Scheduling goes wrong when the form collects answers nobody can read. This template asks the right questions and writes times in a shape a spreadsheet, or a scheduler, can use. Made for music schools and independent teachers.
Every sample row is made up. Delete them before you send anything out.
Nine fields cover almost every studio. The first five decide whether a lesson can be placed at all.
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Student name | One name per row. Siblings get their own rows. |
| Instrument | Decides which teachers can take the lesson. |
| Preferred teacher | Allow "No preference" so you are not stuck guessing. |
| Lesson length | A 45 minute lesson needs a bigger window than a 30. |
| Weekday windows | The hard part. Use the formats below. |
| Home address | Only for teachers who travel. Drive time depends on it. |
| Siblings | Lets you place a family back to back, with one drive. |
| Start date | Stops you scheduling someone who starts in November. |
| Notes | Pets, gate codes, teacher requests. Free text. |
These come from how Set the Tune's own availability reader works, so they are safe in any spreadsheet too.
| Write this | What happens |
|---|---|
Mon 3:30-6:00pm; Wed 4-7pm | Each semicolon segment keeps its own day. |
Mon 10am-2pm; 3-6pm | A segment with no day continues the one before it. |
Tue 8-10:30am, 3-5:30pm | A comma adds a second window on the same day. |
Mon/Wed 3-6 or Mon-Thu 4-7 | Day lists and day ranges share one time. |
Mon 3-6; Wed same | "same" repeats the last window. |
Tue after 3:30 | Reads as 3:30pm until 8pm. |
Wed 17:00-19:00 | 24 hour times are fine. |
Sat X | Marked off. Nothing imports, nothing is flagged. |
TBD or CHECK FORM | Treated as "no availability yet", not as an error. |
| Avoid this | What goes wrong |
|---|---|
3:30-6pm (no day) | No day to attach the time to. Flagged for review. |
Weekdays after school | No clock time, so it is not guessed. Flagged. |
Mon 3-6 (except 4-5) | An exclusion changes the range, so the cell stays flagged. |
Mon | A day with no time reads as open 8am to 8pm. Probably not what they meant. |
Mon 3:30-9pm | Lessons are placed between 8am and 8pm, so the end is clamped to 8pm. |
10-12am | Read as the morning block, not midnight. Write 10am-12pm to be safe. |
Create a new form and add these in order. Copy the wording exactly.
Ready to see the result? Import your roster and see your schedule free. Related: music school scheduling software, the drive-time calculator, and the teacher availability form guide.
Download the family form and the teacher sheet below. Open them in Excel or Google Sheets, delete the three sample rows, and keep the header row. Then pick how you collect answers. Either send families a Google Form built from the question list on this page, or fill the sheet in yourself from emails and phone calls.
Collect teacher availability first. Teachers know their own limits, and you cannot place a family until you know when someone is free to teach them. Then collect families, then merge both into one roster.
Most families will write whatever comes to mind: "after school", "any day but Tuesday", "3ish". A person can read those. A spreadsheet cannot, and every vague answer turns into a follow-up email.
The fix is cheap. Ask for the day first, then the time window, and show one example right under the question. Day name, then a range with am or pm, windows separated by semicolons. Families copy examples more than they read instructions.
Once the rows are in, check the odd ones by hand: anyone with no teacher preference, anyone with several students at one address, anyone whose window is under an hour. Those are the lessons that cause the most rework later.
If you want the sheet turned into a schedule, import the roster CSV into Set the Tune. It reads the availability column, groups siblings by the Family column, and flags any cell it could not read so you can fix it before anything is placed. Building the schedule is free.
Yes. The three CSV files and the question list are free to download and use, with no signup. Edit them for your own studio however you like.
Ask for the day and a time window together, one example under the question, and accept more than one window. A short text box with "Mon 3:30-6:00pm; Wed 4-7pm" as the example gets cleaner answers than a free-form paragraph.
A Google Form for families, because they only see one question at a time and you get one tidy row per student in the response sheet. A spreadsheet for teachers, because there are fewer of them and you can fill it in together.
Ask for sibling names, or a family name, on every form. Putting the same family value on each sibling row lets you schedule them back to back with one teacher and one drive.
The roster import template is built for it. Upload the CSV and Set the Tune maps the columns, reads the availability times, and flags anything unclear for review. The family and teacher sheets work too, since the importer reads many layouts.