Switching from TutorCruncher: what to check before you move

Most agencies that leave a tutoring platform do it for one of three reasons: the bill grew faster than the business, a feature the whole operation depends on is missing, or the platform's own plans no longer match theirs. Whatever the reason, the move is only worth it if nothing important is lost on the way. This is the checklist we use when an agency asks us whether ClassBold is a sensible next home, and it applies whichever platform you are considering.

First, decide what must survive

Write down what your business cannot afford to lose, in this order:

1. People. Families, students, tutors, and the relationships between them. A student without their guardian, or a tutor without their subjects and rates, is a support ticket waiting to happen.
2. Lessons. The past matters for reports and disputes; the future matters more. Every scheduled lesson for the coming weeks must arrive with the right tutor, student, time and room.
3. Money. Unused package hours, open invoices, credit balances and what each tutor is owed. This is where migrations quietly go wrong, because balances are derived from history rather than stored as a number.
4. Documents. Signed terms, tutor agreements, DBS or visa records with expiry dates.
5. Automations. Reminders, no-show rules, invoice runs. These rarely migrate; they are rebuilt, and that is a chance to simplify them.

Anything not on the list can be exported to a spreadsheet and archived.

What to ask the platform you are moving to

• Is there an importer, and what does it actually import? "CSV import" often means people only. Ask specifically about lessons and money.
• How are packages handled? Hours remaining on a package are money the family already paid. They must land as a balance the new system can draw down, not as a note.
• What happens to open invoices? The honest answers are either "we import them as archive records and you collect them in the old system" or "we re-issue them". Both are workable; a vague answer is not.
• Does the platform take a percentage of your payments? A take-rate on family payments is a second, invisible bill. Ask for the number and whether you can use your own payment account.
• Which classroom does it work with? If your tutors teach in Lessonspace, Zoom or Google Meet, the new platform should create the room and put the join link in the confirmation without anyone copying URLs.
• Can families and tutors keep their own portals? Self-serve booking, invoices and lesson notes for families; schedules, reports and pay statements for tutors. If those go back to email and spreadsheets, your admin load doubles.

How ClassBold's importer works

ClassBold has a TutorCruncher importer built for exactly this move. It runs in three passes, each one reviewable before the next.

• People first. Clients, students and tutors arrive with their relationships intact, and every imported record is linked to its import batch, so the whole batch can be reviewed as a unit and re-run without duplicates.
• Lessons second. Past and scheduled lessons come across with tutor, student, timing and status. Scheduled lessons immediately drive reminders and room provisioning.
• Money last, and deliberately conservative. Package hours import as money: each family gets one opening balance line equal to what they had left, so nothing is double-counted and nothing invents history. Old invoices come in as archive-only records for reporting; you collect anything outstanding in the old system before you close it.

The importer is idempotent. Running it twice updates rather than duplicates, so you can import a first cut, check it with a colleague, and re-run once the old system is frozen.

The day-one test

Before you tell families anything, run this on the new system with real data:

1. Pick three families: one with a package, one with an open invoice, one new this month. Check their balances line by line against the old system.
2. Open next week's schedule. Every lesson has a tutor, a student and a room link.
3. Book one lesson as a family from the portal, and one as staff. Confirmations arrive with the join link.
4. Run the tutor pay preview for last month. The totals match what you actually paid.
5. Send yourself an invoice and pay it with a test card.

If those five pass, the migration is real. If one fails, fix it before anyone else logs in.

Timing the switch

Move at a natural boundary: the start of a term, or the first of a month after the last invoice run. Freeze the old system for a weekend, run the final import, and switch the booking link on your website on Monday. Keep the old system readable for a few months for disputes, then export and close it.

A note on cost

The cheapest platform on the price list is rarely the cheapest to run. Add the payment take-rate, the per-tutor or per-student fees, and the hours your team spends on workarounds. ClassBold charges a flat subscription and takes nothing from family payments, which is easy to compare against whatever you pay today. If you want to see the importer against your own export, book a demo and bring a CSV.