How to Bill Martial Arts Families: Sibling Discounts Without the Spreadsheet

Why family billing breaks in most systems

A parent with three kids enrolled is your best customer and your messiest invoice. In most billing setups each child is a separate subscription on a separate charge — three line items on the parent's statement, three renewal dates that drift apart, and three separate failures when a card expires. Parents don't complain about the price; they complain about the noise.

The fix is structural, not a discount code: one household, one subscription, one charge that covers every enrolled child. Everything else in this guide assumes you can get there.

Choose a pricing model: per-kid tiers or a flat family cap

Per-kid tiered pricing charges the first child full price and each additional child a percentage off — typically 10-20% for the second child and 20-30% for the third and beyond. It scales fairly at any family size and rewards exactly the behavior you want (enrolling siblings), and the priciest child's plan should always be the one charged in full.

A flat family cap ('unlimited family for $249/mo') is simpler to advertise and makes the fourth kid free, which large families love. The risk is the two-child family paying the cap resents subsidizing the five-child family. Most schools do better starting with per-kid tiers and reserving flat family pricing as a named plan for 3+ children.

• Second child: 10-20% off is the market norm
• Third child and beyond: 20-30% off
• Always charge the most expensive child's plan at full price — discount the cheaper plans
• Publish the discount — an unadvertised sibling discount converts nobody

One payment method, one renewal date

Consolidate every child onto the household's payment method and a single renewal date, prorating the first invoice when a sibling joins mid-cycle. If a child was previously billed separately, credit their unused prepaid time against the family's next invoice rather than refunding — no double charge, no stranded credit, no manual math.

Consolidation also fixes dunning: when a family's card fails, you make one phone call about one invoice, instead of discovering three half-paid siblings in three different past-due states.

Policies to decide before you advertise the discount

Write down the edge cases now: Does the discount apply to trial-priced students? What happens to the discount when one sibling quits — does the remaining child's price go back up immediately or at the next renewal? Can a grandparent be the paying household for kids across two homes? None of these are hard, but improvising them per-family creates the exact inconsistency families talk to each other about.

MyDojang handles this natively — studio-wide sibling discount tiers applied automatically, one family subscription with one charge, prorated mid-cycle joins, and credit-based conversion for students who started on individual billing. See how it compares to your current system on our feature-by-feature comparison pages.