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FAQ

Getting Started​

What does GRADR do, and who is it for?​

A gym management platform built for Brazilian jiu-jitsu academy owners. GRADR handles your student roster, class schedule, billing, instructor payroll, leads pipeline, and curriculum, all in one place, with the owner portal giving you full control while instructors get a separate, read-only view of their own schedule and pay.

How do I set up my gym profile?​

Go to Settings → Gym Profile and fill in your gym's name, location, phone number, logo, and timezone. Get the timezone right. It affects how class times display and when automated emails go out.

What's the difference between the owner portal and the instructor portal?​

The owner portal is what you use to run the gym: roster, billing, schedule, payroll, reports, and settings. Instructors get a separate login that shows only their own schedule and payroll records, with no visibility into student billing, other instructors' pay, or any settings.

Can I put GRADR on my phone?​

Yes. There's no app store involved; you add it to your home screen from your phone's browser, and there are two separate apps to choose from: GRADR for you and your instructors, and GRADR Student for your students, so if you also train, you can install both. Full instructions for iPhone and Android are at gradrjj.com/install-app, the same link you'd send your students. See Putting GRADR on your phone.

Why did my text message reach so few people?​

GRADR only texts people who have opted in themselves, so an SMS audience is almost always smaller than your roster, especially early on, and you can't opt someone in on their behalf. Use Ask for SMS opt-in on their profile to email them a consent link instead. Email campaigns aren't affected. See Text message consent.

Students and Billing​

How do I add a new student to the roster?​

Go to Students and click Add Student, then enter the student's name, contact details, date of birth, and belt rank, and assign a membership tier and billing method to finish. See the Onboarding a New Student tutorial for a full walkthrough.

How do I assign a membership tier and billing method?​

When adding or editing a student, choose a membership tier from the dropdown; tiers themselves are set up separately, in Settings → Membership Tiers. Then select how the student pays. Options are Stripe (card on file), cash, or no billing. Stripe billing is automated; cash payments are tracked manually.

How do billing tiers work, and where do I create them?​

Tiers define the plan name, price, and billing cycle, and recurring tiers support weekly, every 2 weeks, monthly, every 3 months, every 6 months, or yearly cycles, on top of which you can create fixed-duration passes (a one-time charge for a set number of days), session-capped tiers, and minimum-commitment contract tiers. Go to Settings → Membership Tiers, under the Payments tab, to create and edit them. Then assign one to any student from their profile.

Yes. When editing a student's profile, you can designate another student as the billing account holder under Family Billing, which bills the primary student for both while the linked student's billing method shows as covered by the family account. Useful for siblings or parent-child enrollments.

What happens to a student's record if I remove them?​

Archive, don't delete. Archiving removes the student from your active roster without deleting their attendance history, belt record, or billing history, whereas permanently deleting a student removes their record entirely, so only do that if you're certain the data is no longer needed.

Schedule and Classes​

What's the difference between Template view and Week view?​

Template view is your master schedule: the recurring class structure with no specific dates, and you use it to add, edit, or remove permanent classes. Week view is different. It shows a specific calendar week with real instructor assignments, and you use it for day-to-day operations: staffing classes, cancelling individual sessions, and closing the gym for holidays. See Building a Class Schedule for setup guidance.

How do I cancel a single class without removing it from the schedule permanently?​

In Schedule, switch to Week view, click the class you want to cancel, then click Cancel This Instance followed by Confirm Cancel. Only that one occurrence is marked as cancelled; the class keeps appearing in future weeks. To remove it permanently, delete it from Template view instead.

Can students book classes themselves, and how do I control that?​

Yes, if self-booking is enabled. Go to Settings → Bookings to turn on Enable class bookings and set the booking window, cutoff, and max-simultaneous limits. That's not where trial bookings live, though. Which classes leads can book a trial into is controlled per-class, on the Schedule editor instead.

What do the yellow and red alerts on the schedule mean?​

Yellow means no instructor is assigned. Red means the same thing, but the class is within the next 48 hours, so it's urgent, and both alert types also appear in the Uncovered Shifts widget on your Dashboard. Assign an instructor in Week view to clear it.

Leads and Trials​

What is a lead, and how do I add one?​

A trial prospect, in short: anyone who has expressed interest in your gym but hasn't enrolled yet. Go to Leads and click Add Lead, choose the track (Adult or Kids), enter their contact details and referral source, and optionally book them into an upcoming trial class right away.

How does GRADR book a trial class automatically when I add a lead?​

When adding a lead, check Book into next available class before you create them, and GRADR shows available trial and intro class slots from your upcoming schedule. Select a slot and confirm. The lead is booked, receives a confirmation email if you've entered their address, and their status changes from New to Booked.

How do I convert a lead into a full student?​

Once a lead has attended their trial (status: Attended), open their record and click Convert to Student, and GRADR copies their contact information into a new student profile automatically. One step remains. You then assign their membership tier and billing method to complete enrollment. See Onboarding a New Student for the full flow.

Instructors and Payroll​

How do I add an instructor and set their pay rate?​

Go to Instructors and click Add Instructor, then enter their name, email, belt rank, and qualification (Coach & Assist or Assist Only). Rates are optional. You can set a Custom Coach Rate and/or Custom Assist Rate to override the gym's default rates (set in Settings → General), since these per-class rates drive weekly payroll. Click Add as Instructor, and GRADR emails them a setup link.

