If you’d rather not tap Pay every term, you can set up a Direct Debit and let your studio’s invoices be collected as they fall due. It’s the same idea as any other Direct Debit: you give your bank permission once, and the money goes out when it’s owed.
Set one up
- Open the parent portal and go to Invoices.
- At the top of the page you’ll find the Direct Debit card. Choose to set one up.
- You’re handed over to Stripe, the payments provider your studio uses, to enter your bank details on their secure page. Neither LessonLoop nor your studio ever sees them.
- Come back to the portal and switch autopay on.
That’s it. The card now shows an active mandate and the autopay switch.
Only you can set this up A Direct Debit is your authority to your bank, so your studio can't create one on your behalf — no matter how helpful they're being. If they've asked you to set one up, this page is the whole job.
What gets collected, and when
With autopay on, LessonLoop collects:
- Invoices you owe, once they’re due.
- Payment plan instalments, one at a time as each due date arrives.
Nothing is ever taken before its due date, and your mandate confirmation and advance notice of each debit come from Stripe directly — those are the notices that matter, and they’ll arrive by email.
With autopay on, your Invoices page says so beside each bill — Collected automatically on 1 Nov — nothing to do — and the Pay buttons step aside for anything not yet due. An instalment or invoice that has gone past its date keeps its Pay button, because nothing will take it by itself from there: pay it, or your studio can try the collection again.
If your child stops lessons part-way through a payment plan, your school ends the plan at the last instalment you owe. The instalments not taken are cancelled with a credit, the invoice settles at what you owed up to then, and nothing is collected after the last instalment your school kept. Your Direct Debit itself stays in place for anything else your school invoices, unless you switch autopay off.
”Collecting” — what it means
Once a debit is on its way, the invoice shows Collecting and the Pay button steps aside. That’s on purpose: the money is already in motion, and nobody wants to pay the same bill twice.
The wait is the bank’s, not the app’s — the portal says so plainly: “Bank debits take up to 4 working days to confirm.” When it clears, the invoice marks itself paid.
Turning it off, or starting again
Switch autopay off at any time and collections stop; you’re back to paying each invoice yourself with the Pay button.
If your Direct Debit is cancelled
If your Direct Debit is cancelled — by you at your bank, or in Stripe — LessonLoop hears about it straight away. Automatic payment stops, so nothing more is taken from that mandate, and you get an email saying it has ended. Your studio is told at the same time, including which instalments will now wait for you.
To start again, open Invoices in the portal. The Direct Debit card says Your Direct Debit ended on … — choose Set up Direct Debit again, give your bank details to Stripe, then switch Charge future invoices automatically back on. There’s no link to wait for from your studio: this page is the whole job.
If a collection doesn’t go through, your studio can see it and try again. If you think something has gone wrong, message them from the portal — they can see the invoice and its whole history.
Was this out of date or unclear? Tell us — we keep these guides matched to the live app.