Everything an academy owner does in Skipper, step by step. Fifteen jobs, most of them a couple of minutes.

1. Create Your Academy

• Tap Academies in the bottom bar. It is in the app menu too, if that is where your thumb goes.
• Tap the + in the header.
• Add your academy name and pick your city. That is all that is required.
• Want a short address like @tiruppur-ca? Type a handle, or leave it blank and we make one for you. Add a logo if you have one handy.
• Tap Continue, check the details, read and accept the academy terms, and tap Create academy.

Done. You are the owner, and you land on the Home tab. Your academy starts private; when you are ready to be found in search, open the Get verified card on your academy's home screen, tap Request verification, and our team will take a look. The card then sits quietly as "Verification pending review" until we get to it.

Worth knowing before you worry about it: the academy directory ranks by distance for anyone who has shared a location, and by newest first for everyone else. It does not rank by how many students you have. A one-coach academy that opened last week is not buried under the big names.

To bring in your staff, go to the More tab, find the Staff section and tap Manage. Tap Invite staff, find the person by mobile number or email (they need a Skipper account), pick a role, and send the invite. The roles are admin, head coach and coach. Each person sees only what their role needs, and the differences are real. An admin runs everything, including fees and the store. A head coach can enrol students and manage batches. A coach sees Home, Students and More, and works with the batches they are assigned to.

2. Manage Batches

• Open your academy and go to the Batches tab.
• Tap New batch. Name it the way you already talk, like U-16 Evening.
• Set the age group, capacity, and a colour, and assign a coach.
• Open the batch. It has tabs for Home, Students and Sessions, plus Performance if you rate students there (more on that in section 11). From Home, open the schedule and pick the training days and timings, and a ground if you like. It opens as its own screen, so a batch that trains six days a week is as easy to set up as one that trains twice.

That is your week set. Sessions appear on their own, every week, from the schedule you saved. Attendance on practice day is the coach's one-minute job, covered in section 8.

3. Manage Students

• Go to the Students tab and tap Enroll. It opens a full screen called Add a student.
• Under Who is joining?, pick Someone's child (you will verify a parent's number) or An adult, for themselves (you will verify their own number).
• Enter the phone number and tap Send code. The code goes to that phone. Enter it and tap Verify. It proves the number really belongs to that parent.
• Skipper then shows who is on that number. Pick the person who is joining, or add someone new with their name and, if you like, date of birth and gender. Tap Continue.
• If your academy collects safety details, the next step is More details: Safety & contact (medical notes, allergies, emergency contact), the address, and any questions of your own. Section 13 shows how to choose what is asked.
• The last step is the batch and the fee plan. Tap Add [name] to the academy. In a hurry? Add without batch or fees does what it says, and you can do both later.

When the student is added, the screen offers Add another student. If the next child has the same parent, tap Enrol another child for this parent and the code you already verified covers them for the next half hour, so a family with three children is one code, not three.

One more thing you may see. If your academy is in a short sign-up window for a big first intake, the code step is replaced by a tick that the parent signed your paper registration form. You can then scan or attach that form under Registration form, which is optional. Please do not attach Aadhaar or ID pages.

Tap any student to see their attendance and fee status in one place. And because a student on Skipper is a full Skipper player, there is a doorway from their profile straight into their match stats and analysis. Your coaching and their weekend cricket, finally on one page.

4. Manage Your Store

• Go to the More tab, open Store, and tap Add product.
• Add a name, price, and photo, and sizes if it is kit.
• When a parent places an order, it lands in your orders list. Tap Confirm.
• They collect and pay at the academy. Mark it Delivered and you are square.

5. Manage 1:1 Bookings

• From the More tab, open 1:1 classes.
• Tap New 1:1 session. The session and its weekly availability are set up on one screen: a title like Batting · 1:1, the duration, the price, the coach, and the days and windows that coach is free. One Save covers the lot.

Parents and students pick from the open slots and book. The app holds the slot and blocks double bookings, so two students can never land on the same hour. Payment is collected at the academy.

Coaches get a 1:1s tab of their own in the academy, so they can see what has been booked with them without going through you.

6. Announcements

• Go to the More tab, open Notices and tap to post.
• Write a title and your message.
• Choose who it reaches: everyone, staff only, or one batch.
• Pin it if it matters all week.

Rain washout, timing change, tournament news: one notice, and every phone that needs to know gets a notification. No more forwarding the same message through five WhatsApp groups.

7. Fee Reminders

• Go to the Fees tab and create a fee plan: a name, the amount, and how often, monthly, quarterly, or one-time.
• Assign the plan to each student. Skipper raises the invoices automatically, every period, on time.
• When fees come due, tap Remind all unpaid at the top of the Fees tab. The button shows how many parents are waiting, like Remind all unpaid · 12. A sheet tells you what will go out, and Send reminders sends it. Each parent gets one reminder about their oldest unpaid fee.
• When a parent pays at the ground in cash, tap Record cash payment on the Fees tab, or Record payment on the invoice itself. It is marked paid and a receipt lands in the parent's app.

