Substitute Teacher for a Tuition Class: Cover, Pay, Notify

A tutor messages you at 3 pm: "Sorry sir, I am unwell, cannot take the 5 pm batch." You find someone to cover. Then the follow-up questions start. Who marks attendance? Who is paid for that lesson? Do the parents know a different teacher is coming? And at month end, who remembers that Priya took Rahul's class on the 14th?

Most centres answer these from memory and a WhatsApp group. This guide shows how to record cover for one class in TuitionDesk so those four questions have one answer.

What "substitute" means in TuitionDesk

You mark the absent teacher in Teacher Attendance, choose the status Substitute, pick the covering teacher, and (optionally) link the class session the cover is for. That record is the source of truth for that one session.

For any session, TuitionDesk decides "who took this class" in a fixed order:

Reminders, attendance permissions, parent-facing teacher names and tutor earnings all read from this same order, so they do not disagree with each other.

Step by step: recording cover for one class

1. Open Teacher Attendance and choose Mark Attendance.
2. Pick the teacher who cannot come and the date.
3. Set the status to Substitute.
4. Choose the substitute teacher from your own centre's teachers.
5. Link the session (the batch and time) so the cover applies to that class and not just to the day.
6. Add a note if the covering teacher needs context, such as the chapter to continue.
7. Save.

Teachers must already exist on your teacher list. If the person covering is new, add them first from the Teachers page.

Who is told, and how

When you save a Substitute (or Absent) record:

• The owner and staff are alerted.
• The absent teacher gets a notification.
• The substitute is told they are listed as cover for that teacher on that day.

If you change the substitute later on the same record, that edit notifies people too, so you can correct a mistake without a second round of calls.

You can also assign a different teacher to a regular timetable slot when the change is longer than a day. When a slot's teacher changes, TuitionDesk sends one push each to the new teacher, the previous teacher, and the parents of students enrolled in that batch. Push reaches people who have the app installed or browser notifications on; it is not a WhatsApp message.

Attendance and reminders follow the covering teacher

Once cover is recorded, the substitute is the teacher for that session. They can check in, take student attendance and see the batch, and class reminders for that session go to them rather than to the absent teacher. You do not have to share the owner login or move the batch to another teacher permanently.

Parents see the teacher name for the session on their side of the portal, so a different name on the calendar is not a surprise. This works only where your centre has the Parent Portal turned on.

Who gets paid for the lesson

This is where cover usually goes wrong. Two payroll paths exist, and they depend on how you pay.

Salary-based payroll (Starter and above). In the teacher's pay settings you can set a substitute rate. If you leave it empty, the per-session rate is used. Sessions a teacher covered in the month are counted once, at the substitute rate, and show as a separate line on the salary calculation, for example "Substitute classes (3) x the rate".

Per-lesson tutor earnings (Pro and above). If you pay tutors per lesson, TuitionDesk records an earning for each completed lesson. When you record or change a substitute:

• Unpaid earnings for the original teacher on that session are voided and the lesson is accrued to the covering teacher instead.
• If you later remove the cover, the original teacher's earning is restored.
• Earnings already on a statement or marked paid are never changed automatically. You get a warning to reconcile them by hand.

So record cover before you export or pay. Fixing it afterwards still works for unpaid lines, but paid ones need manual correction.

For the wider payroll picture, read teacher payroll in TuitionDesk.

A simple cover policy to write down

Software records cover, but you decide the rules. Agree these with your teachers once:

• Notice: how early a teacher should tell you (and the fallback for sickness).
• Who finds cover: the teacher, or you.
• Handoff: the absent teacher leaves a short note on where the chapter stopped. Session notes help here; see session notes parents can see.
• Pay for cover: a fixed substitute rate, or the normal per-session rate.
• When to reschedule instead: if no suitable cover exists, reschedule or cancel the class and let parents know.

What this does not do

• Cover is recorded by the owner or staff in Teacher Attendance. This guide does not claim teachers can self-assign as substitutes.
• Automatic ranked cover invitations are a separate Enterprise feature tied to approved leave; see teacher leave and plans.
• Notifications are push and email as described above. A cover record does not send a WhatsApp message to parents by itself.

Where to go next

If cover requests come from planned leave, set up teacher leave and attendance first. If absences repeat for the same batch, the attendance best practices guide covers spotting the pattern.

Try it in your own centre

Add your teachers, create a batch, and record your first cover class in a few minutes. Create your TuitionDesk account.