Tutoring Company

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When Tutoring Company Prep approached us, they weren’t looking for just another tutoring platform — they needed a partner who understood how personal and high-stakes academic support really is. Their model was already working: tailored chemistry tutoring, real exam prep, and a sharp focus on student outcomes. What they needed was a tool to manage invoicing for students and tutors.

Tutoring Company Prep had a growing tutoring business with a unique challenge: no two tutors were the same. Each one had their own hourly rate, their own students, and their own schedule. On top of that, some student-tutor pairs had custom pricing arrangements — all of which had to be tracked manually by the business owner.

Invoices were being handled through spreadsheets and emails, and while the business was expanding, the tools weren’t keeping up. Tutors couldn’t see or manage their own invoices independently, and worse, all tutors had visibility into each other’s rates and billing history — a clear privacy and security issue. This created extra admin work, constant back-and-forths, and an experience that didn’t scale with the business.

Our goal was to create a platform that could scale without losing what they already had. That meant rethinking the invoicing process so tutors could access resources and watch past sessions.

Decision Time

We knew right away that this wasn’t just about automating invoices — it was about creating a more professional, secure, and scalable system that supported the way Tutoring Company Prep actually works.

The system needed to:

  • Allow each tutor to view and manage only their own invoices
  • Support flexible pricing by tutor and by student-tutor pairing
  • Give the Tutoring Company Prep admin full access and control
  • Keep data secure, clean, and easy to manage

 

This wasn’t something off-the-shelf tools could handle elegantly. It called for a custom solution — one that respected the business’s structure, protected sensitive data, and made life easier for everyone involved.

This is what we decided on and why for this project:

Technology Choices

Our Reason

Language: Python / Django

We selected Django for its stability, mature ecosystem, and robust security features. It’s a battle-tested framework that lets us build and iterate quickly, making it ideal for long-term projects that need to grow and scale efficiently.

Database: PostgreSQL

A powerful, reliable database system that's well-suited for structured data. Its strengths in handling time zones, preventing booking conflicts, and supporting complex queries made it a natural fit for multi-marina scheduling.

Payment Gateway: Stripe + ACH

To ensure secure and streamlined transactions, we integrated Stripe Connect for handling payments and splitting revenue between marinas and captains. ACH support allowed us to process direct bank transfers with ease.

Communication: Twilio + SendGrid

Real-time communication was essential. Twilio powered our SMS notifications, while SendGrid handled emails — keeping admins, captains, and clients in sync every step of the way.

Where does the stack live?

To host the platform, we deployed everything to Amazon Web Services (AWS) — a choice that gave us the reliability and flexibility needed for both the MVP and future growth.

  • EC2 instances run the Django backend and handle all the invoicing logic and user permissions.
  • RDS (Relational Database Service) stores invoice data, user accounts, and pricing rules securely, with daily backups and redundancy.

This stack ensures that the system is fast, secure, and easy to maintain, with room to grow as Tutoring Company Prep expands to more tutors and students.

We have our requirements, our stack, and our environment – now it’s time to build!

Implementing strategies with our development:

 

From the beginning, our development approach focused on aligning with how Tutoring Company Prep operates — not just what the codebase needed to do.

We spent time understanding the roles of the business owner and tutors, how sessions were billed, and where the most friction occurred in day-to-day tasks. That insight helped us prioritize features that actually removed pain points, not just add functionality.

We built and tested tutor-facing features early on, giving a few trusted users access to a staging environment to validate workflows, pricing logic, and invoice management tools. Meanwhile, we developed the admin interface to give the manager full visibility and control over everything — with no compromise on privacy for individual tutors.

Through tight feedback loops, we continued refining edge cases, such as mixed-rate bookings, disputed invoices, and the ability to generate summaries for payout tracking.

Gil Austin

President of Coretechs

Talk to Gil

Gil has over 39 years of experience in software development, project management, and business development. He’ll provide an on-the-spot assessment, critical feedback, and determine the level of effort required for your project.

202-540-0002

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Coretechs delivers secure, tailored solutions for government, agencies, and private companies—adapting to each client's unique needs with flexible, U.S.-based development support.

gill illustration

Gil Austin

President of Coretechs

Talk to Gil

Gil has over 39 years of experience in software development, project management, and business development. He’ll provide an on-the-spot assessment, critical feedback, and determine the level of effort required for your project.

202-540-0002