Everything that has changed in DojoMesh, newest first. Academy owners get this as a short email every Sunday; this page is the full record.
Week of October 5, 2026
Grading: "Graded, not promoted" restarts a student's count Oct 9
When a student tests but isn't promoted, you can now restart their days at belt and classes since promotion without recording a fake promotion. On the Grading page, press the new circular-arrow button on their row and choose the grading date, with an optional note.
Their attendance is kept. The grading shows in their Promotion History alongside real promotions, and you can remove it there if you made a mistake.
Grading: days at belt now start from a student's first class Oct 9
On the Grading page, a student who had never been promoted had their days at belt counted from the day their record was created. If they started as a lead months before they actually joined, they showed up as long overdue for grading on day one. Days at belt and classes since promotion now count from their first class instead. Students with a recorded promotion still count from that promotion, exactly as before.
Tip: if someone was training with you before you started taking attendance in DojoMesh, record their last promotion with its real date (Record Promotion on the Grading page) and the count will start from there.
New Zealand dollars (NZD) are now a currency option Oct 5
Academies in New Zealand can now bill members and report in NZD. Choose it under Currency in Settings. Card payments for NZ academies go through Stripe, since Square does not operate in New Zealand. CAD, USD and AUD work as before.
Week of September 28, 2026
Newsletter: see every person it will go to Oct 2
The Preview button beside Audience on the Newsletter page used to list only the first 50 recipients. It now lists everyone, numbered, with a search box to check a particular name or email. The count also now leaves out anyone who has unsubscribed, so it matches exactly who the newsletter will be sent to. Before, unsubscribed people were included in the count even though they were never emailed.
Recurring billing: one clear choice for how often Sep 29
Starting a recurring subscription showed a Monthly Recurring Amount, a Billing Day of Month and a Billing Interval in days, and it was not obvious how they fitted together. The form now asks one question, How often to charge: monthly on a set day of the month, every week, every 2 weeks, or every 2, 3, 6 or 12 months. The billing day only appears for monthly, and the summary tells you the first charge date and the rhythm after it before you press Create.
Behind the scenes the nightly billing now advances each subscription from the date it was scheduled, not from the day the job happened to run, so a late run or a card that needed a retry no longer shifts the cycle. Every existing subscription was checked against the old rule and gets the same next date.
Events can now have more than one price Sep 29
A seminar with a kids price and an adult price, or one session versus both sessions, used to need two events. Now, under Event Registration on Manage Special Events, press Add option and give each a name and a price. The event card on your website says From the lowest price, the sign-up form asks the person to pick one, and the option they chose is charged and shown beside their name in the registrations list. Leave the options empty and it works exactly as before with a single price.
If your own website uses the DojoMesh API, the event list now includes the options and the registration call accepts the one chosen. The API docs explain the two fields.
Week of September 21, 2026
Every lead now shows what happened last, and where they came from Sep 27
The Added column on Leads and Trial Bookings is now Last activity. Each row says the most recent thing that happened, such as Texted 3 weeks ago, Replied by email yesterday, or No activity, with the date they were added underneath. Click View all under it for the full story: every email and reply, every text both ways, notes, bookings, reminders and status changes, newest first.
- New and Contacted leads turn amber after 3 days with no touch and red after 7. Attended-not-joined turns amber at 2 and red at 5, since that is the stage that becomes a member.
- Leads untouched for 90 days are marked cold, have their own chip, and no longer count as needing a first contact. An Archive cold button marks them all Lost in one confirmed click. Anyone can be reopened from their status menu.
- The Leads page sorts by urgency now: trials passed first, then attended, then New and Contacted with the longest-waiting on top, and cold leads down the bottom.
- Under each name you now see where they came from: Website form, Added by staff, Online checkout, and so on, in place of the old ID number.
- The row actions are down to Email and Text, with Profile, Edit, Mark as spam and Delete tucked into a small menu, so Delete is no longer one slip away from Email.
