By Rocky Catala, Payments & Membership Growth Strategist
Date Published: February 25, 2026
Do you actually know whether your martial arts school made or lost money last month? Most school owners don’t. They check the bank account and hope for the best.
That is not martial arts school management. That is guessing.
This article will show you the five financial numbers every school owner should review once a week. You don’t need an accounting degree. You don’t need fancy software.
You just need 15 minutes and a willingness to look at the truth. These five metrics will tell you if your school is growing or slowly dying. More importantly they will show you where money leaks before they become floods.
These five financial metrics did not come from a textbook. They came from real martial arts schools.
Over the past decade, hundreds of school owners across the United States and Canada have tested these exact benchmarks. The data comes from schools ranging from 80 students to over 500 students. It covers Taekwondo schools and BJJ academies and Karate dojos and mixed martial arts programs.
Industry groups like the Martial Arts Industry Association have tracked similar data for years. So have billing companies that process millions in tuition payments each month.
For that reason you can trust these benchmarks as practical starting points for your own martial arts business.
Revenue per student is the simplest number on this list. Take your total monthly revenue and divide it by your total active students. That gives you your revenue per student.
Most martial arts schools fall between $100 and $175 per student per month. However the top performing schools push past $200 per student. The difference comes down to pricing strategy and additional revenue streams like testing fees and retail sales and private lessons.
If your number is below $120 you are likely undercharging. As a result your school has to work twice as hard just to cover its costs.
Pull your total revenue from the previous week. Divide it by your active student count. Then multiply by four to estimate your monthly figure. This takes about two minutes.
For example if you brought in $4,800 last week with 120 students your weekly average is $40 per student. That projects to $160 per student per month. Write that number down every week and watch the trend.
Most school owners think about student retention in terms of headcount. They lost three students this month so they need three new ones. But that thinking misses the real damage.
Churn cost is the total revenue you lose when a student quits. If a student pays $150 per month and the average student stays 14 months then every dropout costs you roughly $2,100 in future revenue. That number should get your attention.
Beyond that it costs five to seven times more to acquire a new student than to keep an existing one. Therefore every student who leaves hits your budget twice. You lose the revenue and then you spend more to replace them.
Count the students who cancelled or froze their membership in the past seven days. Multiply that number by your average monthly tuition. Then multiply by your average student lifetime in months.
So if two students quit this week at $150 per month and your average lifetime is 14 months your churn cost for that week is $4,200. Student retention is not just a feel good metric. It is a financial survival metric.
Monthly recurring revenue is the total amount of predictable tuition income your school collects each month. This does not include one time fees or retail sales or testing income. It only counts the money that repeats every single month.
MRR is the heartbeat of your martial arts business. When it goes up your school is healthy. When it drops something is wrong.
A healthy school sees MRR grow by 2% to 5% per month. If your MRR has been flat for three months or more that is a warning sign. It means your new enrollments are barely keeping up with your cancellations.
Add up the total tuition from all active autopay agreements. That is your current MRR. Compare it to last week’s number. Did it go up or down?
In addition track what caused the change. Was it new signups? Cancellations? Declined payments? Knowing why the number moved matters more than the number itself. This is where good martial arts billing habits make all the difference.
Your lead pipeline is every person who has contacted your school but has not enrolled yet. Most owners track leads by name. Few track them by dollar value.
Here is how to assign value. Take your average close rate and multiply it by your average first year revenue per student. For instance if you close 30% of your leads and each new student is worth $1,800 in the first year then every lead in your pipeline is worth $540.
That changes how you think about follow up. A pipeline with 20 leads is not just 20 names. It is $10,800 in potential revenue. Therefore ignoring those leads is the same as leaving money on the table.
Every week count your total leads. Multiply by your pipeline value per lead. Then compare it to the previous week.
More importantly look at how many leads are more than seven days old without a second contact. Those leads are going cold. Research from the martial arts industry shows that the odds of closing a lead drop by over 50% after 48 hours.
Speed matters more than anything else in follow up. Make that weekly review a habit.
