A family in DojoMesh is a group of members with one person responsible for paying. The parent holds the card, sees everyone's payments and attendance in one place, and gets one view of the whole household instead of three separate logins to worry about. This guide covers how to build a family, what each role changes, and how to take someone back out again.
The three roles
Every member on your roster is in exactly one of three states. Everything on the Manage Families page is about moving people between them.
| Role | What it means | Badge on the page |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | A standalone membership. Not connected to anyone. Pays for themselves. This is what every member is when you first add them. | Individual (grey) |
| Parent account | The head of a family and the person responsible for its payments. A parent account can exist with no children yet — that is normal and it is the first step in building a family. | Parent Account (green, crown) |
| Family member | Someone assigned to a parent account. Trains on their own membership, but their payments are the parent's responsibility. | Family Member (blue, child icon) |
The wording is borrowed from the common case — a mum or dad paying for two kids — but DojoMesh does not care about ages or relationships. Two adult training partners, a coach paying for their own children, or one spouse covering both memberships all use exactly the same structure. If one person's card should cover several people, that person is the parent account.
Before you start
- Everyone in the family already exists as a member. This page organises people who are already on your roster; it does not create anyone. Add missing members first under Members Add Member.
- You know who is paying. That person becomes the parent account, and it is the one decision worth getting right the first time.
- About ten minutes for a household of three or four.
Open Manage Families
From the admin menu, go to Members Manage Families.
Four counters run along the top: Total Families, Children, Individual Members and Total Members. On a roster that has never used families, everyone will be counted as an individual and the first two will read zero.
Below them is one row per member showing their role, their family, and the buttons available for that person. The buttons change depending on the role — you will only ever see the ones that make sense for that member, which is why the row for a parent looks different from the row for an individual.
Make the payer a parent account
Find the person who will pay. On their row, click the green crown button, Make parent account. Confirm the prompt.
Their badge changes to Parent Account and Total Families goes up by one. They now have a family — it just has nobody else in it yet.
If you go straight to step 3 and pick an individual as the parent, DojoMesh promotes them to a parent account automatically. Doing it deliberately first just makes the roster easier to read while you work.
The crown button only appears on rows for individuals. If a member is already a parent, or already belongs to someone else's family, there is nothing to promote and the button is hidden.
Assign the rest of the family
Find the first person who should join the family and click the blue link button, Assign to a family. A window opens showing their name and a dropdown, Select Parent Account.
Pick the parent you created in step 2 and click Assign to Family. Repeat for everyone else in the household.
The dropdown lists only individuals and existing parent accounts, and never the person you are assigning. That is deliberate: it is what stops you building a chain where someone is both a child and a parent, which nothing downstream would know how to bill.
A family is one parent and their members — there is no grandparent tier. Someone who is already a family member cannot also be a parent for someone else, which is why they never appear in the dropdown. For a household where two adults each pay for different children, create two separate families.
Check the family looks right
The parent's row should now show a blue count badge — 2 children, say — and each family member's row should name the parent under Family Information.
To see a family on its own, click the teal button on the parent's row, Manage children. It opens a list of everyone assigned to that parent, with a Remove button beside each. That list is the quickest way to confirm you have not attached someone to the wrong household.
The filter buttons above the table — All Members, Families Only, Parents Only, Children Only, Individuals Only — narrow the table by role. Individuals Only is the useful one at the end of a tidy-up session: whoever is still listed is not attached to any family, which is either correct or the person you forgot.
What the family sees
Family structure is not just admin bookkeeping — it changes what your members see when they sign in to the member portal.
The parent gets a Family view covering everyone in the household: every member, the combined payment history, and the family's attendance. They are the only person who can make a payment for the family, and the portal tells them so.
Family members see the same Family view, with a note explaining that only the parent can make payments. The Make Payment button is not shown to them.
The payment history and attendance in the Family view are the whole family's, and they are visible to every member of it — not only to the parent. For a parent and their young children that is exactly what you want. For two adults who simply share a card it may not be, because each can see what the other paid and when they trained. If that matters, keep them as separate individual memberships.
Someone who is not in a family has no Family view at all; opening it sends them back to their dashboard.
Moving someone out of a family
Which button you need depends on the role of the person you are moving.
Taking a family member out
Click the red unlink button on their row, Remove from family — or Remove beside their name in the Manage children window. Both do the same thing.
Removing someone from a family makes them the head of a new, empty family of their own — their badge changes to Parent Account and Total Families goes up. The confirmation prompt describes this as making them an individual member, which is not quite what happens.
If you want a genuinely standalone membership, do it in two steps: remove them from the family first, then use Convert to individual on their row, which is described next. Their payment history is not affected either way.
Turning a parent account back into an individual
Click the orange button on their row, Convert to individual. Their badge goes grey and Total Families drops by one.
This button only appears once the family is empty. A parent who still has members assigned shows Manage children instead — empty the family first, then convert. That ordering is enforced so a family member can never be left pointing at a parent that no longer exists.
Moving someone to a different family
You do not need to remove them first. Click Assign to a family on their row and pick the new parent; the old link is replaced.
Troubleshooting
The parent I want is not in the dropdown
Only individuals and existing parent accounts can be parents. If the person you are looking for is already a member of another family, take them out of it first — or reconsider which household you are building, since one person cannot be in two.
"Cannot convert to individual — this parent has children assigned to them"
The family still has members in it. Open Manage children on that row, remove each one, then convert.
"A member cannot be their own parent"
The dropdown hides the person you are assigning, so this normally only appears if a page was left open a long time and the roster changed underneath it. Reload the page and try again.
Someone shows as a parent account but I never made them one
Two things cause this. Assigning a family member to an individual promotes that individual to a parent automatically (step 3). And removing someone from a family leaves them as a parent account rather than an individual, as described above. If they should be standalone, use Convert to individual.
The counters look wrong
They are counts of roles, and every member is counted once: Total Families is the number of parent accounts, including parents whose families are currently empty. A roster of ten people with one family of three reads 1 family, 2 children, 7 individuals — the parent is counted as a family, not as an individual.
Common questions
Does the parent get one combined bill?
Each member keeps their own membership plan and their own charges. What the family gives you is one responsible payer and one place to see everything: the parent's card is the one on file, and the Family view shows the household's payments together. It is not a single merged invoice, and it is not a family discount — if you want a reduced rate for siblings, set that up as a membership plan and assign it to them.
Can a family member have their own login?
Yes. Being in a family does not remove anyone's own account; each member still signs in as themselves, sees their own membership and attendance, and additionally gets the shared Family view. What they cannot do is make a payment for the family.
What happens to a family member's payment history when I move them?
Nothing. Payments stay attached to the member they were recorded against, whichever family that member is in. Moving people between families is safe to do at any time and does not rewrite anything historical.
Can one person pay for members at two different academies?
No. Families exist inside a single academy, and members are never shared between tenants. Each academy manages its own roster.
Do I have to use families at all?
No. Individual memberships work perfectly well, including for children — a parent's card can be stored against a child's membership without any family structure. Families are worth setting up when one person is paying for several people and you want them to see it all in one place.
Can I export my family structure?
Not from this page. Members Manage Members exports your roster, and families are assigned one member at a time rather than in bulk.
How many people can be in a family?
There is no limit. The structure is one parent with as many members as you assign.
You do not have to convert your whole roster. Set up the two or three households that ask you about payments most often, see how the Family view lands with them, and add more later. Nothing about the page has to be done in one sitting.