# Group class scheduling: how to fill your timetable when a new season starts > Group class scheduling works when spots, waiting lists, instructors, passes and attendance sit in one timetable. A practical guide before a new season. Source: https://reservation.business/en/blog/group-class-scheduling · Language: en · Updated: 2026-08-03 A group timetable is a capacity plan, not a poster. When spots, waiting lists, passes and attendance stay connected, a studio fills more places with less coordination. ## Frequently asked questions ### How many spots should I open for a group class? Start from the number you can teach well, not the maximum the room can hold. Equipment, floor space and the attention each participant gets are the real limits. A class that feels crowded is one of the quietest reasons clients stop coming back, and it rarely shows up as a complaint. ### Should a full class refuse bookings or keep a waiting list? Use a waiting list where cancellations are common and where you would otherwise turn away regulars. When a spot frees up before the session, the first client waiting moves into the class and the team is notified. For closed courses or fixed groups, refusing the booking is the clearer answer. ### Can one client book more than one spot in the same class? Yes, if you allow it. You decide how many spots a single client can take, and it is worth setting deliberately for popular hours. When the client pays with a pass or a membership, the spot is booked for that client individually, so a place for a friend is a separate booking rather than a second visit off the same pass. ### Do I have to publish every class for online booking? No. Online booking is decided per class, so closed courses, corporate groups, trial weeks and private sessions can stay internal while the regular timetable is publicly bookable. A studio timetable looks like a poster, but it works like a capacity plan. Every session on it commits a room, an instructor, a start time and a fixed number of spots, and each of those runs out at a different pace. The gap shows up fastest when a new season starts and demand comes back in a burst. Classes that ran comfortably through the quiet weeks fill in a day, the popular hours overflow while others sit half empty, and the team spends the first weeks rebuilding the schedule instead of teaching. Most of that work can be done earlier, while the timetable is still easy to change. ## Start from capacity, not from the poster Two numbers decide how a group class behaves, and both are set before anyone books. The first is how many spots you actually want to sell. That is not the maximum the room can hold. It is the number where the equipment is enough, the floor is not crowded, and the instructor can still see everyone. The second is how many spots a single client can take in one booking. Owners underestimate this one. Friends and couples book together, so if one person can claim three places in a popular class, two bookings can close it before your regulars open the app. Set both per session, and set them against the real constraint: the instructor, the room, and the equipment that class needs. [Services, team, locations and availability](/en/platform/availability-setup) is where that structure lives, and it is worth getting right before the season rather than during it. ## Decide in advance what happens when a class is full A full class is a decision, not a dead end. Either the booking is refused, or the client waits for a place. A waiting list kept in a notebook or a chat is really a task for the front desk, and it only works while someone remembers to check it. A waiting list attached to the session works on its own: when a place frees up before the class starts, the first client waiting moves into it and the team is told that it happened. The recovered spot is filled while the client still wants it, not the next morning. Not every class needs one. A closed course with fixed participants, or a session where a late arrival disrupts the group, is better off refusing the booking clearly. Decide it class by class, before the season, so the front desk is never improvising. ## Build the recurring timetable once, then review it A weekly class is the same session repeating. Building it week by week is how mistakes get in, and how the schedule ends up different from what the poster promised. Generate the season from one template instead, then review what comes out before you publish it. The review is where the value is: 1. Check the weeks around public holidays. 2. Check the weeks an instructor is already away. 3. Check that every recurring class actually has sessions on the calendar for the coming weeks. That last one matters more than it sounds. A recurring class that has quietly stopped producing sessions is invisible from the inside — you notice it when a client tries to book and finds nothing there. Planned absences are a related job. If a lead instructor is off for two weeks in the middle of the season, the cover needs to be in the schedule before clients book, which is the same discipline covered in [keeping bookings on track during staff vacations](/en/blog/keep-bookings-on-track-during-staff-vacations). ## Connect passes and memberships to the classes The start of a season is the moment clients are most willing to commit to a rhythm. Passes, packs and memberships turn that willingness into predictable attendance, and they give the studio a reason to plan capacity instead of hoping for walk-ins. For that