A dojo runs sections by age, two disciplines, licences to keep valid and fees that come in any which way. BetterSport brings the timetable, the registrations, the payments and the messages together in a single tool, held by the people you choose.
Groups by age category, two practices with quite different audiences, gradings and courses to fill, with a valid licence and medical certificate behind every name.
Kata, kumite, children's and adult beginners' slots all sit side by side in the same diary. Each student books their own online, at any hour, within the places open.
Payment goes through Stripe at the moment of booking or joining, class cards included. The treasurer no longer chases November's cheques.
Belt, grading date, licence number and medical certificate all fit on the student's record. Missing documents come to light well before a competition, not the night before.
Send a call-up to a whole group in a few clicks, or let the reminders go out by themselves before each class. Confirmations and renewal follow-ups work the same way.
A karate club takes in children signed up by their parents, and adults who sign up themselves. The first need a short lesson and a slot that is easy to read; the second need a class they can walk into at thirty-five without embarrassment. The software keeps those groups apart, gives each one its price and its capacity, and sends everyone only what concerns them.
The same separation applies to the disciplines. Forms work and sparring do not attract the same people: announced as two distinct kinds of class, they avoid disappointment on the first evening and make life easier for the coaches, who know who is coming for what.
The life of a combat sports club is also played out off the mat: affiliation, licences, certificates, keeping track of the money from fees. That work usually rests on two or three volunteer committee members, and it is what grows heaviest fastest as the club grows.
Keeping the data in one place lightens that load. A single database, open to the committee and to the coaches according to the rights you grant, replaces parallel spreadsheets. BetterSport is not accounting software: it looks after memberships, attendance and payments, and gives you clean figures to pass on to whoever does the books.
The season runs for ten months and changes pace every term. September means registering people, taking payments and sorting students by age group and by ability. Winter brings the training camps and the first competitions. Spring brings the gradings. Every stage produces information, and that information ends up in three places at once: a ring binder at the dojo, a spreadsheet on the secretary's computer, a message thread on somebody's phone.
Club management software deals with that scattering first. Member data sits in a single database, and you see exactly the same view as your coaches. Simplifying the running of a dojo starts there: one source of information, readable straight from a phone. The timetable, attendance, memberships and payments stop being four separate projects. It is the most direct way to win back time without changing anything about your teaching, and it holds just as true for neighbouring disciplines: the platform equips judo club software and a karate dojo in exactly the same way.
A club revolves around two things: training sessions and competitions to schedule, and members to keep track of. The features fall into those two families.
The online schedule shows your sessions exactly as they run: children's classes, teen classes, the adult section, kata work, sparring. Anyone can book around the clock, up to the number of places you have opened. When a class shows as full, the waiting list takes over and releases the place the moment a cancellation comes in. Check-in is by QR code at the door, which gives you reliable attendance with no roll call. The same system handles regular classes and one-off training camps.
Memberships and subscriptions cover the season, while session passes suit adults who come along irregularly. Payment is taken at booking or at sign-up, through Stripe, and a place is only held once it has been paid for. Renewal reminders go out on their own. As for online payment, it is all handled from the same interface, with no module to bolt on.
Every student has their own record: contact details, group, belt, date of their last grading, licence number, medical certificate. Deadlines surface before the official competitions, not after. The history carries over from one season to the next, which saves anyone having to reconstruct everybody's level from memory in September.
A training camp with a guest instructor fills up in a fortnight if it is open online, and falls flat if it depends on a sheet pinned to the wall. Set it up as an event with limited places, payment at sign-up and a reminder before the date. For call-ups and season announcements, emails and campaigns reach one group or the whole club in a single send.
French sports regulations govern the life of a karate club on three points that the software helps you keep on top of, without ever standing in for them. Affiliation is what opens the door to official competitions and official gradings. Coaching under-18s requires a background check, for paid staff and volunteers alike. And the licence and the membership fee form a single whole: quoting one without the other means advertising a price that does not exist.
On the software side, the job is to know at any moment who is in order. Missing information is easy to spot group by group, and the documents you are waiting on can be chased by email before the season restarts. If the club also wants a shop window explaining its sections and the style it teaches, building a karate club website takes over from there, with booking plugged straight into it.
You are not after a general solution for every sport: you are after a tool that knows your season, your groups and your grades. BetterSport is a platform for coaches and sports organisations, built bespoke for the activity, website included, and search-optimised for the people typing the name of your discipline. Making a club run better starts with giving time back to the volunteers. The features arrive ready to use, and day-to-day use takes a few minutes, not a training course.
Setting up follows the club's own order: import the members, create the groups, open the timetable, connect the payments. Your teams keep their training habits and lose only the thankless part. Not every user has the same rights: the committee sees everything, a coach sees their groups, a family sees its own bookings. To find out whether it fits your dojo, the best thing is to talk to an expert or start your free 14-day trial, with no card details.
Yes: two kinds of class, each with its own slots, places and sign-ups.
Yes, through Stripe, both when joining and when booking, with class cards and subscriptions included.
The licence number and the medical certificate are filed on the member's record and carried over from one season to the next.
Yes, with multi-coach access: each one reaches their own groups and slots from their phone.
The two go together: the site brings the registrations in, the software processes them. BetterSport supplies both, and it will also connect to a site you already have, through a booking widget.
A few days is enough. The longest part is gathering the details of your existing members: creating the groups and opening the timetable is a single day's work.
Yes. Each account sees what concerns it: a parent manages their children's bookings, an adult student manages their own, a coach manages their sessions.
Nothing automatic: the trial runs for 14 days with no card details, and you decide afterwards. Whatever you have entered stays yours.
