Questions
Questions and answers
Real questions about how ClassLoop behaves, including the awkward cases. Nothing here is filler, and where the answer is “not yet” it says so.
Getting started
Setting up
How long does setup take?
A few minutes. After your first sign-in ClassLoop asks for your studio name, business type, timezone, a contact email and your main location, and you can skip anything that is not essential. Then you add a teacher and a class, and you have a public timetable.
Do I have to add locations and rooms?
No. A single-location studio gets a primary location created during setup and never has to think about it again — there is no picker with one option in it. Rooms are entirely optional.
Can I import my existing timetable?
Not as a file, today. Recurring classes mean the work is smaller than it sounds: each weekly class is entered once, not once per week. If you have a large timetable, get in touch and we will help.
What is my public web address?
Your studio gets a short name of your choosing, and the timetable lives at
/t/your-studio. You can link it from your own website or send it directly.Booking
How people reserve a place
Do people need an account?
No. A name and an email address, plus a phone number and a guardian’s name if you have asked for them. They receive a private link that shows the booking and cancels it. The data model is built so customer accounts can be added later without anybody re-registering.
Is a booking link safe to email?
It is a long random value, and only a keyed hash of it is stored in the database — the key lives in the server’s environment, so a copy of the database alone could not be turned back into working links. Sequential booking numbers are never used as a credential. Treat the link as private, the way you would a password-reset link.
Can somebody book twice by accident?
No. One live place per person per session is enforced by a unique constraint in the database, so a double-tap or a refreshed form cannot produce two places. Cancelling and booking again does work, because that is a different intention.
What if two people book the last place at the same moment?
One is confirmed and the other is offered the waiting list. The check runs inside the database with the session row locked, so the count cannot be read by two requests at once. A class cannot go over capacity.
Can I add a booking for somebody who telephoned?
Yes, from the session’s roster. Staff bookings are not held to the public booking cutoff, because somebody ringing up ten minutes before the class is exactly when you need to be able to do it.
How do cancellations work?
A participant opens their link and cancels, provided they are inside your cancellation window — twelve hours before the class by default, and you can change it. After that the link tells them to contact you, and staff can cancel at any time. A freed place goes to the waiting list immediately.
Scheduling
Recurring classes and one-off changes
What recurrence patterns are supported?
Weekly on the days you choose, and every second week up to every twelfth, with a start date and either an end date or none at all. Monthly patterns and rules like “the last Friday” are deliberately not supported: cancelling the sessions you do not want is one press and covers the same ground without a rule language.
How far ahead are sessions created?
About 4 months, and a nightly job keeps extending the horizon. So an indefinite class is always bookable well in advance without ClassLoop having to store a decade of Tuesdays.
If I change a class, what happens to next week?
Editing the class offers to push the change onto every future session except the ones you have deliberately changed. So a substitution you arranged by phone is not undone by a later edit to the series.
What if I reduce a class's capacity?
Future sessions are reduced, except any that already have more people booked than the new number. Those stay where they are and ClassLoop tells you how many, because quietly dropping somebody who has a place is not an acceptable outcome.
How do bank holidays and half-terms work?
Add a closure with a date range. Sessions inside it are not generated, and if you add the closure after the sessions exist, the future ones inside it are cancelled for you.
Can two classes use the same room at the same time?
ClassLoop will not let a class reference a room at a different location, but it does not currently refuse a double booking of one room. That is a known gap rather than a design decision, and clash detection is on the list.
Teachers and attendance
What teachers can see and do
Exactly what can a teacher see?
Their own upcoming sessions, the roster for each of them, the notes you wrote for teachers, and each participant’s name, guardian name and contact number. They cannot see your booking settings, your member directory, your internal notes, your reports, other teachers’ classes, or anything at all belonging to another organisation.
Is that enforced, or just hidden?
Enforced. A teacher holds no direct read permission on any table in the database. Everything they can see arrives through a small number of database functions that return only the permitted columns and re-check the assignment each time, so a mistake in a query cannot expose a private field.
Can a teacher become an administrator?
Not by their own action. Role changes run through database functions that check the caller is an owner or administrator, and the application’s own database role has no permission to write a role directly — so there is no update it could craft that would promote itself.
Can I add a teacher before they have signed in?
Yes, and this is the normal way round. A teacher profile is created immediately and can be assigned to classes straight away; you invite them to sign in whenever it suits.
Can attendance be corrected?
Yes, and every correction is recorded with who made it and when. The register keeps a history rather than only a current value, which is what makes it usable as evidence.
Does attendance work offline?
No, and ClassLoop does not pretend otherwise. Marking attendance writes to the server, so it needs a connection, and the interface says so clearly rather than accepting marks that will never be saved. The app installs to a home screen and starts quickly; the register itself needs signal.
Data and privacy
Your records
Where is the data held?
In a managed PostgreSQL database in the European Union, run by Techvora. The application is served from the EU as well.
Can another studio see my classes or members?
No. Each organisation is separated at the database itself by row-level policies, not merely filtered by the application, and the organisation a request may act on is derived from a verified membership on the server rather than taken from the browser. There is no identifier you could change in a URL that would reach another studio’s data.
Can Techvora read my class notes and members?
No. The platform tools Techvora uses to operate the service return counts, plan state and health — never a member’s name, a booking, a register or a private note. That is a property of what the tools are able to query, not a policy about what staff choose to look at.
What do you send to analytics?
Counts of anonymous events, such as a timetable being viewed or a booking being completed. Never a name, an email address, a phone number, a class note or anything that identifies a person.
How long do you keep records?
Your classes, members and attendance are kept until you delete them. Security and activity records are kept for 13 months and then removed automatically. Expired sessions and used links are cleared within days.
Can I delete a member's record?
Yes. Archiving keeps the history and removes them from your working lists; deleting removes the record and its bookings. Both are available to an owner or administrator, because you may be legally obliged to do the second.
Can I get my data out?
Members, rosters, attendance, bookings and report results export as CSV. It is your data and there is no exit fee or export request queue.
Everything else
Practicalities
Does ClassLoop send emails?
It is built to: booking confirmations, waiting-list notices, cancellations, password resets and teacher invitations. Email delivery depends on a mail provider being configured for the installation; where it is not, ClassLoop shows the link on screen instead of claiming a message was sent.
What browsers does it support?
Current Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge, on desktop, tablet and phone. It is tested down to a 320px-wide screen, and no basic task requires horizontal scrolling.
Is it accessible?
That is treated as a requirement rather than an afterthought: keyboard operation throughout, visible focus, real labels and error association, status stated in words and not only in colour, and respect for the operating system’s reduced-motion setting. We aim at WCAG 2.2 AA.
Who is behind it?
ClassLoop is built by Techvora, a small independent software company. You will be dealing with the people who wrote it.
What is coming next?
Paid bookings, class passes and memberships, calendar subscriptions, automated reminders, teacher availability and room clash detection. The data model was designed so none of those requires starting again.
Still something unanswered?
Ask a direct question and you will get a direct answer, including “no” where that is the honest one.
Or read the privacy notice.