Academic terms tell LessonLoop how your year is shaped, and closure dates mark the days you don’t teach. Setting both up once keeps your billing, your timetable and your reports all aligned to the calendar your families actually follow.
Where to set them up
Both live under Settings → Organisation.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Academic terms | Named periods with a start and end date (for example “Autumn Term”). They drive term billing runs, lesson continuation and reporting. |
| Closure dates | Individual days with no lessons. Recurring lesson creation automatically skips them. |
Add an academic term
- Open Settings, then choose Organisation.
- Go to Academic terms and select Add term.
- Give it a name and set its start and end dates.
- Save. Repeat for each term in your year.
Once your terms are in place, a term billing run can invoice a whole term in one go, and term continuation knows when one period is ending and the next begins.
Add closure dates
- In Settings → Organisation, go to Closure dates and select Add closure.
- Set the date and a short reason for each day you’re closed — half terms, bank holidays, your own breaks.
- If you run more than one location, choose under Applies to whether the closure covers all locations or a single one.
- Save. Repeat for each closed day.
When you create recurring lessons, LessonLoop skips any date marked as a closure, so you don’t have to delete them by hand afterwards.
Good to know If you teach from more than one site, you can apply a closure to a single location rather than the whole school — so one venue can shut for the day while the others keep teaching. There's also a quick UK holidays shortcut that lets you add the standard bank holidays in one go.
Why it’s worth doing first
Getting terms and closures right early means everything downstream just works:
- Billing — term runs bill the correct period, with no lessons landing on days you’re shut.
- Timetable — recurring lessons skip closures automatically.
- Reports — period-based figures (such as utilisation and lessons delivered) line up with your real term dates.
You can come back and adjust terms or add closures at any time as your year takes shape.
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