How to Organise a Tutoring Company's Resources in Google Drive (and What to Do When a Tutor Leaves)
How should a tutoring company organise its resources in Google Drive?
Put every master resource in one shared drive owned by the company, organise it with a shallow folder structure by subject and level, give most tutors view-only access, and let only a few people edit. Name files so the version and level are visible without opening them. Files that live in a tutor’s personal “My Drive” belong, in practice, to that tutor, so they leave when the tutor does.
Last updated: October 2026.
Why does a company need a different setup from a solo tutor?
A solo tutor’s Drive is a filing cabinet. A company’s Drive is shared infrastructure: several people read it, a few write to it, and someone has to be able to switch access off. That means three decisions: who owns the files, who can change them, and what happens on a tutor’s last day.
Shared drive or My Drive?
Use a shared drive for anything the company needs to keep. Google’s help puts it plainly: “Your organization owns the files in a shared drive, not an individual,” so files stay with the team when a member leaves (Google Workspace help: shared drives). Files in someone’s My Drive are owned by that person, however widely they are shared.
Shared drives are a Google Workspace feature, so check that your plan includes them. On free personal Google accounts, the fallback is one company-owned account that owns the master folder, with tutors given access. That one account then owns everything in it, so protect its login.
A folder structure that survives growth
Keep it shallow. Two levels are findable; five are not.
Company Resources (shared drive)
01 Master - Mathematics
Year 7 / Year 8 / Year 9 ...
02 Master - English
03 Templates (worksheet, report, welcome pack)
04 Past papers (exam authority originals, unedited)
05 Archive (superseded versions)
06 Tutor drafts (anything not yet reviewed)
Two rules make this work. Masters and drafts are separate, so students only ever get a reviewed file. Nothing is deleted, it moves to Archive, so you can answer “which version did that student get?”.
My own Drive is organised by year level, then subject, or just by subject when year level adds nothing. I keep the resources pages inside ClassQuill in the same structure, so a tutor who knows where something is in Drive knows where it is in the software. One structure, two places, no translation step.
Who gets which permission?
| Role | Typical access | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Owner or admin (1 to 2 people) | Manager | Can add and remove people and move files |
| Subject lead | Content manager or Contributor on their subject only | Owns the master version |
| Tutor | Viewer (or Commenter) | Can teach from the file, cannot change the master |
| Departing tutor | None, from the last day | See the offboarding checklist |
The role names above are Google’s shared drive access levels: Manager, Content manager, Contributor, Commenter and Viewer (Google Workspace help: access levels). A Viewer can open a file but cannot edit it. By default that does not stop a tutor downloading it. Google lets you limit who can download, copy and print on a file, but its own help notes that “you can’t stop how others share the file content in other ways” (Google Docs help: share files). Treat Drive permissions as housekeeping, not security. If a resource is genuinely commercially sensitive, the contract has to carry that weight.
What file naming convention should we use?
A good name tells you subject, level, topic, type and version without opening the file. One workable pattern:
Subject_Level_Topic_Type_vN_YYYY-MM
For example: Maths_Y9_Linear-equations_Worksheet_v3_2026-10.
Keep it boring. Use hyphens within a field, underscores between fields, never “final”, “final2” or “new”. Put the version in the name, and move the old one to Archive on the same day.
What to do when a tutor leaves
Tutor offboarding is the moment file ownership gets tested. Do these in order, on or before the last day. The early steps cannot be done once access is gone.
- Find company files in their personal Drive. Ask the tutor to move or transfer ownership of anything created for the company. If you run Google Workspace, an admin can also transfer a user’s Drive files to another user in the Admin console. Do it before the account is suspended or deleted: Google’s help says transfers cannot start from a deleted or suspended account, can only go to an active user in your organisation, and can take up to 36 hours (Google Workspace help: transfer Drive files).
- Remove access to the shared drive, to any individually shared folders, and to the email and calendar accounts you provided.
- Check what they used from the company that sits outside Drive (messaging groups, email lists, student contact details) and remove those too.
- Remind them of the contract. Check what your agreement says about materials created for the company and about client information. Who owns materials a tutor made is a contract question, not a Drive setting, so have a lawyer or your industry body review the clause wording. This is general information, not legal advice. Our guide to hiring tutors and contracts in Australia covers the wider agreement.
- Record it. A dated line in the tutor’s file: access removed, files transferred, who did it.
Where ClassQuill fits (and where it doesn’t)
ClassQuill’s Library holds worksheets and files, and an organisation-level item belongs to the organisation rather than the tutor who added it. Students open shared files inside the software. You can also attach a Google Drive file using the Drive picker. If you keep a question bank, it sits alongside as the place for individual questions, filterable by topic, difficulty, marks and parts.
Be clear about what that does. ClassQuill stores a link to the Drive file, not a copy, and it sets the picked file to “anyone with the link can view”. It does not organise or sync your Drive folders, and it does not manage Drive permissions. If a file is sensitive, keep it out of the picker.
Students get resources two ways: inside ClassQuill through shared files, or through a Google Drive file the tutor attaches. I use both, with the same folder structure behind each, so students never have to hunt.
Get the structure right first. The software only points at what your Drive already holds, and a master that lives in the company’s shared drive stays yours when a tutor leaves.
UK and US notes
The method is the same in all three countries. What differs is privacy law, and it applies to student information rather than to worksheets. Keep student names and contact details out of resource folders entirely, and check your national privacy regulator’s guidance for what you do hold.
Related reading: Hiring tutors in Australia: contracts and onboarding
