Inside Adminished — scheduling, payments, and the parts nobody shows you

Most product tours show you a tidy demo with no edge cases. This isn't that. This is a walk through a real week of running an instructor business in Adminished, including the bits that are clunky and the bits we haven't built yet.

If you're evaluating booking software, the honest version is more useful than the marketing version. Here goes.

Setting up a recurring class block

You teach Vinyasa Yoga every Tuesday at 6:30pm. You want to sell an 8-week block, £80, capacity 14, in the upstairs studio.

In Adminished, you open Classes → New Block, and fill in:

• Title, description, instructor (you)
• Schedule: Tuesdays, 18:30, 75 minutes, starting next week
• Duration: 8 weeks
• Room: Upstairs Studio
• Capacity: 14
• Price: £80 for the block, or £12 drop-in (you can offer both)

You hit Save. The system creates the 8 individual dates, holds the room on each one, and generates a public booking page. Total time, with a slow cup of coffee: about four minutes.

Now the edge case. Week 5 lands on a bank holiday. You open the block, click that date, and pick Skip this date. Students who book the block see "7 classes" with the bank holiday week explicitly noted. The block price stays at £80, or you can pro-rata it. Your call.

Handling a waitlist when someone cancels

It's Monday morning. Tuesday's class is full at 14, with three people on the waitlist (Sarah, James, Priya, in that order). At 11am, Linda cancels — she's caught a cold, well outside the cancellation window so she gets a full refund.

You do nothing. Adminished does this:

1. At 11:01am, Sarah gets an email and SMS: "A spot just opened up for Tuesday 18:30 Vinyasa. Claim it before 11:31am."
2. Sarah's at work, doesn't see it for an hour. Window expires.
3. At 11:31am, James gets the same message. He's free, clicks the link, claims the spot.
4. His saved card is charged £12 automatically. He gets a confirmation. He's in.
5. Priya stays on the list in case anyone else cancels.

You find out about it the next morning when you check the dashboard. The class is still full. Linda is refunded. James is happy. You didn't touch your phone.

The whole point of automation in a small business isn't to replace the personal touch. It's to do the boring admin at 11pm so you can do the personal touch at 9am.

Charging a no-show

Wednesday morning. Looking at yesterday's class: 13 attended, 1 no-show (a drop-in student called Mark, who booked for £12, no prior history, didn't cancel, didn't show).

In the Class Report view, Mark's row shows a yellow "No-show" badge. Next to it: Charge £12 (no-show fee) and Forgive.

You click Charge. The card he saved at booking time is charged £12. He gets an email explaining the no-show policy and the charge. Done.

If Mark were a regular with a clean record, you'd click Forgive instead. The system would log the forgiveness against his account (so a pattern would be visible later) but no charge would go out.

You can also turn on Auto-charge for the whole studio, which does this without you opening the report — useful once you trust the policy.

End-of-month payout reconciliation

The last day of the month. You want to know what you earned, where the money went, and whether the numbers match your bank statement.

Open Reports → Monthly. You see:

• Gross bookings (everything that came in)
• Refunds and credits issued
• No-show charges collected
• Stripe processing fees
• Net payout to your bank

Each line is clickable down to individual transactions, with the booking, the student, and the timestamp. You cross-check the total against your Stripe payout, which should match to the penny.

What used to be a Sunday-afternoon job in a spreadsheet is now a 10-minute check, mostly spent making tea.

If you want exports for your accountant, the same view has a Download CSV button that produces a file with every transaction, tax-categorised. We don't claim to be Xero, but the CSV is well-behaved enough that whoever does your books won't groan.

The parts we haven't built yet

Honesty bit. Adminished v1 is deliberately narrow. Things that aren't there yet, in rough priority order:

1. Multi-currency. Today, you sell in GBP. If you're a UK instructor running a UK business, that's fine. If you want to take EUR or USD natively, you'll need to wait.
2. Gift cards and gift vouchers. Very common request. Sitting in the next release cycle.
3. Memberships with class caps. Unlimited and pay-as-you-go memberships work. "10 classes a month, rolling" is on the roadmap but not shipped.
4. A native mobile app. The web app is fully responsive and works well on phones, but there's no iOS/Android wrapper yet. We'll do this once the feature surface stabilises.
5. Deep integrations with marketing tools. Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Klaviyo — basic Zapier hooks exist, native is later.
6. Multi-location reporting. If you run two physical sites, the reports work per-site but the rollup is rougher than it should be.

What's there is the core: blocks, drop-ins, passes, memberships (the simple kind), waitlists, no-show charging, refunds and credits, room scheduling, end-of-month reports. If you're a UK instructor with 1-5 teachers, that's the 80% that runs your business. The other 20% is on its way.

If you'd like to try the parts that are built, Adminished has a free trial — you can set up a real block in about four minutes and see whether the shape fits your business.