone or turn up, so the remaining places fall in one count. Because the class scheduling software holds places per session, a full Tuesday is full whichever way the request arrives, and the next person is offered another session or a place on the waiting list.
Yes. Places belong to each dated session and follow the room it runs in, so the same class can take twelve in the studio and twenty-five in the hall.
Yes. Sessions are generated from the pattern but live on their own, so a holiday, an illness or a one-off move changes that evening and nothing else.
Yes, ordered per session, so a place freed a few hours before can be offered to the next person while it is still worth something.
Yes, on the session itself, which is what allows the people booked to be told before they arrive rather than at the door.
It counts sessions used from a block. It does not bill a membership, take payment or decide what an expired pass is worth — those stay with your own commercial process.
Next step
Registration takes an email address. The operating model, services and resources are configured afterwards, in the console.