How do you run your club (payments/attendance)?

[Nidan Melbourne]

I use a couple of different systems rather than one alone.

Booking into their first lessons -

I use a program called Smoothbook where you can set up your class times, days, categories etc and have a "book now" button

This alerts me when someone has booked and also sends automatic emails of confirmation, reminder (24h before), and follow up (next day). It's great.

Joining and member management -

The software I use to manage our dojo including member records, event registrations, event payments, gradings, attendances, email correspondence, text messages etc is called DojoExpert - it's great and the owner will work with you to customise it. It has the ability to take payments through PayPal regularly for fees, but I only use it for event based fees, and the below for regular. When people join they full out an eForm and this inputs directly into my management system. The only paper we have is the signed waiver/disclaimer.

Trainings fees -

We require fees to be paid monthly, 12 months of the year. We use a direct debit company where the student can select their method of payment and it comes out automatically. I use this rather than the inbuilt system as it allows me to more easily suspend and cancel payments, provide more flexibility in payment options, and they've written all the financial disclaimers for me. I can also easily just add a charge for gradimgs etc. I have templates built for each program, so it's a fully electronic sign up and cancellation etc.

It's taken me 8 years to get to this system, but it works really well and is fairly seamless and has reduced my manual workload and admin significantly. We're a dojo with a commercial facility, 8 classes a week, and 80 students, but we're not a business, we're a non profit and it means I do everything from teach to admin while having a full time day job - so I try to use efficient self regulating systems.

P.s. typed this in my phone, sorry for any mistakes.

Thanks for that Rhys, I've been looking up admin sites like that. How much does it cost on a Monthly/Yearly Basis?