How Duration Is Interpreted for Pay and Student Credit

Published 11 March 2026, Updated 12 March 2026

Session closure now distinguishes between:

This is important because these two values are not always the same.

Core Rule

Instructor pay now follows two steps:

the system first checks whether the attendance sheet was opened late
if the late opening stays within the configured late-open pay threshold, the delayed opening is forgiven for pay purposes
if the delay is greater than that threshold, pay falls back to the real delivered overlap only

To be eligible for payment, the lesson must have a pay code selected, and the member must have permission to record its duration in the timesheet.

Student lesson credit follows a separate protective rule:

if the real session overlap reaches the configured student-credit minimum threshold, students receive the full scheduled lesson duration
if the real overlap stays below that threshold, students receive partial credit equal to the real overlap

A student will receive credit for the session duration only if they are enrolled in the course associated with the lesson.

This means instructor pay and student credit can differ for valid operational reasons.

The late-open pay threshold is an administrator-defined grace value.

Use it when you want to forgive small opening delays without reducing instructor pay.

Recommended interpretation:

if the attendance sheet is opened late by a small acceptable margin, the session can still be paid from the planned start time
if the delay exceeds the allowed margin, only the real delivered overlap is paid
early closing is not forgiven by this rule

Practical effect:

The system compares:

Only the part where those two time windows overlap counts as real delivered time.

Assume the session was scheduled from 09:00 to 12:00 and that the late-open pay threshold is set to 15 minutes.

Real attendance-sheet timing	Instructor pay	Student credit	Why
Opened 09:00, closed 12:00	3.0 hours	3.0 hours	Full session was delivered inside the planned window
Opened 09:15, closed 12:00	3.0 hours	3.0 hours if the real delivered time reaches the student-credit minimum threshold	Opening delay is inside the allowed pay grace margin
Opened 09:15, closed 11:45	2.75 hours	3.0 hours if the real delivered time reaches the student-credit minimum threshold	Late opening is forgiven for pay, but early closing still reduces paid time
Opened 10:30, closed 12:00	1.5 hours	3.0 hours if the real delivered time reaches the student-credit minimum threshold	Delay is beyond the allowed pay grace margin, so pay uses real overlap only
Opened 10:30, closed 10:45	15 minutes	15 minutes if the real delivered time stays below the minimum threshold	Very short delivery results in partial credit only
Opened 14:00, closed 15:00	0 hours	0 hours	There is no overlap with the planned 09:00-12:00 session

This rule is intended to be fair in both directions:

instructors can be protected from minor operational opening delays when the organization chooses to allow a grace margin
instructors should not be fully paid for major late openings or early closures that significantly reduce delivered time
students should not automatically lose full planned credit when the session was substantially delivered despite delays
very short sessions should not automatically produce full student credit

Operationally, this gives admins a cleaner and more defensible result:

pay can forgive small late openings, but still reflects real early closing
student credit follows planned training value only when enough of the session was truly delivered