Billing & payments
Billing that runs while you teach,
and a front desk that stops chasing
Billing runs every night, autopay charges the families who use it, and what needs you, such as a failed payment, waits in one short list. The rest of this page is the part built to close the small leaks: a discount nobody removed, a member billed too late, a sibling on the wrong cycle.
The billing runs while you teach.
Billing runs every night, and what needs you, such as a failed payment, waits in one short list.
The actual problem
Get your evenings back, and stop the quiet leaks
A membership roster is not a list of identical monthly payments. It is a pile of exceptions: the family with three children on two different programs, the adult who trains twice a week and pays by the class, the student on a rate that was supposed to go back up after the summer, the member who moved away and whose payment is still running.
Software that only understands “monthly, per member” forces every one of those into a spreadsheet, a calendar reminder, or somebody’s memory. That is where the money goes — not to members who refuse to pay, but to arrangements nobody updated.
How it bills
Ten cycles, including one nobody else offers
Every billing line chooses its own cycle. A single family can hold several at once, and each line keeps its own next billing date rather than everything firing on the first of the month.
By attendance is the one worth stopping on. If someone pays for what they actually use — open mat, drop-ins, private lessons, a swim block — that is a billing cycle here, not a monthly membership with a manual adjustment on the end of it. There is also a separate per-additional-class fee for members who train beyond what their package covers.
Where the exceptions live
The detail is on the billing line, not in your head
- Percentage discounts with an end date
- A billing line can carry a discount percentage and a date for it to stop, so an introductory rate does not have to be removed by hand.
- Family and member, on one account
- Billing is held per line, and a line belongs to a member and to a family. Three siblings on different programs bill correctly and arrive as one statement to one parent.
- Its own start, end and termination date
- A term that runs to June stops in June. A member who leaves stops being billed on the date they left, not the date somebody got round to it.
- Registration and tax handled separately
- A joining fee is not tuition and is not taxed like it. Each line carries its own taxable flag and registration fee rather than being folded into one amount.
- A ledger account per line
- Revenue arrives already categorized — tuition apart from retail, testing fees apart from tuition — instead of as one deposit you unpick at month end.
- Autopay per line, not per person
- One member can have a membership on autopay and a private lesson paid at the desk. The two do not have to agree.
Taking the money
Cards, ACH, and the fees around them
Cards and ACH are enabled independently, so you can run both or offer ACH to the members it suits — usually cheaper per transaction on larger monthly amounts. The merchant account is opened through us and stays in your name, on a gateway we have integrated rather than one you bring.
What you charge your members is yours to decide. Late fees are configuration, not policy we impose: you set the amount, the number of days after the due date before it applies, and whether it is added automatically at all. Returned payments carry their own separate fee. The billing run can also be set to raise charges a chosen number of days before they are due, so statements arrive with warning rather than on the day.
What taking cards costs you is one line: 2.75% + 35¢ per card payment, everything included, plus $20 a month per location. Bank payments are 25¢ each, plus $20 a month per location that takes them. No contract, no setup fee, no statement fee and no extra charge for American Express.
You do not have to absorb that rate. A surcharge is optional: turn it on for credit card payments on autopay, at the Cashier, or both, and the payer sees it as a surcharge line before paying — so the cost of taking a card sits with the people choosing to use one. Surcharges are generally permitted, but some states and some merchant agreements restrict them, so check what applies to you before you switch it on.
At the front desk
A payment in a few clicks, and money owed in one view
The Cashier takes a payment on one page: find the family, see what they owe with the charges already due selected, oldest first, and press Pay. The card on file is chosen for you, and the receipt appears in the same place. When a family pays part of what they owe, the money goes to the oldest charge first, or to the charges you choose, with the tax split correctly.
Before the nightly run, Collect payments now charges the cards families saved for autopay on the spot: see what is ready, select who to charge, confirm once, and read the next step for each decline. A bill run preview shows every charge the next run will create and why, and lets you skip a period. New monthly memberships can bill on the 1st or from the day a member joins.
