Charging a card

This is the "just put it on my card" flow: a parent is at the desk, a belt test fee is due, and they've already saved a card. One dialog, one charge, taken immediately.

It needs card charging switched on. If it isn't, the card described below simply isn't on the page.

Where it lives

On the student's own detail page — Students then →Students, then click the student. Scroll to the Payments card:

Charge a card this family has already saved. The payment is taken immediately and a receipt is emailed to the payer.

The button is Charge a card on file.

It is on the student's page rather than on a payments screen because that is where staff already are when the question comes up — you looked the child up, the parent is standing there, and you shouldn't have to navigate away and find them again.

Taking a payment

1. 1

   Press the button and wait a beat

   It says Loading cards… for a moment. The card list is fetched from Stripe when you click, not when the page loads, so an unrelated student page is never slow because Stripe is having a bad afternoon.

2. 2

   Check who you're charging

   The sheet opens with the student's name and the billing email at the top. Check the email — it tells you whose card you are about to use.

3. 3

   Pick a card

   A dropdown of the saved cards: brand, last four digits, and the expiry. If there's only one, it's already selected.

4. 4

   Enter the amount and a description

   Amount in dollars. The minimum is $0.50 (Stripe's floor) and the maximum is $10,000. Two decimal places at most — a third is refused rather than rounded.

   The description is optional but do use it. It is what shows in the family's payment history, on your ledger and on your reports; "Belt test fee" is the difference between a clear record and a row nobody can explain in March.

5. 5

   Confirm

   The button names the exact amount: Charge $45.00. Above it, a line confirms "You are about to charge $45.00 to this card. This happens immediately."

Whose cards are these?

The payer's — which for a child is the guardian, not the child.

That has a consequence worth knowing before it surprises you: two siblings show the same list of cards, because the cards belong to the guardian both children share. Charging on either child's page uses the same card and the same billing email. The charge is recorded against the child whose page you were on, which is what makes per-student history work.

An adult student with no guardian is their own payer.

Why you can't add a card here

There is no "add a card" button in this dialog, and that is deliberate. Card details never pass through Dojo Tiger — a family adds a card by being redirected to Stripe's own hosted page, from their own payments page.

If a family has no card saved, the dialog says so:

This family has no card saved. Ask them to add one from their Payments page before charging.

Point them at their Payments page in their own view. If they don't have a login yet, the Email guardian button in the Billing column on Students then →Enrollments sends them a link that also prefills a signup.

What happens after you confirm

• Succeeded — a toast confirms the amount, and Stripe emails a receipt to the payer. The charge appears in Charge history lower down the same page, and on Reports then →Payments.
• Processing — some payment methods settle asynchronously. The sheet stays open and tells you it will appear as paid once the bank confirms. Do not charge again.
• Declined — you get the reason in plain words. The family's card was not charged. Ask them for a different card, or take the money another way.

Test mode

If your studio is connected with Stripe test credentials, a yellow Test mode block sits at the top of this sheet. No real money moves. See Test mode.

Charge history, on the same page

Directly below the Payments card, Charge history lists every charge this student's payer has been billed, with a running total of what was collected net of refunds. Each row shows the description, the date, who took it, the status, a Receipt link where Stripe provided one, and — for settled rows — a Refund button.

Unlike the charge dialog, this loads with the page: it reads Dojo Tiger's own records rather than calling Stripe.

The history stays visible even if you later switch card charging off, because a studio that has paused charging still has to be able to answer "what did you bill me for?" — and still has to be able to give money back. See Refunds.

Who can do it

Owner and Admin. Instructors cannot see the student detail page at all.

Last reviewed 2 August 2026