Run an academy with several levels: step by step

1. One student account across all products

1. The student signs up on your site once, with their email.
2. For every later course they sign in with the same email.
3. Each course is added to My courses in that one account.
4. To check: open Students in your dashboard. Each student is listed once.

• The account is matched by email. A different email makes a second account.
• Progress is the same on phone and laptop.
• Not available: merging two accounts into one.

2. Several Level 1 products with one shared community

1. Open Communities and click New community.
2. Pick a starting point (Blank is fine), give it a name such as Level 1 Community, and click Create community.
3. Open Courses and click a Level 1 course.
4. In the Community card on the right, choose Level 1 Community.
5. Do the same on every other Level 1 course.

• A student who enrolls in any of these courses joins the community automatically.
• A second Level 1 course does not add them twice.
• If you remove a student from the community yourself, they stay removed.

3. A Level 2 membership that opens the Level 1 library

1. Open Add plugins and add the Storefront.
2. In Storefront, create a product of type Course access for each Level 1 course, and publish each one.
3. Create one more product and pick Membership.
4. Under "What's included with the membership", tick the Level 1 products.
5. Under Price, choose Subscription and enter the amount.
6. Click Publish.

• Members keep the included courses and their community while they pay.
• Lesson progress is kept if they leave and come back.
• Not available: an "everything in Level 1" setting. When you add a new Level 1 course, tick it in the membership too.
• For a membership priced in rupees, connect Razorpay with your own API keys. The one-click Razorpay sign-in cannot take recurring payments.

4. Higher-level programs and live cohorts

Limit a live class to one cohort:

1. Open Live Classes and click Schedule class.
2. Enter a title. Under Course, choose the program.
3. Switch on Only these students can join.
4. Click Schedule & Notify.

Let students pay a high-priced program in parts:

1. Open the course and click Publish.
2. Under "How will students get in?", pick Payment plan.
3. Choose the number of installments (2, 3, 4, 6 or 12) and how often to charge (every 7, 15, 30 or 60 days).
4. Choose Automatically or On reminders, then click Next and finish.

• Class reminders go out 3 hours, 1 hour and 15 minutes before, to the students of that class.
• Not available: automatic credit for what a student already paid at a lower level. Give them a coupon instead.

5. Payments, access, cancellation and refunds

Set a price:

1. Open the course and click Edit.
2. Open the Pricing tab.
3. Choose the currency and enter the price. 0 makes the course free.
4. Click Publish changes.

Refund a course bought from its course page:

1. Refund the payment in your Razorpay or Stripe dashboard.
2. Prolaud is told by the payment company. After a full refund, the student's access ends the next time they load a page.

Refund a Storefront order paid through Stripe:

1. Open Storefront and click Orders.
2. Click Refund on the order.
3. Click Refund + revoke access.

• Paid course: access opens when the payment is confirmed.
• Free course: access opens when the student enrolls.
• Buying a course the student already owns is refused, so nobody pays twice.
• Membership cancelled: access stays until the end of the period already paid for.
• Membership payment failed: 3 days of grace, then access pauses. It reopens when the payment goes through.
• Payment plan installment missed: 3 days of grace, then the course pauses. It reopens on payment.
• A partial refund of a course leaves access in place.
• Not available: a refund button for payments on your own Razorpay account. Refund those in Razorpay.
• Students see their receipts under Billing.

• Refund an order
• Payment plans

6. Community access and engagement tracking

1. Open Students and click a student's name.
2. On Overview, find the Community card. It lists their communities with Posts, Comments and Reactions.
3. Open the Activity tab to see their posts in date order with lessons and classes.
4. For everyone at once, open Engagement.
5. Click Roster & nudges to see each student's stage and last active day.

• Community access follows enrollment. Enroll in the course, join its community.
• Not available: time spent in the community, or who read which post.

7. Duplicate student or enrollment records

1. Open Courses and click the course.
2. Open the Students tab.
3. Each student should be there once. If a person is there twice, compare the two emails.

• A student has one enrollment per course, even if they enroll again from another device.
• Progress only moves forward. An older device cannot undo it.
• Two rows for one person means two emails. Ask them to use one.
• Not available: a button to merge two accounts.

8. A video shows for me but not for the student

Check these in order:

1. Open the course. Is it marked Draft? Click Publish. Students never see drafts.
2. Did a yellow notice say a lesson "has no content"? That lesson has no video saved. Add the video, then publish.
3. Open the lesson again in the editor. Is the video still there? If not, the upload did not finish. Upload it again and wait for it to complete.
4. Did you see "changed somewhere else since this page loaded"? Your edit was not saved. Click Reload and make the change again.
5. Open Students. Is the student enrolled in this course, with the email they sign in with?
6. Ask the student to refresh the page.

