In TutorCruncher, Tutors and Students are linked together through Jobs. How they get matched in the first place is up to you: your team does the matching, your Tutors apply for work you advertise, your Clients book for themselves, or any combination of the three. This article covers all of them.

A Job is the record that ties a Tutor to a Student. It might represent a course you offer, a subject or unit you teach, or simply the ongoing relationship between one Student and one Tutor, along with every Lesson they have had and have coming up.

Create one via Activity > Jobs > Create New Job, then add the relevant Students and Tutors using the Add button on the Job's summary page. From there you schedule Lessons, mark past ones as complete or cancelled, and attach Documents such as worksheets or homework. A Job can hold one Tutor and one Student, or a whole group.

While creating a Job you also set its Charge Type, which decides how Lessons on it are billed: per hour or per Lesson, charged to each Student individually or as a flat rate split between however many Students are on the Job.

If you run group Jobs where not everyone pays the same, you can override the default rates for individual Students and Tutors from the Job's summary page under Activity > Jobs > select the Job, so one Student can sit on a reduced rate while another pays full price. Read more about custom charge and pay rates here.

Every Job has a Matching tab, found via Activity > Jobs > select the Job > Matching. That is where you tell TutorCruncher what the Job needs, and where it tells you which of your Tutors fit.

On the ‘Skill Sets’ panel, select Add to set the subject category, the level required, and whether each skill is required or merely preferred. You can put several skill sets on one Job. TutorCruncher then compares those against your Tutors’ own recorded teaching skills.

The Send Notifications button on the same tab’s ‘Job Applications’ panel sends the Job out to your Tutors, and you choose who receives it:

Applications come back into the same Matching tab, where you open a Tutor’s application to read it and then Approve or Reject it. Administrators, Client Managers or both can be notified whenever a Tutor applies, set from the ‘Group to notify when a Tutor applies to a Job’ dropdown under System > Settings > People and Activity > Activity.

If you would rather Tutors came to you, run your Jobs as Available for Application. New Jobs get that status by default, and you can set it on an existing Job via Activity > Jobs > select the Job > Actions > Set Status.

Those Jobs appear on the ‘Available Jobs’ tab of every Tutor’s dashboard. Tutors see the Job’s name, description and Pay Rate. They do not see the Client’s name, the Client’s address, or how much the Client is being charged.

Tutors can filter that list by how well they qualify, because TutorCruncher works out from their recorded skills whether they are fully or partly qualified for each Job. Any Tutor can still apply to any available Job regardless.

The matching gets sharper the more the skills list looks like your own business. Add your own subjects via System > Settings > People and Activity > Custom Subjects and your own levels via System > Settings > People and Activity > Custom Qualification Levels. Read more about Custom Subjects and Custom Qualification Levels.

Clients get a ‘Book a Lesson’ tab on their dashboard, which covers two different things, and your own website can carry a third.

Clients browse your bookable Tutors, filter them by weekly availability or by subject, open a profile to see skills and qualification levels, and pick a slot. You or the Tutor then accept or decline the booking.

To switch this on, enable ‘Clients book Public Tutors’ under System > Settings > People and Activity > Clients Booking Lessons & Tutors, apply the ‘Public Profile’ Label to the Tutors you want bookable via People > Tutors > select the Tutor, set their Availability, then approve their profiles under System > Settings > Integrations > Approve Public Tutor Profiles.

Clients see a calendar of every Lesson currently bookable on your platform for a given week, filter it by Job, and pick one. They confirm the time, the total cost and which of their Students is attending before it is booked.

You can set a cutoff so Lessons that have not been confirmed a set number of hours beforehand are cancelled automatically, using the ‘Lesson booking time threshold’ field under System > Settings > People and Activity > Clients Booking Lessons & Tutors.

TutorCruncher Socket embeds your Tutor listings straight into your site, so prospective Clients who have never logged in can browse Tutors and send an enquiry. You control which Tutors appear using the ‘Public Profile’ Label and the same approval step under System > Settings > Integrations > Approve Public Tutor Profiles, and you can add more detail to each listing with Custom Fields.

There is also an option to create a Job automatically whenever a Client enquires, with that Tutor already listed as an applicant, via the ‘Create Job for enquiries’ checkbox under System > Settings > People and Activity > Activity. Socket can carry online Lesson booking as well as Tutor listings.

If you sell a block of Lessons rather than single sessions, Packages let Clients buy a set number of Lessons or hours up front, usually at a discounted rate, from the ‘Packages’ section of their dashboard.

The Jobs collection covers Jobs in full, and Clients booking Lessons and Tutors covers the self-serve side.