Start a scuba instruction business on DiveDesk

You don’t need a shop, a website, or a point-of-sale to teach for a living. You need a way for a student to find a class, pay for it, sign the paperwork, and walk away certified with a record you can stand behind. That is what DiveDesk’s Solo plan is: every course you teach gets a page and a link, and everything after the click is handled.

Have these ready before you sign up

• Your teaching status and instructor number with your agency (SDI, PADI, SSI, NAUI, TDI, RAID or PSAI). Referral forms print it, and certifications need it.
• Professional liability insurance. Your agency requires it to teach; your waiver references it.
• Somewhere to run pool sessions and somewhere to do open-water dives. You will enter both as locations so class days and rosters know where to send people.
• A Stripe account, or ten minutes to make one. Money from every enrollment goes straight to it — DiveDesk never holds your funds.
• Your prices. If you don’t have them yet, read “How to price a course” next.

Day one, in this order

1. Sign up on the Solo plan. Your admin is live in about a minute; the welcome email has a temporary password.
2. Change that password first (Settings → Account), then set your time zone.
3. Connect Stripe (Settings → Stripe Connect). Use your existing account if you have one.
4. Add your courses. Nothing is pre-loaded: open Training → Course Templates, pick the courses you teach, then set your price and tick Active on each. Upload your logo under Settings → Brand while you’re there.
5. Choose your waivers and training records (Settings → Waivers & Records). Three waivers are already in with your shop’s name filled in — liability release with the medical questionnaire, rental agreement, trip waiver — and the SDI and PADI Open Water referral forms are what DiveDesk fills at the end of a course. Keep each one, or upload your own PDF in its place. Students sign from their phone before the first session.
6. Add your pool and your lake under Pool & Lake Locations.
7. Post your first class (Training → Post a Class): the pool day and the lake days on one roster.
8. Open the course you just scheduled and press Copy on the Course link in the sidebar. That link is your storefront.

How students reach you

Post the course link in a Facebook group, on your Instagram, in a text thread. Whoever taps it lands on a page with your description, price and Enroll button. They pay by card, get a receipt, get the waiver, and appear on your roster and in your Contacts — you did nothing. The class also has its own signup link (on the class record) for people you have already sold.

What happens after they enroll

• They sign the waiver and medical questionnaire. If an answer needs a doctor’s sign-off, the record is flagged in red under Physician Holds until you clear it.
• They do eLearning with the agency. You mark it done, or upload their eLearning results as a review document and send it for signature.
• Class Day: on the pool day and each lake day, open Class Day, tick attendance, log dives and skills, submit. Their training record fills itself in and their stage moves from needs-pool to needs-lake to complete.
• Send Training Records: when the record is complete, send it for the student’s e-signature, countersign it yourself, and the agency referral form is generated with your instructor number on it.
• Issue Certifications: when the record is signed and eLearning is done, the student shows up under Ready to issue. Enter the card number and date; it is on their profile forever.

Keeping the books

Every enrollment is an order with a receipt. Money → Finance shows income net of refunds by month, in your time zone, and Sales Tax shows what you collected. If you use QuickBooks Online, the QuickBooks add-on posts each day’s totals as a journal entry so your accountant never keys anything.