Can I be listed as an instructor and still keep owner access?​

Yes. On the Instructors page, click Add Instructor and tick the This is me checkbox to link the instructor record to your owner account. Owner access is unaffected either way, and you'll now appear in the Coach and assistant pickers on the Schedule page.

How do I run payroll for a given week?​

Go to Payroll, navigate to the week you want to pay, and click Generate Payroll. GRADR does the math. It calculates each instructor's total from their class assignments and pay rates for that week, so all that's left is to review the totals, add any adjustments, then pay out via PayPal or mark as paid manually. See Running Payroll for a step-by-step walkthrough.

Can I pay instructors directly through GRADR?​

Yes, if you connect PayPal in Settings → Billing & Payments. Once connected, you can initiate a batch payout to all instructors for a given week, or pay them individually, and GRADR tracks the payout status (Processing, Paid, Failed) and lets you retry any that fail. Paying by cash or bank transfer works too. Use Mark Paid (or Mark All Paid) to record it manually.

Grading and Promotions​

Can I promote a student who hasn't met all the requirements?​

Yes. On the kiosk, a student who isn't ready yet shows an amber Grade early button along with what they're still short of. Tap it and confirm. The promotion is recorded like any other, marked in their history as early so you can see later that requirements were waived, because the requirements decide which button appears, not whether you're allowed to promote. See Promoting a student who isn't ready yet.

Why does my just-promoted student show 0 classes?​

That's correct, not a bug. The class they were graded at counts toward the belt they held that day, because stripes are awarded at the end of a class, so that class belongs to the old rank and the new count starts the following day. A student graded on Tuesday evening correctly shows 0 toward their next stripe on Wednesday. See How Requirements Reset.

I changed a student's belt on their profile — why did their class count reset?​

Because it's treated as a promotion. Changing the belt or stripe count on the Edit Student form writes it into their promotion history, updates the last grading date, and resets the Since last grading count, with no confirmation and no undo, since owners edit those fields to promote people far more often than to fix typos. To correct a record instead, edit the entry in Promotion History. See Students.

If I record a class from last week, which week does it count in?​

The week it was held. GRADR always counts a class on the day it actually ran, not the day you entered it, so if a student was promoted in between, that backdated class counts toward their old rank. That's the correct outcome, since they trained it at that rank. See Recording a Past Class.

Curriculum — Blocks, Areas, and Lessons​

How is the curriculum organized in GRADR?​

Four levels, nested. Systems (e.g., Gi, No-Gi, Kids) contain Areas (e.g., Guard, Mount, Back), which contain Lessons, the individual techniques, while Blocks sit alongside them as rotating sequences of Areas that you assign to classes, with GRADR mapping the content to each week automatically once a block goes live. See Blocks, Areas, Lessons, and Systems for details on each level.

What's the difference between a block and a lesson?​

It's a matter of scale. A lesson is a single technique or topic, the smallest unit of curriculum, while a block is a rotating schedule of Areas (groups of lessons) that runs across multiple weeks and gets assigned to classes to determine what content is on deck. Think of a lesson as a card and a block as the deck order.

How does the intro program fit into the curriculum structure?​

It doesn't, really; it's separate. The intro program is a standalone lesson sequence for brand-new students, managed on its own surface (Curriculum → Intro Programs) rather than as a block type inside Blocks, and you build an Intro Program from an ordered list of lessons, assign it to your intro classes, and activate it. GRADR tracks each intro student's progress through the sequence independently, so you always know where a new student is in their foundational curriculum.

Reports and Data​

What reports does GRADR generate, and what date ranges can I use?​

The Reports page has three tabs. Growth tracks member trends (paying members, net new, growth and churn rates) and lead sources, Attendance shows the roster-health cards, top students, daily check-in trends, most popular classes, instructor popularity, and belt distribution, and Financial covers revenue by source, revenue by membership tier, and payroll-to-revenue margin. The date-range filter (Last 30 days, 60, 90, 6 months, or a year) lives on the Attendance tab.

Where do I see revenue broken down by membership tier?​

Go to Reports and open the Financial tab, where the Revenue by Membership Tier chart shows how much each plan is generating over your selected period. It's the fastest way to see which tiers your members are actually on and whether your pricing mix is working.

Settings​

How do I customize the emails GRADR sends to leads and students?​

Go to Settings → Email Templates, where each transactional email (booking confirmation, trial class reminder, no-show follow-up, waiver reminder, and the shift/schedule notices) has its own template with its own subject line and body, both of which you can edit or turn off entirely. Merge tags stay safe. Things like the student's first name or class time are inserted automatically and shown in the editor so you don't accidentally break them.

What are retention alerts and how do I set them up?​

They surface at-risk students on your Dashboard. No email is sent automatically; that part is on you. Go to Settings → Retention to set the inactivity threshold (e.g. 14 days) and your membership-milestone reminders, and when a student crosses a threshold, they appear in the Retention Alerts card on the Dashboard, where you can reach out personally and mark them as contacted.