Getting a programme live, out of view, or off sale

Draft is where everything is still cheap

Two things go wrong at opposite ends of a term. Something goes live before it was finished, and something stays on sale for weeks after it should have stopped. Both are settings.

A programme in draft is invisible to families. It is not on your booking page and nobody can book it, so a half-finished draft costs you nothing overnight or over a fortnight.

Draft is also the state in which the expensive decisions are still free. Batch type, capacity, price structure and age ranges can all be reworked while no booking depends on them. Build in draft, check in draft, publish when the term is ready to sell.

The packages list with a programme card showing an Active badge, dates, times, weekday, centre and revenue split into collected, outstanding and overdue — The badge on each card is the whole story — Active means families can see and book it.

Publishing, and what to look at first

Publishing makes the programme live at the centres its batches run at. Families can find it and book it from that moment.

An incomplete programme will not publish, so leave a working day between finishing and opening for booking rather than meeting the gaps at eight in the morning on launch day.

The last look before you publish is the parent's look: name, description, image, the price shown first, the dates. Those five decide whether anyone books.

A programme card with its Active badge outlined — Active means families can see it and book it.

Hiding: live, but not listed

Hiding takes a programme out of what families browse without sending it back to draft. It still exists, your team still sees it, and the bookings already in it are untouched.

Batches can be hidden individually too, so a listed programme can hold one group that is not advertised. Use it for a group you fill yourself: a school partnership, an invited cohort, a class you are quietly winding down.

Hiding is also how you stop new bookings without disturbing families who are mid-term. Taking bookings covers adding a family to a hidden group yourself.

The approval toggle outlined — A published programme can still require your approval on each booking.

Taking a programme off sale

When a programme should stop being sold altogether, you make it inactive. At that point you choose whether the bookings still to come are cancelled with it.

The two outcomes are not close. Off sale with bookings kept means the term finishes as sold and nothing new can be bought. Off sale with bookings cancelled means every future booking in the programme goes at once.

The Add Booking button outlined — And you can always book someone into a hidden programme yourself.

What a duplicate of last term copies

A duplicate copies the shape: batches with their days and times, the price options attached to them, capacity, the questions you ask and your terms. It does not copy bookings or the families in them.

The copy arrives with (Copy) on the end of its name, and it has to be renamed before it can go live, because two programmes cannot share a name.

It also keeps the status of the programme you copied. Duplicate something live and the copy is live too, under that name and carrying last term's dates. Put it back to draft first, then fix the dates, then everything else.

The Activation Rules section outlined on the Special Considerations step — Activation rules decide when a programme becomes bookable.

A term rhythm that holds up

If you are standing up a whole term at once rather than a handful of programmes, Importing your programmes from a spreadsheet is faster than duplicating one at a time.

Duplicate last term's programme rather than starting from blank.
Set the copy back to draft and rename it so the term is obvious to families and to you.
Move every batch's dates forward, and take out the closures you already know about.
Check the price options are still what you want to sell, and that capacity matches the rooms you have this term.
Publish, then open your own booking page and read it as a parent would.

The Gallery section outlined — A gallery gives families more than the single cover photo.

Hiding a programme from families

Hiding is separate from drafting, and the difference matters. A draft is unfinished — it has never been live and nobody can book it. A hidden programme is fully live and bookable, it simply does not appear to families browsing your booking page.

That gives you a staff-only programme. It exists, it takes bookings, it invoices normally and it shows up in your reports like anything else — but the only way in is for someone on your team to book a family into it.

What staff-only programmes are for

Because a hidden programme is live rather than draft, nothing about it is second-class. The booking, the invoice and the payment all behave exactly as they would on a public programme.

A private group or one-to-one sessions you arrange case by case rather than advertising.
A make-up or catch-up class you open only to families who missed something.
A negotiated rate for a particular family, kept off the public page.
A programme still being trialled with a handful of families before you open it to everyone.