How the Team Screen Manages Instructor Invites, Pay Rates, and Availability

How the Team Screen Manages Instructor Invites, Pay Rates, and Availability

A new instructor sends you a text at 6 a.m. asking what to bring to the 10 o'clock lesson. You pull up your calendar and realize you never actually added him to the schedule, because you forgot to send the invite link three days ago.

That kind of thing happens once or twice, then it happens every other week, and eventually you stop trusting your own roster.

The problem is not that you are disorganized. The problem is that instructor information lives in four different places: pay rates in a spreadsheet, availability in a group text, certifications in a folder somewhere, and assignments scattered across your calendar. When someone asks who can teach a private kite lesson next Tuesday at noon, you are stitching an answer together from memory instead of looking at one screen that already knows.

The Team screen is that one screen. It is where you invite instructors, set their pay rates, assign them to lesson types, track certifications, log time-off, and check their availability. Everything that determines whether someone can teach a specific lesson on a specific day lives here, and every lesson on your schedule pulls from it.

This guide walks through the Team screen, what it tracks, and how it ties to the rest of the schedule. For the broader operational picture around running an outdoor lesson business, see The Complete Guide to Running an Outdoor Lesson Business. That guide covers defining your services, building a trusted schedule, hiring, documentation, and the numbers worth tracking. This one focuses on the Team screen specifically.

Table of Contents

1. What the Team Screen Actually Does

2. Invite a New Instructor and Add Them to the Roster

3. Set Pay Rates for Lessons, Camps, and Roles

4. Assign Instructors to Lesson Types They Can Teach

5. Track Certifications and Expiration Dates

6. View and Approve Instructor Availability and Time-Off

7. How the Team Screen Connects to Lesson Assignment

8. Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

9. FAQ

What the Team Screen Actually Does

The Team screen is not a contact list. It is the authoritative source for who can teach, when they can teach, what they are qualified to teach, and what they get paid for teaching it.

Every time you assign an instructor to a lesson, the schedule checks this screen. Every time a customer books a private lesson through the widget, the booking system filters the instructor list using the information stored here. Every time you run a pay report, the numbers come from the rates you set on this screen.

It tracks five categories of information:

• Roster — who is on your teaching staff, their contact information, and whether they are active or archived

• Pay rates — what each instructor earns per lesson, per hour, or per camp, broken down by lesson type or role

• Lesson type assignment — which activities each instructor is cleared to teach, independent of certifications

• Certifications — credentials each instructor holds, when they expire, and which lesson types require them

• Availability and time-off — weekly teaching hours, one-time availability changes, and requested days off

When all five categories stay current, the schedule works. When one falls behind, lessons get assigned to the wrong person, pay reports are wrong, or customers see instructors in the booking widget who cannot actually teach the lesson they are trying to book.

Invite a New Instructor and Add Them to the Roster

You do not add instructors the way you add customers. Instructors get an invite link, create their own Seshana account, and join your organization that way. This is intentional: instructors need to log in, see their own schedule, set their availability, and update their own profile. That only works if they control the account from the start.

Here is the flow:

Open the Team screen and click Invite Instructor. You will see a form asking for the instructor's name and email. Fill those in. You can also add a personal message that will appear in the invite email, which is useful if you are inviting someone who has never heard of Seshana and might be confused by an automated email.

Send the invite. Seshana emails the instructor a link to create an account and join your organization. The link expires after 7 days. If they do not accept within that window, you can resend the invite from the Team screen.

The instructor accepts the invite. They click the link, create a password, and land on their own instructor dashboard. From there, they can see their schedule, set availability, request time-off, and update their profile.

The instructor appears on your Team screen. Once they accept, you will see them listed under Active Instructors. At this point, they are on your roster but not yet assigned to any lesson types, not yet configured with pay rates, and not yet eligible to be assigned to any lessons.

That is where the next three sections come in.

Set Pay Rates for Lessons, Camps, and Roles

Pay rates live on the Team screen, not buried in a spreadsheet or a notebook. When you run a pay report, Seshana pulls the rate from here, checks the lesson duration, applies any adjustments, and calculates what the instructor is owed for that session.

You set pay rates per instructor. Each instructor can have multiple rates depending on the type of lesson or their role on the lesson.

Open an instructor's profile from the Team screen. You will see a Pay Rates section. Click Add Pay Rate.

