1. Home
  2. Getting Started
  3. Terminology



Timetabling and Scheduling terms

You can view more information about these terms, and how they impact timetabling here.


See period.


Periods (or terms) are blocks of time that class blocks are organised into. This helps to make classes easy for students to find. Periods allow you to easily group your classes for viewing reports and statistics, as well as automate the sending out of feedback forms to students when the period ends. Even if you don’t use terms for your classes, we recommend grouping classes into periods based on your financial periods (for example, monthly, quarterly, etc.) so you can easily use those periods for enrolment reporting.

Most studios have one period start as another period finishes, but periods can also overlap.


A course is a set of content taught to students. For example, a studio might have Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced courses, each with their own settings. You can timetable classes for a course as many times as you want, but all classes must  be part of a course.

Enrolment Block

An enrolment block is a set of classes that students enrol into. Enrolment blocks are not used for casual enrolments. 

If your studio offers multi-week periods or terms (for example, an 8-week beginner course), enrolment blocks are used to group the set of classes for each course. Each course can have multiple enrolment blocks. For example, the beginner course might run on Monday at 7pm, and Tuesday at 8pm. All the Monday classes would be in one block, and the Tuesday classes in another. Students enrol into either the Monday, or the Tuesday, enrolment block.

Classes in an enrolment block do not have to be scheduled on the same time or day each week. In addition, enrolment blocks can have multiple classes in a single week. (For example, if your studio is running an Intensive 4-Week Fitness course, students may attend classes on both Tuesday and Friday. The enrolment block for this course would have classes scheduled on both these days each week.)

Enrolment blocks exist with a single period (or term). Each period will have a different set of class blocks. (When scheduling a new period, enrolment blocks can be copied from one period to another to avoid rescheduling your classes every period).


A class is single time-slot at your studio where students attend (for example, Monday, 27th October, at 7pm). If you allow casual enrolments, students enrol directly into these individual time-slots.


A Skill can be anything you want it to be that you or your staff teach. This would generally be individual moves that you teach students, but could also be a stretch, combination of moves, or a whole routine. You can track student completion of skills, as well as marking them on their ability to do them.


Curriculums let you group sets of skills together for teaching to students. When you create a Course, you can select which Curriculums instructors will teach, and, at your choice, make the curriculums available to staff and/or students for their reference. You can mark and track student\’s progression through your curriculums, as well as prevent them from enrolling in more difficult classes if they have not completed certain skills or obtained certain marks.

At Home Curriculums

At Home Curriculums create small sets of skills that can be assigned to students on a casual basis for them to practice at home. For example, whilst you might not allow students to view your whole curriculum, you might want to give them stretching exercises or strength building exercises to practice between classes, and change what they are doing at home each week. At Home curriculums let you create these sets of skills and easily assign them to students on a on-by-one basis.

In Case of Emergency (ICE)

ICE refers to both the emergency contact information provided by a student, as well as any relevant issues they may need you to be aware of. This is captured when customers are asked to complete your


Membership Template

A Membership Template is a recurring billing service that you offer. Memberships allow you to charge students automatically (and either automatically debit their account, or have them pay in-studio), and provide any combination of free or discounted classes, class blocks, privates, or retail purchases. Membership templates represent what students can subscribe to. Each student that is being billed for a membership, is on their own membership subscription.

Membership Subscription

A Membership Subscription represents a single student\’s involvement in a membership template you offer. This allows you to cancel, suspend, or prematurely renew a membership for a student based on their own subscription to a membership template.


Discounts allow you to give students discounted or free pricing for enrollments, retail purchases, and anything else. Discounts can either be redeemed using codes that you generate (and can be used on marketing/promotions) or can be directly applied to student\’s accounts, for example if you wanted to give a student a discount for being a loyal student. You can also automatically have PoleBuddy apply discounts to students accounts automatically, like on their Birthday. Individual discount codes can be cancelled, as can the discounts once they have been applied to a user\’s account. Whilst students can have as many discounts on their account as they want, only one can be used on each invoice. PoleBuddy automatically picks the discount that will provide the best pricing for the student. This can be manually overridden if you are manually selling something.


Vouchers or Packages are similar to discounts, in that they allow you to give students discounted or free pricing for enrollments, retail purchases, and anything else, but they can be sold and purchased from you, either online or in-store.

Gift Cards

Gift Cards are a prepaid vouchers students can purchase and use themselves, or gift to others. They do not provide any discounts or package items, they just allow you to collect a set fee upfront, and have the student receive that in credit in the future.


A Tax Rate refers to a taxable rate that is applied to an item you sell, or pay. The easiest example would be a sales tax. If you sell items and have to charge different amounts of taxes for different items, you need different tax rates. Each tax rate can be made up of a single tax (e.g. a federal tax), or it can have multiple components, so if when you sell an item, you have to charge a) local, b) state, and c) federal taxes on the same item, you would enter all three of these into a single tax rate that is used for retail items or enrolments requiring it.

Tax Rule

Tax Rules are not used by the majority of studios. They allow you to charge different taxes based on where your student/customer is related, and are mainly used if you have an online store and have to charge different taxes depending on where people are. Tax rules allow you to set different tax rates for different regions throughout the world, or within different countries, states, or cities. Unless your studio is selling to a large audience in different locations, you most likely will not need to setup tax rules.

Location Groups

A location group is used by Tax Rules and delivery charges and other parts of PoleBuddy to easily define groups of locations that can be used for various tasks. For example, if you deliver retail items to students, you can create regions for which you need to charge different delivery rates.



A contact is either a person or business associated with your business. This could be a student, instructor, or business that you purchase from.

Was this article helpful to you Yes No

How can we help