Classroom bookings, payouts and student progress for UK schools

The problem

Rooms to rent, and money to split

Atnda wanted schools to earn from their classrooms by renting them to DBS-checked, qualified teachers, who then run paid lessons there. It needed bookings, payments and the right share for everyone paid: the school for the room and the teacher for the lesson, after fees. Later it also wanted tools for tracking student progress inside schools.

Bookings

Calendars that refuse overlapping slots

From October 2023 I was the principal developer. Schools publish when each room is free on a calendar that rejects any slot overlapping one already there, and a schedule can be copied to other dates. Teachers search for rooms within a radius measured by road with the Google Distance Matrix API, then filter by date, time, room type, disabled access and capacity. The school accepts or rejects each booking, and teacher profiles hold DBS and qualification documents.

Payments

Payments in, net payouts out each month

Room bookings and lesson sign-ups go through Stripe Checkout in pounds, with a platform-fee line and an invoice. A Stripe webhook checks the signature, then links each checkout session to its payment intent. Schools and teachers onboard to Stripe Connect Custom accounts, and can pick up onboarding where they left off. Every payment lands in a ledger, and on the day of the month an admin sets, a payout command transfers each payee’s net amount for the month before and records the Stripe transfer ID.

Student progress

Feedback and school data, shared with a teammate

In 2025 the client widened the product into student progress inside schools, and I shared this phase with a teammate. I created the skills-and-grades version of the feedback board, student-started “Ray” threads, bulk feedback and the notifications platform, and the teammate extended them. I moved subjects and skills to many-to-many relationships with data migrations.

I also built the spreadsheet importer. Each row posts in its own database transaction, so a school sees progress and errors row by row, and new accounts get a temporary password that must be changed at first login. The teammate built voice-to-text, translation, staff permissions and parent access.

The timetable

A timetable that catches clashes

In March 2026 I built the timetable on my own. Schools set up day structures and periods, plan Week A and Week B, and see a warning when a teacher or a room is used twice in the same period. Terms and holidays sit above the grid, and an 8-page guided tour takes a school from timetable set-up to data upload. The product now has two sections behind one login: Facility Bookings and Student Progress.