9. The live-class experience

1. You: open Live Classes, click Schedule class, fill the form and click Schedule & Notify.
2. Student: gets the invite and reminders, and joins in the browser. Nothing to install.
3. After class: open Live Classes and click Attendance. Export with CSV or PDF report.
4. Student: finds the recording under Recordings.

• You can paste a Zoom, Google Meet or Teams link instead. Then Prolaud does not capture attendance or the recording.
• Not available: a Prolaud app in the App Store or Play Store. It runs in the browser on phone and laptop.

10. One student's whole journey, for the admin

1. Open Students.
2. Click the student's name.
3. Overview: their courses with progress, and the Community card.
4. Activity: lessons, classes and posts in date order.
5. Invoices: what they paid for.
6. Messages: what you sent them.

11. WhatsApp, CRM and automation

1. Open Marketing.
2. Scroll to the automation builder and type a name.
3. Under Trigger, choose When someone makes a purchase or When a contact gets a tag.
4. Under Action, choose Send an email, Send a WhatsApp message or Add a tag.
5. Write the message and create the automation.

• Contacts: buyers and people who fill in a form on your site are saved here. You can tag them.
• An unpaid checkout gets the tag abandoned-checkout after about an hour, so a tag automation can follow up.
• On Engagement, a button tags the students you select as at-risk. It does not happen by itself.
• WhatsApp is on the Studio and Institute plans. Messages are sent from Prolaud's WhatsApp number.
• Not available: sending from your own WhatsApp number.
• Not available: triggers such as "finished a lesson" or "inactive for 7 days".
• Not available: a connection to an outside CRM, Zapier or Make.
• API and webhooks are on the Institute plan only.

12. Affiliates and referrals

• Not available: an affiliate or referral program for your courses. There are no partner links, commissions or payout reports.
• Refer & Earn in your dashboard is Prolaud's own offer: invite another academy owner and get a free month.
• Students also have a Refer & earn page. Its link opens Prolaud's sign-up page, not your course, and no reward is given to the student. Do not promise students a reward from it.

What you can do today is give each partner their own coupon:

1. Open the course and click Edit.
2. Open the Pricing tab and find Coupons.
3. Enter a code, the percent off, an end date and the maximum uses.
4. Click Add, then Publish changes.

• Counting each partner's sales and paying them is done by you, outside Prolaud.

13. Branding, integrations and languages

1. Open Public Site → Site settings.
2. Identity tab: set your display name, tagline and logo.
3. Style tab: set your colors.
4. Advanced tab → Custom Domain: type your address and click Connect.
5. Advanced tab → White-label: tick Hide "Powered by Prolaud" in the footer.
6. Advanced tab → Analytics & tags: paste your Google Analytics 4, Plausible, Hotjar or Meta Pixel ID.
7. Languages tab: switch on Multilingual portal and pick the languages.
8. Click Publish.

• Custom domain, white-label and languages are on the Pro, Studio and Institute plans.
• Payments: Razorpay or Stripe.
• Zoom, Google Meet and Teams: by pasting the meeting link into a class.
• Languages: English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam and Punjabi. Some are only partly translated.
• The picker translates the site menu, footer, sign-in and course catalog.
• Not translated: your own page text, your lessons, the learning area, checkout and emails. Write those in the language you want.
• Not available: Arabic and Bahasa Indonesia. They are listed as coming soon.

14. GST invoices

1. Open Billing & plan and find GST & tax invoices. It shows for academies in India on a paid plan.
2. Tick Issue GST tax invoices (I'm GST-registered).
3. Enter your GSTIN, Legal / registered name, Registered address, State (place of supply) and GST rate (%).
4. Tick My course prices already include GST if they do.
5. If you sell abroad, add your LUT ARN and its validity date.
6. Click Save GST settings.

• The invoice shows your legal name, GSTIN, address and state. Checkout still shows your brand name.
• Invoices are numbered in order with no gaps, and restart each financial year.
• Tax is shown as CGST + SGST.
• Sales in other currencies get a zero-rated export invoice.
• With GST off, the buyer gets a plain payment receipt.
• Not available: IGST for buyers in another state. The buyer's state is not collected.
• Not available: the buyer's GSTIN, name or address on the invoice. There is no GSTIN box at checkout.
• Not available: GST invoices for Storefront products such as memberships and bundles. Those get a simple receipt.
• Ask your accountant to confirm this fits how you file.

• Set up GST
• What a GST invoice contains

15. Support

1. Open the Help page.
2. Click Contact support.
3. Fill in your name, email, phone number, subject and message.
4. Click Send message.

• A person replies to your email, usually within a day.
• You can send 3 messages in 24 hours from the form.
• Not available: live chat or a phone line.
• A 1-hour response time is offered on the Institute plan only.