Within TutorCruncher, Locations are used to indicate where a Lesson will take place. You can use Locations to organise a workplace for your Tutors and Students. Locations can also be conflict aware, meaning that TutorCruncher will notify you if another Lesson is booked during that time, in that Location. You can set the default Location of a Job, and you can select a Location when creating Lessons. An associated Tutor's or Client's address can also be set as the default Location for a Job.

The Locations panel can be found via System > Settings > People and Activity > Locations. It’s used to create and edit your Branch Locations, whether that’s the address of a school or meeting place, or the address of one of your Tutors or Clients:

An example of a Locations page.

Selecting Add Location will open the Locations panel, allowing you to create a new Location, specify the name, address and description of the Location. You can also toggle whether the Location is Conflict Aware - having this checked will prevent the system from allowing two users to book the Location at the same time.

The Locations panel, with the Conflict Aware checkbox highlighted.

Ticking Conflict Aware reveals a Concurrent lessons per location field. This sets how many Lessons are allowed to run in that Location at the same time, and it defaults to 1 - meaning a single Lesson occupies the Location and any second booking is flagged as a conflict. If the Location is a room or site that can genuinely hold more than one Lesson at once, raise this number and TutorCruncher will only warn you once that many Lessons are booked into the same slot.

A Location to be used by default on all Lessons created on a Job can be set via Activity > Jobs > select the Job > Actions > Select Default Location. This will open the ‘Select Default Location’ panel, from where you can specify a default Location for that Job from the dropdown menu. You can also choose whether to update all planned Lessons on that Job using the ‘Update planned Lessons’ checkbox - enabling this will update all planned Lessons on that Job with the new Location.

Setting a Job’s default Location.

If you would like to set a different Location for a specific Lesson, you can do so via Activity > Calendar > select the Lesson > Actions > Edit - you can then specify a new Location for that particular Lesson via the ‘Location’ dropdown menu.

Setting a new Location for a Lesson.

Every Location has its own Calendar Colour, which lets you tell at a glance where each Lesson is taking place. Set it via System > Settings > People and Activity > Locations > select the Location, choose a colour in the Calendar Colour field, and save.

The Location edit panel with the Calendar Colour field highlighted, and the Concurrent lessons per location field visible beneath a ticked Conflict Aware checkbox.

Setting the colour does not change your Calendar on its own - you also need to tell the Calendar to colour by Location. Go to Activity > Calendar, open the View menu and set Colour By to Location. Each Lesson will then take the colour of the Location it is assigned to.

Location is one of several options in the Colour By menu - you can also colour your Calendar by Job, Tutor, Client, Student, Lesson Status or Is Editable. Your choice is remembered between visits, so if your Calendar is not showing the colours you expect, check which option is selected in the View menu first.