The full driving school tutorial

Welcome. This is a full tutorial for running a driving school in OneBookPlus, from setting up your lessons to paying your instructors.

Your home page starts with the day. Driving school today lists today's lessons, the students running low on prepaid credits, and the driving tests coming up, so you know who needs a call.

In the menu, Driving School holds what the Driving School Suite adds: your lesson packages, each student's credits, and their lesson progress.

Fleet and Scheduler holds the rest: how today is running and what needs renewing, your bookable instructors, the suburbs they cover, booking links, and instructor pay.

Both come from the App Marketplace. Driving School Suite, and Instructor and Vehicle Scheduler, are twenty nine dollars a month each, or forty nine dollars together as Driving School Complete.

Start with your lesson types, under Services: manual and automatic lessons, an assessment, mock tests and parking skills, each with its own length and price.

Your test day lesson works a little differently. Open it, go to More settings, and tick This is a driving test day.

Then choose how long before the test the lesson should start. Here it's sixty minutes, time for a warm up drive and to get to the centre. Press Save.

Here's what that does for a learner. On your booking page they choose Test, then the test day lesson, and the suburb to be picked up from.

Instead of guessing a start time, they enter the time of their driving test, and the test centre.

When they choose a day, the page works back from the test, and offers the start time that gets them there on time. If the run-up would be too short, it tells them so.

Next, your instructors. Bookable instructors lists everyone who teaches, with the lessons they teach, the days they work and the suburbs they cover. Each switch turns online bookings on or off for that instructor.

Open an instructor to set the name and photo learners see, and tick the lessons they teach. A learner choosing an automatic lesson only sees the instructors who teach it.

Set the notice they need and the gap between lessons for travel. Lesson hours keep a lesson to certain times, like assessments only on weekday mornings.

Every instructor has their own booking link, a box to embed on your website, and a calendar feed, so their lessons show up on their phone.

Service areas sets the suburbs each instructor travels to. When a learner enters their pickup suburb, they only see the instructors who come to them.

And Booking links has a ready link for every page, lesson and package, plus a builder for any lesson with any instructor, to put on your website or in a text.

Your cars are under Today and compliance. The top of the page shows how today is running: which instructors are teaching, and which cars are out.

Below it is anything due in the next sixty days, for cars and instructors alike: a service, a rego, a roadworthy, or an instructor's accreditation. Each one turns red two weeks out.

To add a car, press Add vehicle. Give it a label, its rego, its make and model, and choose manual or automatic.

Then add the dates its rego, insurance, roadworthy and next service fall due. Dual controls are ticked for you, and it's available for lessons straight away.

It joins your fleet, and because its service is due in five weeks, it's already on the compliance list.

Now your packages. A package is a prepaid bundle of lessons. You sell it once, it becomes credits on the student's account, and each lesson they book uses one, with nothing more to pay.

Press New package, and give it a name, a description for the student's receipt, a price, and how many days it lasts.

Then add what's inside it, one line for each lesson type: here, five manual lessons, and one test day.

Tick the box to sell it on your booking page, and press Create package.

Learners can now request it from the Packages tab on your booking page. You confirm each purchase before the credits are added.

To sell a package yourself, open the student's page, and under Prepaid packages, press Sell package.

Choose the package. The amount fills in from its price, and you can change it for a discount, tick to raise a GST invoice, or note that someone else is paying. Then press Confirm sale.

The lessons are now credits, with the date they expire. If a lesson was taken some other way, you can adjust the balance here.

Student Credits lists every student and how many credits they have left, so you can see who's due to top up.

And with this switch on, when a paid lesson is cancelled in time, the payment becomes a credit for their next booking of the same kind.

Here's how a new learner books on your booking page. They choose what to book, then the lesson: here, a one-hour manual lesson.

They enter the suburb to be picked up from, and only the instructors who travel there are shown.

Then they pick a free time with one of those instructors.

They add their name, email and mobile, and tap their pickup point. A parent can tick a box to book for their child. Then they confirm.

The lesson is booked, and a confirmation is on its way to them.

On your side, the booking is in Bookings, with the learner, the lesson, the instructor, and where to pick them up.

Once a learner has credits, give them their own booking link. On their page, under Prepaid packages, press Copy self-booking link, and text it to them.

When they open it, your booking page greets them by name, and shows how many prepaid lessons they have left.

They choose a lesson, their pickup suburb, and a free time.

Their details are already on file, so they tap a recent pickup spot and confirm, with nothing more to pay.

The lesson came straight out of their credits. They're down to nine.

On the day, the calendar's instructor view gives each instructor their own column, so you can see the whole school's lessons at a glance.

Switch to the week to plan ahead, and filter by instructor when you only want one diary.

As learners progress, Lesson Progress tracks them against your syllabus: the skills every learner works through, from the cockpit drill to roundabouts.

Open a student, and mark each skill as introduced, practising, or competent, as you go.

Their progress adds up as you work. Print it, or email them a summary before their test.

After a lesson, add a note on the student's page: what you covered, and what's next. Tick the box so they can see it.

Then press Copy parent or student link, and send it to the learner, or to their parents.

They see every note you've shared with them, without signing in.

Finally, Instructor pay shows what each instructor is on, as a share of each booking, and what the last pay period came to. Open Contractor Pay in Accounting to run the pay itself.

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