How to run a yoga studio using Simplifythis

1. Set the studio up once

Two screens, ten minutes, and you never come back to them.

Settings → General. Studio name, address, and the timezone. Get the timezone right before you add classes — every class time, reminder and booking is read in it.

Settings → Billing. Currency, and tax if you charge it. Give the tax a name and a rate, and choose whether prices already include it or it is added as its own line.

Settings → Billing. Set once, applies everywhere.

Connecting Stripe

Stripe is how students pay you online — a card at booking, a pass bought from your website, a membership that bills itself every month. Without it none of that can take money.

Go to Settings → Billing → Connect Stripe. It hands you to Stripe to enter your business and bank details, then returns you here showing Connected. Payouts go to your own Stripe account, on Stripe’s schedule. Nothing sits with us.

Settings → Billing → Stripe payments.

You can run the studio without it. Bookings, the timetable, attendance and the client list all work, and you record cash or a card taken on your own terminal as you go. What you lose is students paying themselves, and memberships billing on their own.

2. Add your teachers

Classes are assigned to a teacher, so add people before you add classes. Each teacher gets their own color on the schedule, which is how you read a week at a glance.

If you teach alone, add yourself. The studio still needs someone to assign the class to.

Staff → each teacher gets a color, which is how the week reads at a glance.

Hours — and when they matter

Every teacher has an Availability section on their record: the days and times they work, weekly or on a longer cycle, from a start date.

Staff → the teacher → Availability.

Hours decide which slots a private one-to-one offers. They do not drive classes — a class runs at the time you put on the class, whether or not it sits inside anyone’s hours.

So if you only teach group classes, you can skip this. If you sell privates, fill it in, because an empty week has no slots to offer. For a holiday, click the day in the preview and mark it not scheduled — that date closes and the rest of the pattern is untouched.

3. Put your timetable in

A class is many people at a time you choose. A service is one person at a time they choose — a private session or a one-to-one. Most of a yoga studio is classes, with privates as services.

When you add a class, the one decision that matters is the type:

• Series — your weekly Vinyasa. Recurring, runs on indefinitely, people pay per visit.
• Course — an eight-week beginners block. A fixed run of dates, bought as a whole.
• Single — a Saturday workshop. One date, its own price and cap.

Classes → Add. The type decides how people are billed.

Set the capacity to what the room holds. When a class fills, it stops offering itself online.

4. Take it out of draft

This catches everyone. A new class is a draft, and draft means invisible — not on your website, not in booking, not to students. It is a scratchpad while you finish setting it up.

A draft is invisible everywhere until you change it.

When it is ready, set it to Active. If you have made a class and cannot find it anywhere, this is almost always why.

5. Decide who can book it

Separate from draft and active. That decides whether the class exists; this decides who may book it.

• Public — anyone, including someone who has never been to you.
• Clients only — they must sign in. Only people on your list.
• By request — not offered online at all. They ask, and you book them in.

Public only does anything if you have also switched on Let new people sign themselves up in Settings. Leave that off and you stay invite-only: you add people, and only they can book. Your existing students can still book either way.

6. Set up the money

Three ways to be paid for the same mat, and a studio usually needs all three.

The same Tuesday class, three ways to be paid for it.

Drop-in is just the price on the class. Nothing to set up.

Passes — the ten-class card

A pass is sold once and drawn down per visit. In Simplifythis these live under Packages. Give it a name and a price, then say what is in it: a number of sessions, and which classes they can be spent on.

Packages → New. One row can cover several classes, so the pass works across your timetable.

Three decisions worth thinking about:

• Expiry — a number of days after purchase, a fixed date, or never. Days is the usual one, and it is what stops a pass bought two years ago turning up.
• Who can use it — one person, or anyone on the account. Pick the account option for a couple or a family sharing a pass.
• What it covers — put several classes in one row and a session can be spent on any of them. Use one class if the pass is meant only for that.