Choose what the rate applies to. You can set a rate for a specific lesson type, for camps, or for a role. A role-based rate might be something like lead instructor versus assistant, where the same person earns different amounts depending on how they are assigned to the lesson.

Choose how the rate is calculated. Flat rate per lesson, hourly, or a percentage split of the lesson price. Flat rates work for fixed-duration privates. Hourly rates work when lesson length varies. Percentage splits work when instructors share a lesson and you want to divide the revenue proportionally.

Enter the amount. If it is a flat rate, enter the dollar amount per lesson. If it is hourly, enter the rate per hour. If it is a split, enter the percentage.

Save the rate. It applies immediately to new lessons. Past lessons are not recalculated unless you manually adjust them.

If an instructor teaches multiple lesson types at different rates, add a separate pay rate for each one. When you assign that instructor to a lesson, Seshana picks the rate that matches the lesson type. If no specific rate exists, it falls back to a default rate if you configured one, or it shows zero until you add the rate.

Pay rates do not automatically increase over time. If an instructor gets a raise, you update the rate on the Team screen. Any lessons booked after that change will use the new rate. Lessons already on the books keep the old rate unless you adjust them manually from the session detail page.

Assign Instructors to Lesson Types They Can Teach

Just because someone is on your roster does not mean they can teach every lesson type you offer. A kiteboarding school might have beginner instructors who only teach intro lessons and advanced instructors who teach everything. A horseback barn might have wranglers cleared for trail rides but not for jumping lessons.

The Team screen tracks that. Each instructor has a list of lesson types they are assigned to teach. When a customer books a lesson through the widget or when you assign an instructor from the schedule, Seshana filters the instructor list to only show people who are cleared for that specific lesson type.

This is a simple yes-or-no assignment, not a certification requirement. Think of it as a basic eligibility filter. Certifications come later and add a second layer of filtering.

Open an instructor's profile. You will see a section called Lesson Types or Assigned Lesson Types, depending on your plan.

Select the lesson types this instructor can teach. You will see a list of all the lesson types you have created. Check the boxes next to the ones this instructor is cleared for.

Save the changes. That instructor is now eligible to be assigned to those lesson types. If you try to assign them to a lesson type they are not cleared for, Seshana will either hide them from the list or show them with a warning, depending on where you are assigning from.

If you do not assign any lesson types to an instructor, they will not appear in the booking widget at all. They also will not show up in the instructor picker when you create a lesson from the schedule, unless you ignore the filter and manually search for them. This is intentional: if someone is not cleared to teach something, they should not be offered as an option.

For schools that also track certifications, lesson type assignment and certification requirements work together. How Kiteboarding Schools Handle Instructor Certification and Lesson Types walks through how assignment, certifications, and eligibility interact when a school turns on certification tracking.

Track Certifications and Expiration Dates

Certification tracking is off by default. If you turn it on, the Team screen becomes the place where you store every credential your instructors hold, when it expires, and which lesson types require it.

This is the second layer of eligibility filtering. Lesson type assignment is the first filter. Certifications are the second. An instructor must pass both filters to be eligible for a lesson.

Turn on certification tracking. Go to Settings → General → Instructor Certifications. Flip the toggle to enable it. Once it is on, you will see a Certifications section on the Team screen and on each instructor's profile.

Define the certifications your school recognizes. Before you can track certifications, you need to tell Seshana what certifications exist. Go to the Team screen and click Manage Certifications. Add each certification your school cares about: its name, the organization that issues it, and optionally whether it expires.

This catalog starts empty. Nothing is preloaded. If your school recognizes IKO Level 1, PSIA Level 2, or USCG Captain's License, you add those yourself. If an instructor typed a credential on their profile before you added it to the catalog, Seshana stores it but does not count it as satisfying any requirement until you map it.

Add a certification to an instructor's profile. Open the instructor's profile, go to the Certifications section, and click Add Certification. Choose the certification from the list you just defined, enter the date earned, enter the expiration date if it expires, and upload a copy of the certificate if you have one. Save it.

Instructors can also add their own certifications from their profile. You control the catalog, they fill in the details.

Set which lesson types require which certifications. Open the Lesson Types screen, edit a lesson type, and go to the Required Certifications section. Select the certifications an instructor must hold to teach this lesson type. Save it.