to work, what the client holds has to be visible where it is used: what it covers, how many visits are left, and when it expires. If the front desk has to reconstruct that from a spreadsheet while five people are waiting to get into the 18:30 class, the pass creates work instead of removing it. One practical rule is worth stating at the start of the season. A client paying with a pass books their own place. If they want to bring a friend, that second place is a separate booking, not a second visit off the same pass. Say it once, put it in the class description, and the front desk never has to argue about it later. [Memberships, packages and client rights](/en/platform/memberships-vouchers) covers how these are set up, and [how memberships, prepaid visits and vouchers create more repeat bookings](/en/blog/memberships-vouchers-service-business) covers the commercial side of the same decision. ## Publish the classes that should be public, and only those Not every session belongs in public booking. Closed courses, corporate groups, trial weeks, private sessions and instructor training all live better on the internal calendar. Decide it per class rather than switching online booking on for the whole timetable. It keeps the public schedule honest: what a client sees is what a client can join. Showing the remaining spots is a small choice with a real effect. "Two places left" reads very differently from an open list, and it moves the decision from later to now. Use it where classes genuinely fill; on a class that runs half empty it does the opposite job. It is also worth letting clients move themselves within your rules. A client who can switch to another class the evening before releases the spot while someone else still wants it. The alternative is a client who simply does not come. That mechanic is part of the wider [online booking](/en/platform/online-booking) setup, and it is one of the few settings that reduces both empty places and front desk calls at the same time. ## Make attendance part of the class routine A booked place and an attended place are not the same thing, and only one of them tells you anything. If the instructor marks who came and who did not, three things stay true: the client record reflects reality, unused visits on a pass are visible before it expires, and the client who has quietly stopped coming shows up as a pattern rather than a vague feeling. Marking a missed class is also fairer than deleting the booking, because the history stays intact. Missed group sessions cost more than missed individual appointments — the spot could have gone to someone on the waiting list, and the class runs either way. The habits that reduce them are the same ones covered in [reducing no-shows and late cancellations](/en/blog/reduce-no-shows-late-cancellations): a clear change path, reminders that tell the client what to do, and rules that match the value of the session. ## Review fill rate before adding more classes When classes fill, the instinct is to add more of them. That is sometimes right and often expensive: a new class splits the same demand across two sessions and makes both look weaker. Before adding to the timetable, answer these: 1. Which classes fill, and which consistently run below half capacity? 2. Which hours hold demand across the whole week, not only Monday and Tuesday? 3. Which instructors are consistently full, and are they carrying too much of the schedule? 4. How many bookings arrive through online booking rather than the front desk? 5. How many clients holding a pass are actually using their visits? [Reports and analytics](/en/platform/reports-analytics) turns those into something you can look at by service, hour, instructor and client instead of debating them from memory. The answer is often that one hour needs a second class and the rest of the week needs a different offer entirely. ## A checklist before the season starts 1. Set the number of spots per session — the number you want to teach, not the maximum the room fits. 2. Set how many spots one client can book at once, especially for popular hours. 3. Decide which classes accept a waiting list and which refuse when full. 4. Generate the recurring schedule from a template, then review holidays, absences and the odd week. 5. Confirm which classes passes and memberships cover, and check expiry dates before renewals start. 6. Choose which classes are publicly bookable and whether remaining spots are shown. 7. Agree with the team who marks attendance and when. None of these take long on their own. They take long in September, in front of a client, with the phone ringing. ## How Reservation.Studio Business helps Reservation.Studio Business keeps group sessions in the same system as everything around them: spots and per-client limits, waiting lists that move the next client in when a place opens, recurring rules that build the season from a template, passes and memberships connected to bookings and checkout, per-class online booking, attendance in the client record, and reports by service, hour, instructor and client. The point is not the individual settings. It is that the timetable, the money and the client history stop being three separate systems that the front desk reconciles by hand. If you run yoga, Pilates, dance, martial arts or group training sessions, [see how it fits class-based studios](/en/solutions/class-scheduling-software) or [book a demo](/en/book-demo) and we will go through your timetable, your passes and your busiest hours.