Parents can also pay in the app by UPI, and the invoice marks itself paid. You do not have to record those.

Reminders always go through the app. If you have turned on WhatsApp or SMS, they go there too (each SMS is charged, so it stays off until you switch it on). For reminders that chase on their own, open the More tab and tap Fee reminders. Switch on Remind parents automatically and pick the days around the due date. Each reminder goes out once per invoice. Only an owner or admin sees this screen.

The Fees tab opens on a collection meter, so you always know how much of the month's money is in and who is pending.

8. For Coaches: Mark Attendance

• On practice day, open your academy. Coaches land on Today, with the day's session right there.
• Tap Mark attendance.
• Tap each student: Present, Absent, Late, or Excused.
• Tap Save attendance. Done, in under a minute.

Coaches see their own batches under My batches, and only theirs. Their tabs are Home, Students and More, and a head coach gets Batches as well. Every saved session builds into an attendance percentage on the student's profile, so when a parent asks how regular their child has been, the answer is a number, not a guess.

9. Academy Teams

• Go to the More tab and scroll to Linked teams. It is a section on that tab rather than a screen you open.
• Link your academy's playing sides, the same Skipper teams you already use for matches and tournaments.

Now your academy and its teams are one family. Your students train under the academy, play matches under its teams, and their scores and stats build on the same player profile in both places.

10. Student ID Cards

Every student gets a QR ID card. Parents find theirs on the academy Home tab, in the ID card row ("View, share or scan at the gate").

• To print a whole batch, open the Students tab and tap the badge icon, Print ID cards. It makes one PDF of the students in the list you are looking at, ready for the share sheet.
• For one student, open their profile and tap ID card. You can Show QR, Share as PDF, or Reissue card if one has gone missing.
• The card shows the student's status live when someone scans it, so a card printed in June still tells the truth in October.

Student numbers start with a short prefix, like TCA-0042. To choose yours, open More, tap Academy details, and set Student ID prefix (two to six letters or numbers). The screen previews the result as you type. Leave it blank and Skipper makes one from your handle. If you change it later, new IDs use the new prefix and cards you have already printed keep the old one.

11. Monthly Reports

Once a month a coach can rate every student in a batch against a list your academy sets, and the result goes to the parent as a report they can read on their phone and download as a PDF. Templates are under More → Report templates, and roles such as batter and bowler are under Player roles. Coaches rate from the batch itself, on the Performance tab. Parents read the result in the Progress tab.

The whole thing, from setting up templates to the signature and sending, has its own guide: Monthly Progress Reports for Your Academy.

12. Absent Messages

When a student is marked absent, the family can hear about it the same day. Families always get an app notification. To add more, open More → Academy details and scroll to Attendance messages.

• Absent messages tells the family when a student is marked absent.
• Mark unmarked students absent handles the coach who forgets a name. Thirty minutes after a session the coach has marked, anyone still unmarked is marked absent.
• SMS when WhatsApp fails sends arrived, late and absent messages by SMS only if the WhatsApp message could not be delivered. Each SMS is charged.

WhatsApp itself is switched on in the Messaging section of the same screen. Parents only get WhatsApp once a staff member has recorded their consent.

13. Extra Student Details

Every academy has a few things it needs to know that nobody else asks. A jersey size, how the child gets to practice, a swim test. You can add your own questions, and choose which of the standard safety questions you ask at all.

• Open More → Academy details and tap Student form.
• Tap + (Add a field). Give it a label, pick a type (Text, Number, Date, Choice list or Yes/No), and for a choice list type the options, one per line.
• Turn on Required if you want it counted toward a complete profile. It never blocks an enrolment.
• Under Asked at enrolment, switch off anything you do not collect: medical notes, allergies, emergency contact or address. Switched-off questions are left off the enrolment form and the student profile.

Your own questions show up as More details when you add a student, and the answers sit on each student's profile under Details. If a question stops being useful, archive it. Students who already answered keep their answer.

14. Keep Your Facilities for Members

Your public page lists your facilities, with photographs if you have added them. If you would rather strangers did not see the list, open More → Academy details, find Facilities, and switch on Members only. Visitors then see a short note and an Enquire button instead of the list. Your staff and your own members always see it. Tap Save changes to apply it.

15. Get Found

Everything above is the inside of your academy. This is the outside.

From the More tab, open Public page. This is the page a stranger sees: what you do, your facilities, your programs, what you have won, photographs, and your coaches. Every word of it is written by you. Nothing on it is counted or scored or averaged by us.

When someone lands on it and taps Contact admin, their enquiry arrives in Requests on the same More tab, with a badge when something new is waiting. Open one, and you can start a chat with them in a tap.

To send people there, use the share action in the academy's app bar. It shares a link to your academy that works for anyone, in the app or out of it, which is what you want in a WhatsApp status or a poster.

There is more to the public page than fits here, including how coaches choose whether to appear on it and the one image trap worth avoiding. It has a guide of its own: Your Academy's Public Page.