Now, when you assign an instructor to that lesson type, Seshana checks two things: is the instructor assigned to this lesson type, and do they hold every required certification. If both are true, they show up in the eligible list. If either is false, they do not.

Handle expiration. Seshana notifies the instructor and your admins 30 days before a certification expires and again when it expires. What happens after expiration depends on your school's policy, which you set in the certification settings. You can choose to warn only, block new assignments, or also remove the instructor from upcoming lessons that require the expired certification. Past lessons are never touched.

An expired certification is treated the same as a missing one. The instructor does not appear in the booking widget for lessons that require it, and if you try to assign them anyway from the schedule, Seshana asks for confirmation and logs the override.

Certification tracking is a filtering and reminder system. It does not verify that a certificate is genuine, does not track training hours or skill progression, and does not schedule renewal courses. It stores what the instructor holds, checks whether it is current, and uses that information to filter assignment lists.

View and Approve Instructor Availability and Time-Off

The Team screen is where you see who is available this week and who has time-off requests pending. Instructors set their own availability from their profile. You review it, approve it if your school requires approval, and use it to decide who to assign to a lesson.

Availability rules. Each instructor has a set of availability rules: weekly hours they normally teach, or specific dates they are available. These rules live on the instructor's profile, not on the Team screen, but you can view them from the Team screen by clicking into the instructor's profile.

Availability is a positive declaration. If an instructor has not set any availability, the schedule assumes they are available all day, every day. This is different from time-off, which is a negative declaration: these specific dates I am not available.

If your school requires approval for availability changes, instructors submit a request instead of updating their availability directly. You review the request from the dashboard or the Team screen, approve or deny it, and the change takes effect once approved.

Time-off requests. Instructors request time-off from their profile. The request shows up on your dashboard under Pending Requests. You can also see all time-off requests, approved and pending, from the Team screen by clicking into the instructor's profile or by filtering the calendar to show time-off blocks.

Approve or deny the request. If you approve it, the instructor is marked unavailable for those dates. If you deny it, their normal availability rules still apply.

Time-off approval is optional. If your school does not require it, instructors mark themselves unavailable directly without waiting for approval. The time-off request workflow is a setting you control.

Check availability for a specific lesson. When you are assigning an instructor to a lesson, the schedule automatically checks availability. You do not have to cross-reference the Team screen manually. The assignment view shows you who is free, who is already booked, and who has time-off, all in one list. Instructors who are unavailable appear at the bottom with a note explaining why.

How to Assign Instructors to Outdoor Lessons Without Guessing Who's Free walks through the assignment view in detail, including how availability, certifications, and lesson type assignment all filter together. How Horseback Riding Barns Handle Instructor Availability and Time-Off covers how equestrian schools handle availability when instructors also manage horses and some horses are unavailable.

How the Team Screen Connects to Lesson Assignment

The Team screen is where you set up instructors. The Schedule screen is where you assign them to lessons. The two screens are connected, and every assignment decision pulls information from the Team screen.

When you create a lesson and open the instructor picker, here is what happens behind the scenes:

Seshana checks lesson type assignment. Only instructors who are assigned to this lesson type appear in the eligible list. Instructors who are not assigned to it are hidden or appear at the bottom with a warning.

Seshana checks certifications. If the lesson type requires certifications and your school has certification tracking turned on, only instructors who hold all required certifications appear as eligible. Instructors who do not hold them are moved to a separate section labeled ineligible.

Seshana checks availability. Instructors who are available at the lesson time appear at the top. Instructors who are already booked, have time-off, or have no availability rule covering this time appear below with a note explaining the conflict.

You pick an instructor from the eligible list. If you need to assign someone who is not eligible, you can do that. Seshana asks for confirmation and logs the reason. The lesson is still created and the instructor still sees it on their schedule.

The booking widget follows the same rules, but it does not allow overrides. Customers only see instructors who pass all three checks: assigned to the lesson type, holding required certifications, and available at the requested time.

When you update an instructor's information on the Team screen, it affects future lessons immediately. If you remove an instructor from a lesson type, they stop appearing in the booking widget for that lesson type. If you add a certification requirement to a lesson type, instructors who do not hold it stop appearing as eligible. If an instructor marks themselves unavailable next Tuesday, they stop appearing in the assignment list for lessons on Tuesday.