Follow-ups: see it, fix it, then send it Sep 27
The envelope and text icons on each lead used to send the moment you clicked them, with no way back. They now open a preview first. You see who it goes to, the subject, and the message with the person's name filled in. Change a sentence, fix the subject, then press Send, or cancel. Edits apply to that one message; the template is untouched.
Also fixed: texts to phone numbers stored with brackets or dashes, such as (250) 428-6471, were quietly failing for most leads. Numbers are now tidied up before sending, for every text the system sends.
One thing to check in the text preview: if your SMS template already names your academy, the sender adds the gym name from Settings on top, and you may see it twice. Either set the SMS from-name in Settings to match, or drop the name from the template.
Your prospects now hear from you, automatically Sep 27
Until this week the person who booked a trial class on your website got nothing but a thank-you message on the screen. Only you got the email. Four emails now go to them, each from a template you can edit on the Message Templates page under the new Trial Emails tab, each with its own on-off switch:
- Confirmation, the moment they book: class, date, time, your address and what to bring. Also sent when you book or reschedule someone from the Leads page, unless you untick the box.
- Day-before reminder, sent the evening before their class, between 4 and 9 pm your local time. Each booking is reminded once.
- No-show follow-up and After-class email. When you mark someone No-show or Attended, the message opens for a quick edit and goes only when you press Send. Nothing is sent behind your back.
The wording is deliberately short and generic. Two placeholders fill in your details: gym_address and gym_contact come from Settings, so check your address and phone are filled in there. If they are not, the emails say Contact us for address details, which is not the first impression you want.
Trials that slipped through the cracks now stand out Sep 27
A booked trial whose date has come and gone used to look exactly like one that is still coming up. Now it turns into a red Trial passed badge, and the row shows Attended and No-show buttons right there, so you can record what happened in one click without opening anything.
- Trial Bookings sorts by what needs you most: trials passed, then people who attended but have not joined, then upcoming classes by date.
- A new card, Trials passed with no outcome yet, sits at the top of Trial Bookings. Click it, or any other number card, and the list filters to match.
- Bookings that nobody has spoken to yet show a small unconfirmed tag. Sending a follow-up or marking the person Contacted clears it.
- The filter chips now use the same words as the status badges, and there is a Contacted chip at last.
Leads and Trial Bookings are now one list Sep 25
Until now a person who booked a trial class lived in two places: as a lead on the Leads page, and as a booking on the Trial Bookings page, each with its own status. Changing one did not change the other, so a lead you had converted could still show as a New booking, and the other way round.
Now each person appears once, with one status that follows them the whole way: New, Contacted, Trial booked, Attended, then Joined, with No-show and Lost as the exits. Click the status to move someone along, add notes right from the list, and the Trial Bookings page is simply the same list narrowed to people who booked a class. Marking someone Joined makes them an active member in one click.
- Booked someone in over the phone? Pick Book a trial from their status menu, choose the class and date, and they move to Trial booked straight away. Pick it again to reschedule.
- Their trial history now shows on their profile, under the waivers.
- Deleting a lead now removes their booking too, so nothing is left behind.
You will see a notice across the top of both pages for a few days while we settle it in. If anything looks off, say so in the chat.
The free round timer got a proper front door Sep 25
The free combat round timer at dojomesh.com is the page most new people find us through, so it had a tidy-up this week. If you already run the timer on your own academy account nothing changes for you, but two parts are worth knowing about.
- A coach can now get a private timer straight from the page: type an email, and the timer opens on its own link with a short three-step walkthrough for bookmarking it, getting it onto the TV by the mat, and running it from a phone.
- The page now has a plain guide to putting the timer on a screen: cast a Chrome tab to a Chromecast, AirPlay from an iPhone or Mac to an Apple TV, open the link in a Fire TV or smart TV browser, or use an old laptop on an HDMI cable. The same tips apply to your own timer. The two things that catch people out are the screen's sleep timer, and a cast tab that is muted, so no bell.