Who owes you reads every open balance by how long it has been due, from just due to 60 days or more, and lets you take a payment, send an email or log a call from the same row, including a promise to pay and a reminder when one is missed. Credit memos and customer credit carry a reason, and a refund or void shows the amount and where it goes before anything moves.
When a card is disputed
The bank’s notice names a card, not a member
A dispute notice gives you the last four digits of a card, an amount, a date and a deadline. Find Payment matches those to the payment, closest first, so you know which family it was in seconds instead of an afternoon spent in statements.
Open a dispute on that payment and the case keeps the deadline, the reason and the case number together, with the evidence your records already hold, each line marked found or missing. Two steps come recommended, and you decide on both: putting the charge back on the family’s balance, and pausing that family’s automatic payments so the same card is not charged again while the case is open. Every step you apply is written to the family’s history.
In practice
How this runs in your business
Martial Arts
Family billing that collects on time, belts and promotions that track themselves, and a warning before a student quits. For every style, from Little Dragons to black belt.
Gyms & Fitness
Recurring revenue, real retention numbers, and a front desk that is not chasing failed cards.
Dance, Gymnastics & Cheer
Tuition, siblings, levels and competition season — handled on one account.
Swim, Music & After-School
Session packages, weekly and daily rates, pickup services and parents who need one bill.
Questions
The things people actually ask
Can two children in the same family bill on different dates?
Yes. Billing is held per line, not per household, and each line carries its own next billing date, cycle and amount. A family can have one child on a monthly membership, another on a term that ends in June, and a private lesson billed by attendance — all on one account and one statement.
Do you take ACH as well as cards?
Yes. Cards and bank payments (ACH) are turned on independently, so you can run both, or offer bank payments to the members who prefer them. A bank payment is 25¢, whatever the amount, against 2.75% + 35¢ for a card payment, everything included.
How do late fees work?
You set the amount and the number of days after the due date before it applies, and choose whether it is added automatically. A separate returned-payment fee covers ACH returns and NSF. Nothing is charged on a schedule you did not configure.
Can I add a surcharge when members pay by card?
Yes, and it is optional. Turn on a surcharge for credit card payments on autopay, at the Cashier, or both, and the payer sees it as a surcharge line before paying. It applies to credit cards rather than ACH, which is one reason to offer both. Surcharges are generally permitted, but some states and some merchant agreements restrict them — check what applies to you before switching it on.
Can I bill for a class someone attended rather than a flat monthly fee?
Yes. "By attendance" is a billing cycle in its own right, and there is a separate per-additional-class fee for members who train beyond what their package covers. Drop-ins, make-up classes and open-mat visits do not need a workaround.
What happens when a member disputes a card charge?
Enter the last four digits, the amount and the date from the bank's notice in Find Payment to find the payment, then open a dispute on it. The case keeps the deadline, the reason and the evidence your records hold. It recommends putting the charge back on the balance and pausing that family's automatic payments; you decide on both.
Does billing feed our accounting?
Every billing line carries a ledger account, so revenue arrives categorized — tuition apart from retail, testing fees apart from tuition — rather than as one undifferentiated deposit you have to unpick at the end of the month.
Included, like everything else
From $49 a month with every feature switched on. Free to try, no card and no contract. If billing is the reason you are looking, it is the fastest thing to test with your own numbers.
Every student who quits unseen is tuition you do not get back.
The warning was in your attendance all along. Start the trial and see it on your own members.
- Switching is a file, not a project
- Import your members from your old system’s export, free at any size. You see every family before anything is saved, and you can undo it.
- No contract, no card to start
- Free to try. Export your members to CSV or Excel any time, without asking us.
- $49 a month, every feature
- Priced by the size of your membership. No setup fee, no per-staff charge, no feature held for a higher plan.
- English and Spanish
- Each person on your team picks English or Spanish, and emails go out in each family’s language.