Revenue is what comes in. Profit is what stays. Net profit margin is the percentage of revenue left after all expenses including rent and payroll and insurance and utilities and marketing.
A healthy martial arts school should aim for a net profit margin between 15% and 25%. Many schools operate below 10% without realizing it. Some schools with high revenue still struggle because their expenses eat everything.
As a result knowing your profit margin is more valuable than knowing your total revenue. A school doing $30,000 per month at 20% margin keeps $6,000. A school doing $40,000 at 8% margin keeps $3,200. The smaller school is actually more profitable.
You don’t need to do a full accounting review every week. Instead take your weekly revenue and subtract your estimated weekly expenses. Divide the remainder by your revenue and multiply by 100.
For example if your weekly revenue is $5,000 and your weekly expenses are about $3,800 your profit is $1,200. That is a 24% margin. Track this number weekly and you will spot trouble months before it shows up in your bank account.
Mike Reeves opened Ironside Martial Arts in 2019. By late 2024 the school had 145 students but Mike felt like he was barely surviving. The bank account was tight every month despite what looked like decent enrollment.
In January 2025 Mike started tracking these five metrics. The results shocked him. His revenue per student was just $118 per month. His churn rate was costing him over $6,000 per month in lost future revenue. His MRR had been flat for five straight months.
On top of that his lead pipeline had 34 names but nobody had followed up with 22 of them. His net profit margin was sitting at 7%.
Mike raised tuition by $20 per month for all new students. He built a simple follow up system that contacted every lead within four hours. He also added a quarterly retention call for students past their six month mark.
Within 90 days his revenue per student climbed to $142. His MRR grew by 11%. His lead close rate jumped from 24% to 38%. Most importantly his net profit margin hit 18%. The five numbers gave Mike clarity and that clarity gave him the confidence to act.
Sarah Chen opened Peak Performance Academy in 2021. She had 92 students and was running every class herself. Sarah never looked at her financials beyond the monthly bank statement.
After she started tracking these five weekly metrics she discovered her biggest problem was churn. She was losing an average of six students per month at $160 per month. With an average lifetime of 11 months each lost student cost her $1,760 in future revenue. That added up to $10,560 per month in lost potential income.
Sarah introduced a structured check in system at the 30 day and 90 day and 180 day marks. She also started tracking declined autopay payments weekly instead of monthly. Within four months her monthly cancellations dropped from six to two.
Her MRR grew by 14% and her annual revenue increased by over $22,000. She credits the weekly habit of looking at real numbers for the turnaround.
Start with estimates and refine them each week. Even a rough revenue per student number is better than no number at all. After four weeks of tracking your data will get sharper on its own.
Most school owners complete the full review in 10 to 15 minutes once they build the habit. The first few weeks might take closer to 20 minutes. After that the process becomes routine.
You can start with a simple spreadsheet. However as your school grows martial arts software designed for this purpose will save you hours each month. The right system pulls these numbers automatically so you spend less time digging through data.
Monthly recurring revenue is the best starting point. It tells you the overall health of your school in one number. Once you have that dialed in add the other four metrics one at a time.
Yes. When your instructors and front desk team understand the financial picture they make better decisions. Sharing MRR and retention numbers creates accountability and teamwork across the entire school.
These five numbers are not complicated. They don’t require an MBA or a background in finance. They require 15 minutes a week and the willingness to face reality.
School owners who track these metrics consistently make better decisions about pricing and hiring and marketing. They catch problems early. They build confidence in their martial arts business.
Martial arts school management is a skill just like any technique on the mat. It takes practice and it takes repetition. Start this week with just one metric and build from there. Your school’s financial health depends on the habits you create right now.
Tracking these numbers does not need to be hard. But doing it by hand gets old fast. The right martial arts management software pulls these metrics for you in seconds.
If tracking these numbers by hand is costing you time then martial arts management software like Black Belt Membership Software can do that work for you. Visit blackbeltcrm.com to see how it works. Schedule a demo today with Rocky Catala and find out what the right system can do for your school.
See how Black Belt Membership can assists you. To manager your growing martial arts business.