Tutor and Seller Agreement (draft)

1. About this agreement

This agreement is between you and [Legal entity name], ABN [ABN] (“Astry”, “we”, “us”). It applies on top of our Terms and Conditions when you teach on Astry as a tutor, coach or mentor, or list a resource on the marketplace, paid or free. Words defined in the Terms mean the same here. If this agreement and the Terms disagree about teaching or selling, this agreement wins.

You agree to it by ticking the box when you sign up as a tutor, or when you first list a resource. If you are under 18, the parent linked to your account agrees to it for you as well, and is responsible for making sure you keep to it.

2. You run your own tutoring

You are an independent business, not Astry’s employee, worker, agent or contractor. Astry doesn’t provide tutoring. It provides a place where you can be found, talk to students and get paid. So:

• you decide what you teach, how you teach, your rates, your hours and which students you take on;
• you can teach anywhere else as well, and nothing here stops you;
• Astry doesn’t pay you wages, superannuation, leave or workers compensation, and doesn’t deduct tax from what you earn;
• you can’t make promises or agreements on Astry’s behalf, or say that you work for Astry or that Astry endorses you.

3. Your promises

While you teach or sell on Astry, you promise that:

• everything on your profile is true and up to date, including your name, age, qualifications, ATAR, experience, subjects and the results you mention;
• any credential you upload is genuine and yours, and any image of it is unaltered. If a credential is withdrawn, expires or turns out to be wrong, you will remove it;
• if you are 18 or over and teach anyone under 18, you hold a valid NSW Working With Children Check for that work, it is the one you submitted to us, and you will tell us straight away if it is barred, suspended, made subject to an interim bar or expires;
• you are allowed to work in Australia, and to do the kind of work you offer;
• you have not been charged with or convicted of an offence involving children, violence, sexual misconduct or dishonesty, and will tell us straight away if you are;
• you will follow the law, these terms, our Community Guidelines and our Child Safety Policy;
• you will teach the lessons you agree to, at the agreed time, with reasonable care and skill.

We may ask you for proof of anything on this list, and may hide your profile until you give it. Breaking one of these promises can mean your account is closed (see Suspension and ending this agreement).

4. Teaching students, especially children

Many students on Astry are children. Keeping them safe matters more than anything else on Astry, and these rules are there to protect them and you. When you teach a student under 18:

• keep all contact on Astry. Don’t give or ask for a personal phone number, email address or social media account, and don’t contact the student anywhere else, unless their parent has agreed and the two of you have a lesson booked;
• talk about the parent’s arrangements with the parent, not with the child, where there is one linked;
• in person, teach in an open area where a parent or another adult is nearby, or in a public place such as a library. Never teach a child alone behind a closed door;
• online, teach from a quiet, appropriate place with your camera on when video is used. Never ask a student to turn their camera off, to move somewhere private, or to keep anything secret from their parents;
• don’t give gifts, money or favours, offer lifts, or meet a student outside a lesson;
• never record a lesson unless the student and their parent have agreed;
• if a child tells you something that makes you worried for their safety, or you see something worrying, tell us straight away through Support. If a child is in immediate danger, call 000 first.

With adult students, keep things professional: no romantic or sexual contact with someone you teach, and treat them with respect at all times.

5. Getting paid

Card payments are not switched on yet. Until they are, students and buyers pay you directly, Astry takes no fee, and this section doesn’t apply. Once they are:

• you appoint Astry as your limited payment collection agent. That means Astry collects payment from students and buyers for you, and once a student or buyer has paid Astry, they have paid you;
• you must connect a Stripe account and agree to Stripe’s connected account terms before you can take paid bookings or list paid resources. You give us permission to share your details with Stripe and to receive information from it;
• for a lesson, Astry holds the payment until both you and the student mark it complete, then pays you the price minus Astry’s share (see the fees table in our Terms and Conditions). For a resource, you are paid straight away;
• payments arrive in your bank account on Stripe’s payout timetable. We aren’t responsible for a delay caused by Stripe or your bank, or by details you gave wrongly;
• we may hold back a payout while we look into a report, a no-show, a dispute or a chargeback about that lesson or sale, or if we reasonably suspect fraud. We will tell you why, and release it as soon as the matter is settled.

