Updated 2026-09-26 · 5 min read
More and more physiotherapy clinics run classes: Pilates, therapeutic exercise, back school, pelvic floor. They make clinical sense —the patient who finishes their treatment keeps doing guided exercise— and business sense: a room with six or eight people at once earns differently from a single treatment table.
And almost every clinic runs them outside the calendar. A notebook with the names, a WhatsApp group to announce changes, a spreadsheet for the fees. It works while there's one class. When there are five a week, with two physiotherapists and the month of August in between, it starts to break.
Why classes stay outside the calendar
Because most clinic software only knows about one person per slot. If there's a session at ten, the slot is taken; putting eight people in the same slot is, for that software, an overlap. So the class is entered as a block in the physiotherapist's calendar, and who attends that class is tracked somewhere else.
The cost of that isn't visible until something happens: the ninth person who signs up by WhatsApp to a class that was already full, the patient who cancels and nobody crosses out, the fee that was charged twice or not at all.
What a class needs to work
A class is nothing more than a session that admits several people at once. With that in mind, what it needs is little and specific:
| What it needs | Why |
|---|---|
| A number of places | So nobody gets in over the limit and so you can say how many are left. |
| A fixed timetable | The class exists on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:00 even if nobody has signed up yet. |
| One booking per person | Each participant with their reminder, their cancellation and their history. |
| A way to charge the fee | Monthly, without a separate sheet to reconcile. |
| A view of the day | Which classes there are, how many are coming and who has cancelled. |
One booking per person, not a list of names
The decision that simplifies everything most is treating each participant as a booking, just like a patient on the treatment table. That way each one gets their reminder, cancels only their own place without touching the rest, and has in their record the classes they came to. The calendar brings those bookings together in a single card —the ten o'clock class, six of eight— and the physiotherapist sees the group without losing sight of the people.
And when someone asks about the class, the answer comes from there: if there are places left you say how many, and if it's full you say it's fully booked, which isn't the same as «that slot is taken». What's never said is who's going or how many people have signed up.
The monthly fee, like a pack
The Pilates fee doesn't need a separate system. It's a pack of sessions that expires after a month: it's sold at the start of the month, goes down on its own each time the person comes, is given back if they're marked as not having come and gives notice when it runs out. A clinic already working with session packs doesn't have to learn anything new.
August, bank holidays and the class that doesn't fill
A month without classes isn't handled by deleting anything: that line of the timetable is switched off and switched back on in September. A single day is removed by blocking that time, like any other. And the class that's running empty, or the one with more people than places, has to be visible as soon as the calendar is opened, not on the day of the class.
How it's done in ClaudIA
In ClaudIA, the treatment's record says how many people are seen at once, and its timetable says which days and at what time the class runs and with which professional. From then on ClaudIA offers exactly those times over WhatsApp, by phone and on the online booking page, says how many places are left and, when it fills up, says it's fully booked. The database won't let one person too many in, even if two write at the same time.
The calendar's Classes tab shows each class of the day with its occupancy and a traffic light, and when you open it, who's coming, who cancelled and who didn't show up. The fee is handled as a pack of sessions that expires after a month. It's all explained in the «group classes» feature page.
Questions clinics ask
Can Pilates classes be booked over WhatsApp with ClaudIA? Yes. ClaudIA offers the times when the class exists according to its timetable, says how many places are left and, when it fills up, says it's fully booked. They can also be booked by phone and on the online booking page.
Can one person too many get in if two write at the same time? No. The limit on places is enforced by the database, not just by the conversation: if two people ask for the last place at the same time, one gets in and the other is offered another class.
How is the monthly fee charged? As a pack of sessions that expires after a month: it's sold from the till, goes down on its own when the person comes, is given back if they're marked as not having come and gives notice when it runs out.
Does ClaudIA say who else is going to the class? No. It says how many places are left or that the class is fully booked, and never who's going or how many people have signed up. Only the team sees that, in the calendar's Classes tab.