Past lessons are not automatically changed. If you assign an instructor to a lesson today and tomorrow you remove them from that lesson type, the lesson they are already assigned to stays assigned. If you want to unassign them, you do that manually from the schedule.

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Inviting an instructor but not assigning them to any lesson types. The instructor accepts the invite, logs in, and wonders why they cannot see any lessons or why customers are not booking with them. The fix: after an instructor accepts an invite, go to their profile and assign them to the lesson types they should teach.

Setting up certifications but forgetting to define the catalog first. You turn on certification tracking, instructors add credentials to their profiles, and nothing filters because the credentials they typed are not in the catalog you defined. The fix: define the certifications your school recognizes before you ask instructors to add their credentials. Then map the credentials they already added to the catalog entries.

Setting a pay rate for one lesson type but not the others. You run a pay report and see zeros for half the lessons because those lesson types do not have a rate configured. The fix: when you add a new instructor, set a pay rate for every lesson type they will teach, or set a default rate that covers everything.

Assuming availability rules block assignment. Availability rules filter the instructor list and sort eligible instructors to the top. They do not prevent you from assigning someone who is unavailable. If you assign an instructor during a time they marked as unavailable, the lesson is still created. The instructor sees it on their schedule and can accept it or ask you to reassign it. Availability is a filter, not a lock.

Approving time-off requests but not checking the schedule first. You approve a time-off request without realizing the instructor is already assigned to three lessons that week. Now you have to reassign all three lessons or ask the instructor to cancel the time-off. The fix: before approving time-off, check the instructor's schedule for conflicts.

Letting certifications expire without a renewal plan. A certification expires, the instructor stops appearing in the booking widget for lessons that require it, and you realize three days later when a customer calls asking why they cannot book. The fix: pay attention to the expiration reminders Seshana sends 30 days out and again at expiration. Renew certifications before they lapse, or remove the requirement from the lesson type if the certification is not actually necessary.

FAQ

Can I add an instructor without sending them an invite link? No. Instructors must create their own account and accept an invite to join your organization. This is intentional: instructors need to log in, see their schedule, and set their own availability. You cannot add them the way you add a customer.

What happens if an instructor never accepts the invite? The invite expires after 7 days. You can resend it from the Team screen as many times as you need. Until they accept, they do not appear on your active roster and cannot be assigned to lessons.

Can I set different pay rates for the same lesson type depending on the day of the week or time of day? Not directly. Pay rates are per lesson type or per role, not per time slot. If you need to pay instructors more for weekend lessons, you can create a separate lesson type called Weekend Private Kite Lesson and set a higher rate for that type. Or you can track the difference manually and adjust the payable hours or rate on individual lessons from the session detail page.

What happens to pay rates when I change them? Do past lessons get recalculated? No. Pay rates apply to new lessons only. Lessons that are already on the books keep the rate that was set when the lesson was created. If you need to change the rate for a past lesson, you can adjust it manually from the session detail page.

Do instructors see their pay rates when they log in? That depends on your plan. On team plans, instructors can see their own pay rates from their profile. On solo plans, there is no second login, so the question does not apply. Check your plan settings or contact support if you are not sure what your instructors see.

Can I assign an instructor to a lesson they are not cleared for? Yes. Seshana will ask for confirmation and log the reason, but it will not block the assignment. The lesson is created and the instructor sees it on their schedule. This override capability exists because real outdoor schools sometimes need to assign someone outside the usual rules, and the alternative, making the schedule refuse the assignment, causes more problems than it solves.

What does expired certification actually do? It depends on your school's expiration policy. By default, an expired certification is treated the same as a missing one: the instructor stops appearing in the booking widget for lessons that require it, and the assignment list labels them as ineligible. You can change that policy to warn only, block new assignments, or also remove the instructor from upcoming lessons that require it. Past lessons are never touched. Check Settings → General → Instructor Certifications to see your current policy.

Can a customer see instructor certifications when they book? No. Certifications filter the list of instructors the customer can choose, but the customer does not see the credential details. If you want customers to see certifications, add that information to the instructor's bio or to your website outside of Seshana.

Can I require approval for availability changes but not for time-off requests, or vice versa? Yes. Those are two separate settings. You can require approval for one, both, or neither. Check Settings → Team to see your current configuration.