Teacher Payouts

Most homeschool co-ops are volunteer-run: parents teach each other's kids and there's no money changing hands between the co-op and individual teachers. If that describes you, you can skip this feature entirely.

Teacher Payouts is built for groups that operate more like a business: enrichment centers, hybrid academies, tutorials, and co-ops with paid contracted teachers. In those models, families pay the organization, and the organization needs to pass each teacher's share of the tuition along to them on some cadence — weekly, monthly, end-of-term, whatever your arrangement is.

This feature gives you a running ledger of what each teacher is owed, plus a simple way to record that you've paid them. It doesn't move money — you still cut a check, Venmo, or do an ACH transfer outside HomeschoolGo. What it does is keep the accounting honest so nobody has to keep their own spreadsheet.

Here's the flow end to end:

Unless you've set a pay rate, the earning amount is the tuition you set on the class plus its materials fee, if one is set — see the class catalog guide for how the two fields work. The assumption is that if a teacher is buying supplies for their own class, the materials amount passes through to them along with their teaching fee. If that's not your arrangement — for example, you run the supply orders centrally and want to keep that amount in the org's account — use a manual adjustment to back it out.

When a family pays less than the class fee

A sibling discount, a reduced pricing rate, or an exemption can mean a family pays less than the class fee. You decide what the teacher earns on those seats. Open Pay rates on the Teacher Payouts page and pick one:

• The full class fee. The teacher earns the whole fee and the co-op absorbs the discount. This is the default, and it's how earnings have always worked.
• What the family paid. The teacher's earning goes down with the discount. A seat the family paid nothing for records no earning. For the occasional older payment with no record of what was charged, the teacher earns the full class fee.

Click Save pay rates to apply the choice. It affects payments made after you save; earnings already on the ledger keep their amounts. A teacher with a pay rate earns the rate either way.

There's no toggle to turn on. As soon as a class with an assigned teacher gets a paid enrollment, earnings start accumulating. But to make sure things work the way you expect, walk through this checklist once:

Many tutorials and centers don't pass the whole class fee to the teacher. They pay a flat amount for each student, say $5 per student per class, and the amount differs from teacher to teacher. Pay rates handle that. With a rate set, each paid enrollment credits the teacher that amount instead of the class fee.

Open Pay rates near the bottom of the Teacher Payouts page. Every teacher is listed with a box for their rate per student. Type an amount and click Save pay rates. Leave a teacher blank to keep crediting them the class fee, counted the way you chose under when a family pays less.

A different rate for one class

If a specialty class pays more (or less) than the teacher's usual rate, expand Different rate for a specific class and set it there. A class rate wins over the teacher's rate, for that class only. The list covers classes in current and upcoming terms that have one teacher. When you copy a term forward, class rates come along with the classes.

Each class in that list shows its teacher's name, and their rate in parentheses if they have one. A blank class box falls back to that rate, which is why it reads Teacher rate. For a teacher with no rate, a blank class box reads Full fee (or Amount paid, if you credit what the family paid) and the class keeps crediting the fee.

What a rate changes, and what it doesn't

• It applies to payments made after you save. Earnings already on the ledger keep their amounts. Use a manual adjustment if you need to correct older ones.
• The earning is the rate no matter what the family paid, so a sibling discount or a reduced rate for the family doesn't reduce what the teacher earns, whichever fee option you picked.
• A rate of $0 records no earning for that teacher. That's different from blank, which means the class fee.
• Co-taught classes and classes with no teacher still aren't tracked automatically, with or without a rate.

From your Admin sidebar, click Billing. In the summary card at the top, click the Teacher payouts → link (you can also bookmark /dashboard/admin/teacher-payouts). You'll see three things at a glance.

The summary cards

Three numbers across the top:

• Outstanding to teachers — the total dollar amount you owe across all teachers right now.
• Paid out (lifetime) — the total of every payout you've recorded since you started.
• Teachers with balance — how many people have non-zero outstanding earnings.

Outstanding by teacher

Below the summary, every teacher with earnings — paid or unpaid — is listed with their current owed balance. Teachers with money still owed appear with an amber owed label; teachers who are caught up show Paid up in green. The list is sorted so the largest outstanding balances are on top.

Untracked-enrollments notice

If any paid enrollments aren't being tracked automatically — because the class has no teacher assigned, has more than one teacher, or was paid before this feature was enabled — you'll see an amber banner near the top with the count. Use Manual adjustment to record those earnings.

Once you've actually paid a teacher — written the check, sent the Venmo, kicked off the ACH — come back to HomeschoolGo and tell the system what you covered.

Real life doesn't always match the automatic earning flow:

• A teacher earned a bonus you want to record.
• A family was refunded mid-term and the teacher's share needs to be clawed back.
• A family paid you in cash and the system has no record of it.
• A co-taught class needs to be split manually.
• You owe a teacher for prep time, travel, supplies, or any other line item.

For any of these, use Manual adjustment.

If a class has more than one teacher assigned, HomeschoolGo will not automatically record an earning when a family pays for it. We didn't want to guess at how you split the money — 50/50? 70/30? Lead-teacher gets more? — and silently get it wrong.

For co-taught classes, do this instead:

These three scenarios all bypass the automatic earning flow. You'll need to handle them yourself:

Drops

If a family enrolls in a class, pays for it, and then drops mid- term, HomeschoolGo does not automatically reverse the teacher's earning. Depending on your refund policy, you may want to keep the earning in place (the teacher did the work) or claw it back (the family was refunded and your books need to balance).

Refunds

Stripe refunds don't flow back into the payout system. If you refund a family, decide what the teacher's share should be and record a clawback adjustment for that amount.

Waitlist promotions

When a class fills up, paid enrollments go to the waitlist (status: waitlisted). Earnings are only recorded for enrollments that landed with status enrolled. If you manually promote a family from the waitlist later, no earning is recorded retroactively — you'll need a manual adjustment.

Every payout you've ever recorded shows up in the Payout history table at the bottom of the page, most recent first. For each row you see the date, the teacher, the method, the reference number (if any), and the amount.

This is your audit trail. Combined with your bank statement and the underlying earnings (visible in each teacher's detail panel), it should be everything your bookkeeper or accountant needs at tax time.

Teachers see a read-only version of their own ledger at /dashboard/teaching/earnings — accessible from the Teaching submenu in their sidebar.

On that page they see:

• Total earned, total paid out, and outstanding balance.
• A line-by-line list of every earning event — the class title, the date, the amount, and whether it's been paid out yet.
• A table of payouts received, with the date, method, reference, and amount.

Teachers cannot see other teachers' data — only their own. Database-level row security enforces this, not just the UI.

HomeschoolGo does not file taxes on your behalf, and it does not generate 1099 forms. Whether your teachers count as employees or independent contractors, and what tax forms you need to issue, depends on your jurisdiction and your relationship with each teacher. Talk to your accountant.

What HomeschoolGo gives you is the underlying data on-screen: a full payout history per teacher, a year-to-date total, and the method/reference for every payment you've recorded. That covers most accountants' needs for end-of-year reporting.