What families see
The family Payments page end to end — cards, Pay buttons, monthly billing, receipts — and what they cannot do.
Half the payment questions at the front desk are really questions about what the parent is looking at on their phone. This is that screen, in order, so you can talk someone through it without guessing.
Families reach it from Payments in their own sidebar. Everything below repeats per linked student, so a parent with two children sees two of each block.
1. The "add a card" banner
An amber strip at the very top:
Your studio's name bills monthly for Kids Karate. Add a card to keep your spot.
It shows when — and only when — all three of these are true:
- the studio has automatic monthly billing switched on;
- the student is actively enrolled in something the studio bills for;
- there is demonstrably no card on file.
A family who already has a card never sees it. Nor does a family at a studio that doesn't use monthly billing. It has an X to dismiss it for the visit, and it comes back next time until a card actually exists — the condition it reports is unresolved, so it keeps reporting it.
The banner has no button of its own. Add a card is directly below it.
2. Make a payment
A list of things the family can pay for right now, each with its own Pay button. Two kinds, told apart by a badge:
| Badge | What it is |
|---|---|
| Tuition (blue) | One month of a program the student is actively enrolled in. |
| Event (amber) | A paid event — a belt test, seminar or tournament — that the student is eligible for. |
Pressing Pay opens Stripe's hosted checkout in a full page redirect. The family pays there and comes back.
Points worth knowing at the desk:
- Tuition Pay buttons charge the program's standard monthly rate. They do not apply a promotion, a sibling tier or a custom rate. Discounts reach monthly billing and your reports, not this button. For a discounted family, either put them on monthly billing or take the payment yourself.
- Event items disappear once paid. A succeeded payment for that event, by that family, removes the row. Nothing else does.
- Paying and RSVPing are independent. A family can pay first and RSVP later, or the reverse. A full event still shows a Pay button, because the seat was taken at RSVP time.
- Past events don't appear. Nor do events for a program the student isn't in, nor events where the studio ticked "requires payment" and left the amount blank.
- A studio that leaves program rates blank shows no tuition items at all, and the whole card disappears rather than sitting there empty.
3. Monthly billing
A read-only card, one line per subscription:
- the program name;
- Renews 3 Sep 2026 — or Ends 3 Sep 2026 if it is set to stop at the end of the period;
- the amount, as
$95.00/mo; - a status badge: Active, Past due or Paused.
A family not on monthly billing sees no card at all rather than an empty one explaining a feature their studio may not use.
This card is the one part of the page that keeps showing even if you switch card charging or monthly billing off. That is deliberate: a family whose card is still being debited every month must not be left with a charge on their statement and nothing on the page that explains it.
Families cannot cancel or pause their own billing
There is no cancel button, no pause button, and no link to one. This card answers one question — "when am I next charged, and how much?" — and offers nothing else.
That is a deliberate policy, not a missing feature: starting and stopping recurring billing is a studio decision, made by staff who can see the enrollment behind it. When a parent asks to cancel, the answer is that you'll do it for them from the Billing column. See Stopping, pausing and unenrolling.
A family also can't see the internal detail staff see — the retry counter, the rate-drift flag, whether the subscription is mid-setup. Those describe decisions the studio makes, not money the parent is about to spend.
4. Payment methods
The cards this family has saved, with Add a card and a Remove button on each.
- Add a card is a full redirect to Stripe's own hosted form. Card details never touch Dojo Tiger, and there is no inline card form anywhere in the app — not on this page and not on the staff side.
- Expired cards are flagged in red.
- If the studio has card charging switched off, the family sees "This studio isn't accepting online payments yet" and no Add button.
Removing a card does not stop monthly billing
A family who removes the card their subscription bills against will simply start failing, land as Past due on your Billing column, and generate the usual studio email. If they wanted to cancel, they need to ask you. See When a payment fails.
5. Payment history
Every charge, newest first: description, date, amount, status badge, and a Receipt link where Stripe provided one. Refunded amounts show as an extra line beneath the description.
The statuses a family sees are the same words you see on your ledger: Paid, Processing, Failed, Refunded, Partly refunded, Disputed.
The description is whatever was typed when the charge was taken — which is the argument for filling it in. "Charge" tells a parent nothing three months later.
Two things staff should expect to be asked
"Why are there two charges?" — a student in two programs has two subscriptions and therefore two statement lines. They are legible, not a mistake.
"I paid but my child still shows unpaid." — usually an event fee paid on a sibling's page, or a payment that is still processing. Check Reports then Payments and filter by date.
What a family can do without an account
Nothing on this page. If a guardian has no login yet, the Email guardian button on a Needs card row in your Billing column sends them a link that prefills a signup, so creating the account and adding a card is one short session rather than two.
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