Turning on automatic monthly billing
The second switch: its two prerequisites, and the Billing column that appears once it is on.
Automatic monthly billing lets Dojo Tiger charge a family's saved card every month, on its own, for as long as nobody stops it. That is a materially different promise from a one-off charge taken with a parent standing in front of you, which is why it is a separate switch with its own prerequisites.
Where it is
Studio then General → Payments → Automatic monthly billing, directly below the card-charging switch. The checkbox reads Allow automatic monthly billing.
The card's own description sets the expectation:
This lets Dojo Tiger charge a family's saved card automatically every month, with nobody watching, for as long as nobody stops it. That is a different decision from one-off card charging, which authorizes a staff member to charge a card once, with a human present and the amount on screen.
The two prerequisites
- Stripe connected, showing as connected on the same card.
- Card charging already on.
Until both are true the checkbox is greyed out with the reason underneath:
- "Connect Stripe first. Automatic monthly billing needs a connected payment account before it can charge anyone."
- "Card charging is off for this studio. Automatic monthly billing is the stronger of the two permissions — it can't be switched on while the weaker one it builds on is off."
Take a real payment first
The order in the settings card is advice, not just plumbing. Turn card charging on, take one genuine one-off payment from one family, confirm it landed in your Stripe balance and that the family got a receipt. Then turn monthly billing on. A problem you find on one charge you were watching is much cheaper than the same problem found on thirty charges nobody was.
Turning it on
Tick the box. No confirmation dialog, because the flag bills nobody by itself:
Off by default. Turning it on doesn't bill anyone — staff still start monthly billing one enrollment at a time.
Nothing is scheduled until somebody presses Start on a specific enrollment.
What appears afterwards
A new Billing column on Students then Enrollments, on the desktop table and on the mobile cards alike.
For a studio not using monthly billing, that column does not exist at all — not a disabled one, not an empty one. Nothing is fetched, nothing is rendered. Turning the switch on is what brings it into being.
| State | What it means | Buttons offered |
|---|---|---|
| Needs card | Nobody in this family has a card on file, so billing cannot be started. There is deliberately no Start button — it could only fail. | Email guardian |
| Not billing | There is a card on file and nothing is scheduled. This is where every enrollment starts. | Start |
| Active · $95/mo · renews Sep 3 | Billing normally. The amount and the next renewal date are shown. If it is set to stop at the end of the period, the date reads “ends” instead of “renews” and an Ending badge appears. | Stop |
| Past due (2 tries) | A payment failed and Stripe is retrying on its own schedule. The count is how many attempts have been made this cycle. | Retry, Stop |
| Paused | Collection is suspended because the enrollment's status is Suspended. Setting the enrollment back to Active resumes it. | Stop |
An enrollment that has left the roster and has no subscription shows an em dash and no buttons: starting billing for somebody who is no longer enrolled is refused anyway, so the button isn't offered.
Two extra things the column shows
An Ending badge, next to an active subscription that is set to stop at the
end of the paid period. The date line reads ends 3 Sep rather than renews 3
Sep.
A Rate changed badge in amber, plus a Sync to current rate button, when
the amount being collected no longer matches what the enrollment's tuition works
out to today. It only appears when there is genuinely something to do about it.
See When you change tuition.
Turning it off
Unticking opens a short confirmation. What it says:
- This stops new enrollments from being put on automatic monthly billing. Staff can still charge a saved card one payment at a time.
- Subscriptions that are already running are unaffected — they keep billing every month, and each one can still be stopped individually.
Off does not mean everybody stopped being charged
This is the sentence people get wrong in the expensive direction. Turning the switch off removes the ability to create new recurring authority. It does not cancel anything already running.
If you want everyone's monthly billing to actually stop, stop each subscription from the Billing column first. Then switch this off. Order matters — see Turning payments off.
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