Non-coder running a small education business: I replaced spreadsheets with a simple teacher management system (steps + pitfalls)

Hi everyone — I run a small education business in the U.S. I’m not a developer, but I hit a point where spreadsheets + random Slack/text threads were quietly breaking our operations.

I kept thinking, “We’re not even that big — why does this feel so messy?” Turns out the mess wasn’t the people. It was the system (or lack of one).

What I needed (realistically)

• A simple public-facing page for parents (basic info + contact)
• An internal admin panel to manage teachers (profiles, subjects, availability)
• Different access levels (owner/admin vs staff)
• A way to change requirements without rebuilding everything from scratch

What was going wrong before

• Teacher info lived in 4 places (Google Sheets, email, Slack, and someone’s brain)
• Every schedule/contract update created duplicate “final_v3_REALfinal” versions
• No permissions meant anyone could accidentally overwrite something important
• Reporting/exporting for weekly ops was a pain every single time

What I built instead (the smallest thing that actually worked)

• Login + roles: owner, admin, staff
• Teacher table: name, subjects/grades, rate (optional), availability, contract end date, status
• Simple workflow: “request update → approve” (optional, but it cut mistakes a lot)
• Admin screens: list, edit, search, export (basic, but genuinely life-changing)

Biggest surprise (the “aha” moment)

The real win wasn’t the first version. It was being able to make changes in minutes when we realized we forgot a field, needed a new status, or wanted a slightly different workflow.

That “we can just fix the system” feeling was huge.

Pitfalls / what I’d do earlier

• Define roles & permissions first (otherwise you’ll redo screens later)
• Start with 1 table + 1 workflow (don’t try to build a whole LMS)
• Write down 10 real weekly tasks and make the UI match those tasks (not the other way around)

If this is useful

I can share a checklist of the exact screens + database fields I used (and a lightweight template you can copy). Comment with your use case (school / tutoring / edtech / internal ops) and what you’re tracking (teachers, students, classes, payments), and I’ll adapt it.

Note: I used a full-stack app builder to implement this. Happy to share what I learned either way — not here to spam links.

Submitted January 30, 2026 at 01:58AM by SpiritualCold1444 https://ift.tt/Excj5FZ