Booking & Payments

This guide explains how students book lessons, purchase packages, and set up recurring schedules on voila.fun — and how tutors price, propose, and manage the same arrangements.

Booking a Lesson

1. Open a tutor's profile from the marketplace or from your chat with the tutor.
2. Click Book a Lesson and select date and time (or select an available time slot direclty from the tutor's calendar).
3. Confirm and submit the booking request.

If the tutor uses Stripe, your payment method is authorized (held, not charged) at booking time. The tutor then confirms or declines the request:

• Confirmed — the payment is captured, and the lesson is scheduled. You receive a confirmation notification.
• Declined — the hold is released and you are not charged.
• Expired — if the tutor does not respond, the hold is released automatically.

Payment Methods

How you pay depends on the tutor's configured payment mode:

Mode	How it works
Stripe	You pay through Stripe at booking. Standard processing.
External	Payment happens outside Voila (bank transfer, cash, etc.) as arranged with the tutor.
No payment	No payment is collected. Applies to friends, family, or trial arrangements.

Your tutor chooses the payment mode. Most tutors use Stripe for online payments.

Session Packages

A session package is a multi-session bundle a tutor sells at a fixed up-front price (e.g. 10 conversation lessons for a set total). Once the student pays, each lesson with that tutor draws one credit from the package — no card is charged at the lesson itself.

How packages are priced

Packages are priced independently of a tutor's per-lesson price and lesson types. A tutor can offer any combination of:

• A standard per-lesson price (e.g. one rate for any 60-minute session)
• One or more lesson types (e.g. Conversation, Grammar Intensive, Trial) each with their own price and duration
• One or more session packages (e.g. 10 lessons for a fixed total)

Lesson types and packages are not linked. A package buys you N credits, and any one of those credits can be used against any lesson with that tutor regardless of lesson type.

Buying a package (student)

1. Open your tutor's profile or your chat with them.
2. Pick a package and click Buy package.
3. Pay the full price up front — your card is charged immediately.
4. The package appears in your relationship with that tutor as a balance of remaining credits.
5. Track remaining credits on the Lessons page and in your tutor chat sidebar.

Packages are available once your relationship with the tutor is Active (not in Exploring state).

Selling a package (tutor)

1. Go to Profile → Per-language profile.
2. Add a package: name, number of sessions, total price, currency, and (optionally) duration.
3. The package becomes purchasable from your public profile and from your chats with active students.

You can offer multiple packages on the same language profile — for example, a small starter bundle and a larger discounted bundle.

Using a package credit

When a lesson is booked against a package, no Stripe charge is made for that lesson — one credit is debited from the balance at booking time and the lesson is confirmed. This applies to both one-off bookings and recurring schedules running in prepaid package mode (see below).

When a package runs out

When the balance hits zero, no automatic top-up happens. The behavior depends on what's drawing on the package:

• One-off booking — a new booking against the package is rejected; the student is prompted to buy another package or pay per lesson.
• Recurring schedule (prepaid package mode) — the schedule auto-pauses to Paused — Credits Exhausted, and both student and tutor receive an email ("Recurring Lessons Paused — Package Empty"). The schedule does not auto-resume; the student must purchase a new package and either side must explicitly reactivate the schedule.

Refunds on packages

Package refunds are all-or-nothing while no credits have been used. Once any credit has been consumed, partial refunds are not automatic — contact Voila support for special cases.

Recurring Lessons

A recurring schedule books the same lesson with the same tutor on a repeating cadence (e.g. every Tuesday at 14:00). Either side can propose; the other side accepts.

Payment modes

Each schedule runs in one of two payment modes, decided when the schedule is created:

Mode	How payment works
Stripe	Each occurrence is billed automatically to the student's saved card on its scheduled day.
Prepaid package	Each occurrence debits one credit from a session package the student already owns. No per-lesson charge.

Most schedules use Stripe. Prepaid mode is offered when the student already has a package with enough credits to cover the schedule.

Setting up a Stripe-billed schedule

1. The tutor (or student) proposes the schedule from the booking flow or chat — day, time, duration, and price per session.

2. The other side opens the proposal and reviews the details.

3. The student approves the schedule:

   • First time paying this tutor — the student enters card details, which are saved for future occurrences.
   • Already has a saved card with this tutor — the saved card is shown for one-click confirmation. They can swap to a different card from this screen before confirming.

4. Each upcoming occurrence is then charged automatically on its scheduled day.

If the first occurrence is so close that the cancellation window has already passed (i.e. the lesson is no longer freely cancellable), the first charge happens immediately on accept. If that charge fails, the schedule is not activated, no meeting or calendar event is created, and the student is asked to enter a different card before retrying.

Setting up a prepaid-package schedule

If the student already owns enough credits in a package, the tutor can attach the schedule to that package at proposal time. No card is required and no per-occurrence email receipts are sent — credits are debited silently as occurrences arrive.

When a Stripe occurrence payment fails

If automatic billing for an occurrence fails (e.g. expired card, insufficient funds):

• Both student and tutor are notified by email.
• The student sees a payment-failed banner on the Home and Lessons pages, with a one-click action to update their card.
• The system retries the charge on a fixed cadence; once retries are exhausted, the meeting for that occurrence is cancelled and its calendar event is removed.

If the very first occurrence fails to charge (and no occurrence has ever been successfully charged), the entire schedule is reverted to Pending Payment Setup: future meetings and calendar events are removed, and the student is asked to set up a fresh payment method before the schedule can activate.

When a prepaid-package schedule runs out of credits

If the balance hits zero on a future debit, the schedule auto-pauses to Paused — Credits Exhausted and both parties are emailed. See Session Packages → When a package runs out above. The schedule does not auto-resume; reactivate it after the student buys a new package.

Pausing or cancelling

Either side can:

• Pause the schedule — no further occurrences are charged or scheduled, but the schedule itself is preserved and can be resumed.
• Cancel the schedule — all future meetings and calendar events are removed. Past or in-progress meetings are never disturbed.

Cancelling a schedule does not refund already-captured charges for occurrences whose lesson has happened or whose cancellation window has passed.

Cancellations and Refunds

Possible scenarios when you pay your teacher via Stripe

Scenario	What happens
You cancel within the tutor's cancellation policy	Automatic refund.
You cancel outside the cancellation policy	No automatic refund (tutor keeps the payment).
Tutor cancels the lesson	Automatic refund.
Tutor declines your booking	Payment hold released, no charge.
Booking expires	Payment hold released, no charge.

Check the tutor's cancellation notice policy on their profile before booking.

Exploring vs Active Relationships

State	What you can do
Exploring	Message the tutor, book trial or single sessions, view profile.
Active	Everything above plus: buy packages, set up recurring lessons, access advanced features.

You can upgrade to Active when you are ready to commit to ongoing lessons with a tutor. Either you or the tutor can initiate this.

Related

• Finding a Tutor — marketplace browsing and search
• AI Matchmaker — personalized tutor recommendations
• Student Messaging — communicate with your tutor
• Stripe Connect — Payments — tutor-side view of bookings, packages, and recurring payments
• Scheduling — tutor cancellation policies and booking lead times
• Calendar Integration — how calendar events sync with recurring schedules