How money works in Dojo Tiger
Three separate switches, in order — and why turning one off does not turn the others off.
Read this before anything else in this section. Payments in Dojo Tiger are three separate decisions, taken in order, and the app deliberately keeps them separate rather than bundling them into one "turn on payments" button. Understanding why saves you the two mistakes that cost real money.
Everything below lives on one card: Studio then General → Payments, at the bottom of the settings page.
Payments are optional
A studio that collects tuition by cash, cheque, direct debit or its own card machine leaves all three switches alone. The mode stays Independent, and the app never mentions payments anywhere — no Charge button, no Billing column, no Pay buttons for families.
You can still record tuition rates, and the financial reports still work, because those read the rates rather than the money. Independent studios get the reporting without the plumbing.
Switch 1 — pick a payment provider
Independent / Stripe / Square.
- Independent is the default and means "we handle money outside Dojo Tiger".
- Stripe connects your own Stripe account and is the only working option.
- Square appears in the picker and is not usable. If you pick it you get a "coming soon" panel and nothing else.
Choosing Stripe means accepting a short terms line — that Dojo Tiger is software and your studio is the merchant of record for every charge — and then handing off to Stripe's own onboarding. Full walkthrough: Connecting Stripe.
Connecting Stripe charges nobody
Finishing Stripe onboarding does not let anyone take a payment. That is switch 2, and it starts off. This surprises people, and it is intentional: connecting an account and authorising staff to charge cards are different decisions, often taken on different days by different people.
Switch 2 — card charging
"Staff may charge a card, with a person present."
Off by default even after Stripe is connected. Its only prerequisite is a connected Stripe account.
Turning it on unlocks:
- the Payments card on a student's page, for charging a saved card;
- refunds;
- the Pay buttons families see on their own payments page;
- adding a card at all, from the family side.
Article: Turning on card charging.
Switch 3 — automatic monthly billing
"The studio may charge a card every month, with nobody watching."
This one needs both a connected Stripe account and card charging already on. It is the stronger permission, and it is a materially different promise to a family: standing authority rather than a single transaction they watched you take.
Turning it on unlocks the Billing column on Students then Enrollments, and everything that hangs off it — Start, Stop, Retry, Sync and the "Needs card" nudge email.
Article: Turning on automatic monthly billing.
Why they are three switches and not one
Because turning one off does not turn the others off, and the differences are where the money is.
| You turn off… | What stops | What keeps going |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic monthly billing | Starting new monthly billing. | Every subscription already running keeps billing. Each can still be stopped individually. |
| Card charging | Everything: staff charges, family payments, starting monthly billing — and stopping it. | Stripe keeps billing every live subscription on its own schedule. |
The one that catches people out
Turning card charging off while monthly billing is live is a trap. Stopping a subscription is itself a charging operation, so while the switch is off, staff cannot stop anyone's billing from the app — and Stripe carries on charging families every month. The app tells you this before you confirm, and it is worth repeating here.
The way out is: turn card charging back on → stop the subscriptions → turn card charging off again. Better still, stop the subscriptions first.
The whole sequence is in Turning payments off.
Controls you can see but not use
Both switches render even when their prerequisites aren't met — greyed out, with a line underneath naming the state that is blocking them ("Connect Stripe first", "Card charging is off for this studio").
That is on purpose. A feature you cannot see is a feature you cannot ask about, so the app would rather show you a locked door and tell you which key it needs.
Where each thing lives, once it's on
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| The three switches | Studio then General → Payments |
| Charge a card / charge history / refunds | A student's detail page |
| Start, stop, retry, sync monthly billing | Students then Enrollments → Billing column |
| Every charge the studio has taken | Reports then Payments |
| What a family does | Their own Payments page |
The rule that never changes
Nothing in the payment system ever changes your roster. A failed card, a cancelled subscription, a disconnected Stripe account — none of them mark a student inactive or take them off an attendance sheet. A child whose parent's card expired still turns up to class and is still on the register.
The reverse is not true: roster changes do affect billing, because unenrolling someone should stop charging them. See Stopping, pausing and unenrolling.
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