Managed billing for martial arts schools
Roll Payments runs the collection side of your memberships. When a card declines, our system retries it, the card updater refreshes expired cards, and a real billing specialist follows up with the member by email, text and phone as your academy. Nothing lands on your front desk.
Owners report 20 to 40 hours a month back. It is included in the flat monthly fee, with no commissions and no per recovery fees.
The hidden line item
They show up as a front desk person on the phone instead of selling an intro package, as a member who quietly stops coming because nobody followed up, and as a month where the bank balance does not match the roster. Here is what that looks like in numbers already on this site.
20–40 hrs
The admin time an academy typically recovers once failed payment follow up moves off the front desk. It scales with school size and billing volume, and it is time that goes back to teaching, intro classes and retention.
Reported by the academies on Roll Payments. See the Jiu Jitsu gym FAQ.
8–12%
At a typical martial arts school. Follow up on only half of them and you leave $500 to $1,500 on the table every month, depending on the size of the school. Doing all of it yourself costs $2,000 to $4,000 a month once staff time and lost revenue are counted.
42%
At Checkmat Woodland Hills after managed billing took over failed payment follow up. Past due receivables came down within 60 days, and the follow up moved off staff who were hired to teach.
Read the Checkmat case study.
How managed billing works
The software you already use will tell you a payment failed. Almost none of it will call the member. That gap is the job, and this is how we fill it.
A declined autopay is flagged the moment it happens. The member gets a notice from your academy, and a smart retry is scheduled for when funds are likely to be there, typically three to five days out, not a blind retry the next morning that invites a chargeback.
Expired and reissued cards are pulled from the card networks automatically. A new expiry date or card number never turns into a failed payment, and nobody has to ask the member for the new card.
If the retry fails, our U.S. based billing specialists email, text and call the member as your academy. Same name on the message, same tone, no collections agency feel. Members never know it is us behind the scenes.
Freezes, cancellations and reactivations follow the policies you set. Every step is logged in your dashboard, with failed charge reasons and exports when you want them.
What is included
Most gym software stops at automated dunning: retry the card, send an email from a no reply address, and hand the rest back to you. Managed billing is the department that does the rest, built into the platform your memberships, attendance and reporting already run on.
Included with every account
Managed billing, dual pricing payments, member and belt management, attendance, scheduling, digital waivers and a website we design and host. Month to month, no setup fees, no per student fees.
Compare
Doing it yourself, letting the software retry and hoping, or handing it to a billing team. The difference is who talks to the member and what it costs you.
| When a card fails | Doing it yourself | Software only | Roll Payments managed billing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who notices | Whoever reads the report, days later | The system | The system, the moment it happens |
| Who contacts the member | Your front desk, between classes | An automated email from a no reply address, then nobody | An automated notice, then a billing specialist by email, text and phone, as your academy |
| Expired and reissued cards | You ask the member for the new card | Depends on the plan you are on | Card updater, automatic |
| Freezes and cancellations | You, case by case | You | Handled to the policies you set |
| Reporting | A spreadsheet of who still owes | A failed payments list | Dashboard, failed charge reasons, exports, in the same system as attendance and memberships |
| What it costs | $2,000 to $4,000 a month in staff time and unrecovered payments at most schools | The software fee, plus every payment nobody chased | Included in the $199.99 flat fee. No commissions, no per recovery fees |
The do it yourself estimate is from our guide to billing companies versus in house billing. For how the automated layers work on their own, see reducing failed payments.
Results
Checkmat Woodland Hills, a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academy in California, was spending hours every week calling students about failed card payments. The follow up was landing on staff hired to teach and keep members training, not to run collections. With managed billing and dual pricing, that work moved off the front desk.
Improvement in collections
To bring past due receivables down
Card processing cost, with dual pricing
Hours every week returned to staff who had been chasing failed cards.
Checkmat Woodland Hills, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, CaliforniaWhy martial arts schools in particular
A martial arts school runs on monthly recurring memberships, often several per family, with belt promotions, seasonal pauses and kids who age in and out of programs. Every one of those is a card on file that will expire, get reissued, or bounce on the wrong day. At 8 to 12 percent failing each month, a 150 member academy is looking at a dozen or more failed charges to chase, every month, forever.
Managed billing for martial arts schools exists because the follow up is the expensive part, not the retry. A text and a call from your academy on day three recovers payments an automated email never will, and it keeps the member, because the conversation happens before they drift. That is the difference between a failed payment that is recovered and a member who quietly stops coming.
It also changes the pricing conversation. When collections are reliable, you can set membership prices on what the program is worth instead of padding them for the payments you expect to lose, and cash flow becomes something you can plan around. Fewer surprise retries also means fewer chargebacks.
To see how a declined payment looks inside the app, the help center walks through it. Comparing providers? See how Roll Payments stacks up against Zen Planner and Kicksite, neither of which includes a billing team.
Where it fits
Billing is not a separate product here. The same $199.99 per gym per month covers the payments, the software and the website, so the money and the memberships appear in one report instead of a processor statement you reconcile against your software.
Common questions
More on the Jiu Jitsu gym FAQ and in billing company vs. doing it yourself on the blog.
Book a demo
Fifteen minutes. Bring a recent failed payments report if you have one and we will walk through what managed billing would have done with it. No commitment required.
Questions? Call 1-800-409-0555 or email support@rollpay.co.
Free demo call
We reach out within one business day to schedule.
Trusted by hundreds of martial arts academies nationwide