6. Refunds, chargebacks and money owed to Astry

Students and buyers have refund rights under our Refund Policy and the Australian Consumer Law. You agree to those rules. If money has to go back to a student or buyer after you have been paid, for example because a resource wasn’t as described, a lesson didn’t happen, or a bank reversed the payment, we may:

• reverse the payout to you through Stripe;
• take the amount out of your future payouts; or
• ask you to pay it back, which you agree to do within 14 days.

This covers only the amount refunded and any fee the bank or Stripe charged us for it, and only where the refund or chargeback is because of your lesson, your resource or your breach of this agreement. If it was our mistake, we bear the cost.

7. Keeping lessons on Astry

Astry is free to list on and is paid only through its share of lessons and sales. Once card payments are switched on, for 24 months after a student first finds or contacts you through Astry:

• you agree to book and take payment for lessons with that student (or their family) through Astry;
• you agree not to suggest, offer or accept payment some other way, or a lower price for paying outside Astry.

This doesn’t apply to a student you already taught before they or you joined Astry. If you show us that, we will note it.

If you break this rule, you agree to pay Astry the share it would have kept on each lesson taken outside Astry, worked out at the price you charged and Astry’s highest lesson rate (17%). That is our estimate of what we lose, not a penalty. We may also warn you, hide your profile, or close your account, depending on how serious and how repeated it is.

8. Tax, GST and reporting

• You are responsible for your own tax, including income tax and, if you are or should be registered, GST. You must register for GST if your business turnover reaches the threshold set by the ATO.
• If you are registered for GST, you are responsible for any GST on your prices and for any tax invoice your student needs.
• [Whether Astry’s share includes GST, and the tax invoice Astry will give tutors, to be confirmed]
• Once card payments are on, we may have to report what you earn through Astry to the Australian Taxation Office under the sharing economy reporting regime. You agree to give us the details needed for that, such as your ABN if you have one, your date of birth and your address, and that we can share them with the ATO.

9. Insurance

Astry doesn’t insure you or your lessons. We strongly recommend that you hold your own public liability insurance, and professional indemnity insurance if you give advice that people rely on, such as on subject choices or applications. If we ask, you agree to tell us what insurance you hold.

10. Selling resources

When you list a resource, paid or free, you promise that:

• you created it or have written permission to sell it, and it doesn’t copy a textbook, a commercial worksheet, a school’s or exam board’s paper, or anyone else’s work without that permission;
• it doesn’t include anyone’s personal information, such as a student’s name, marks or handwriting, without their consent;
• its title, description, subject, year level and preview are accurate;
• it contains nothing explicit, hateful, unlawful or harmful, and no malware.

You keep ownership of your resource. You give Astry a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to store it, make previews and thumbnails from it, show it on Astry and in Astry’s own promotion of the marketplace, and deliver it to buyers. Unless your listing says otherwise, each buyer gets the licence described in our Terms and Conditions. Buyers keep that licence after you remove the listing.

We may remove a listing that breaks these rules, or that we receive a copyright complaint about under our Copyright Policy. Accounts that repeatedly list other people’s work are closed.

11. Suspension and ending this agreement

You can stop teaching or selling at any time: remove your listings, leave the directory in Settings, or delete your account. Lessons you have already agreed to still have to be taught or cancelled under the usual rules, and money owed either way still has to be paid.

We may hide your profile or listings, stop new bookings, hold payouts as described above, or close your account, under the Terms, if we reasonably believe you have broken this agreement, put a student at risk, or that your Working With Children Check or a credential isn’t valid. For anything that may put a child at risk, we act straight away and may tell the police, the Office of the Children’s Guardian or child protection authorities.

We may also end this agreement for any other reason by giving you at least 30 days’ notice. Anything we owe you for lessons and sales before it ends will still be paid.

12. Responsibility for loss

The limits on our responsibility in our Terms apply to this agreement. As well as what the Terms say, you agree to make good any loss, cost (including reasonable legal costs) or claim that Astry suffers because of:

• a lesson you teach or a resource you sell, including a claim by a student, parent or buyer about it;
• your breach of this agreement, including a promise in Your promises being untrue;
• your tax, GST or other legal obligations as a business.

What you owe is reduced to the extent that Astry caused or contributed to the loss. Astry will tell you promptly about a claim and give you a fair chance to respond to it.

13. Everything else

The rest of our Terms, including how we change our terms, how disagreements are handled and the governing law, applies to this agreement too. We will give you at least 14 days’ notice of a change to this agreement that matters to you, and you can stop teaching or selling before it takes effect if you don’t agree.

Questions about this agreement go to hello@astry.com.au.