After that it runs itself. Each booking takes one session off, the balance shows on the student’s record and on their own portal page, and when it is used up they are asked to pay again.

Memberships — the ones who come every week

A membership bills on a cycle instead of per visit. Set the price, how often it bills, and a joining fee if you charge one. Then set what members get: a number of sessions a period, or a discount, or nothing to pay at all.

Memberships → New. Members are charged the member price when they book.

Which to sell? A pass suits someone who comes when they can and wants the visits to keep. A membership suits a regular, and bills whether or not they show up. Most studios sell both.

All three book the same class the same way. A member, a pass holder and a drop-in can sit in the same room without you tracking anything by hand.

Workshops and teacher training

A workshop is not a class that repeats — it is a fixed run of days, the same hours each day, sold as one thing. Set it up as a Workshop with a first day, a last day and its daily hours, and a student books the whole run once. That matters more here than anywhere: a weekend immersion sold as two separate classes gets half-booked, and half a teacher training is worth nothing to the person who paid for it.

Classes → Add → Workshop. The dates go on your website as the dates, not as “by appointment”.

7. Let students book themselves

There are three ways in, and most studios end up using all three. They are not alternatives — the website, the booking link and the portal are the same booking underneath.

The website you get

Every studio gets one. Pick a template, and it fills itself with what you have already put in — your classes, your teachers, your prices, your passes. You edit the words, not the data.

It is a multi-page site. The timetable, classes, teachers, plans and passes each get their own page, with a Book button on every class.

Website → the pages are built from your real classes.

Because the pages read your live data, a price change or a new class shows up on the site on its own. You are not editing the website every time the timetable moves.

It lives at clients.simplifythis.com/your-studio from the moment you publish. To use your own address, go to Website → Custom domain, enter it, and add the one DNS record it shows you at your domain registrar. It verifies itself and the site moves across.

If you already have a website

Keep it. You do not need to replace a site you like — you need a Book button on it that goes somewhere that works.

That is your booking link: clients.simplifythis.com/your-studio/portal/booking. It opens the booking flow directly — the timetable, pick a date, pay, done.

It is a link, so it works anywhere a link works. Put it behind the Book Now button on your own site, in your Instagram bio, at the bottom of every email, or on a QR code taped by the door. Settings → General has the link ready to copy, and it follows your custom domain if you set one up.

The portal — where students manage themselves

After the first booking, each student has their own page. This is what stops the messages asking how many classes they have left.

Their portal — bookings, sessions left, membership, what they owe.

• Bookings — what they have coming up, and cancelling one themselves.
• Plans & passes — sessions left, when the pass expires, membership status, and buying another without asking you.
• Billing — anything owed, and paying it.
• Account — their own details.

They reach it from your website, or straight at clients.simplifythis.com/your-studio/portal/home.

Who is allowed to book

One setting decides this, and it is worth being deliberate. With Let new people sign themselves up off, you stay invite-only: you add the person, and only people on your list can book. Switch it on and a stranger can find a Public class and book it without you doing anything.

Studios filling a new timetable switch it on. Studios with a full room and a quiet phone leave it off.

8. Running the week

The Schedule is the week. Each teacher has a color, and you can view one teacher at a time when the studio gets busy.

Schedule → the week, with how full each class is.

• Mark attendance per class. That is what tells you the regular who has not been in three weeks, while there is still time to send a message.
• Cover a class by reassigning the teacher. Bookings and the roster stay as they are.
• Cancel one date without touching the rest of the series.
• Edit a class — name, price, description — and the schedule is left alone. Only changing the dates, recurrence, capacity or teacher rebuilds it.

9. When something changes

Studios change constantly, and most of it is two clicks.

• Taking a class off the timetable for a while — set it to By request. It leaves your website and booking, and you keep the history.
• Ending a class — cancel it. It stops generating dates.
• Putting prices up — change the price. Booked classes keep what was agreed.