If you know a coach at another gym who is still using a kitchen timer, send them the link. Their free timer stays free, and it is the easiest way for them to see what the rest of DojoMesh does.
dojomesh.com/combat-round-timer/
Your seminars and events, on your own website Sep 25
If your academy has its own website, it can now show the seminars, camps and competitions you set up under Manage Special Events, and take registrations for them, card payment included, without anyone retyping anything.
- Add or edit an event in DojoMesh and your site updates within a few minutes: title, dates, times, image, description and the button you chose.
- Switch on the registration form for an event and your site can take sign-ups. Free and pay-at-the-door events are recorded straight away. Online-paid events charge the card through the Stripe or Square account you already use, then record the registration. Nothing is saved if the card is declined.
- Every registration lands under the event's Registrations panel in Manage Special Events, prepaid ones also under Event Payments, and you get the same email you get from your DojoMesh landing page.
This runs through the API, so it is for academies with their own website or a developer. The API page under Settings shows both calls already filled in with your key, and the docs walk through it. If you are on the DojoMesh + Custom Website plan, we add it to your site for you.
Email settings: fewer ways to get SMTP wrong Sep 22
If you send email from your own mail server (Settings, Email), DojoMesh now works out the encryption from the port you enter: 465 means SSL, anything else means STARTTLS. If the first connection fails it quietly tries the other way once before giving up.
The settings page also refuses combinations that can never work, such as SSL on port 587, and says why, instead of saving them and failing on the next email.
One thing no setting can fix: Outlook.com and Microsoft 365 no longer accept a plain username and password from outside apps. If your academy email is with Microsoft, use the mail server that came with your website or domain instead. We can help you find it.
Following up a lead now updates their trial booking too Sep 21
The Leads page and the Trial Bookings page used to be two separate lists. Sending a follow-up from Leads left the person's booking sitting on New forever, even after you had called everyone back.
Now reaching out from Leads marks that person's new trial bookings as contacted, so Trial Bookings shows what actually happened. Bookings you have already marked attended, converted, no-show or cancelled are left exactly as they are.
dojomesh.com/docs/trial-bookings/
Sell memberships from your own website, paid through your own Stripe or Square Sep 21
If your academy has its own website, you can now let visitors pick a plan, sign your agreements and pay right there: by card through the Stripe or Square account you already connected to DojoMesh, or by Interac e-transfer if you accept it. Everything lands in DojoMesh exactly as if you had recorded it yourself.
- Paste two lines from Settings, Online Checkout onto any page. It shows your live plans, so changing a price here updates your site.
- The visitor picks Just me or Someone else, so a parent can put two children on different plans and pay once. The family discount from Gym Settings applies on its own.
- New students sign the same agreements as your signup form. Existing members are matched by email, and their membership extends from their current paid-through date, so paying early never loses days.
- Someone new who buys a membership becomes Active straight away. Drop-ins and day passes stay as leads.
- The payer gets a receipt, you get an alert, and the payment, plan and paid-through date are on the member's profile before you have finished reading it.
The checkout page uses your logo, colours and fonts, and the plan tiles on your site can be styled with your own CSS if you want them to match exactly.
New since we wrote this: if you take cards through Stripe, the payment step now offers a tick box, Keep my card on file and renew automatically. When the visitor ticks it, they still pay one period today, and DojoMesh saves the card and sets up automatic renewal for each membership in the checkout, timed to the day their paid-through date ends. Those renewals appear on your Recurring Payments page like any other, and a parent paying for two children gets one renewal per child on the parent's card. The box is ticked by default, the visitor can untick it, and the receipt spells out the amount, the interval and how to cancel.
Two things worth knowing. It only sells plans marked Show on website that have a price, so glance at Membership Plans first. And the renew-automatically option is Stripe only for now; Square academies still set up auto-billing from the member's profile. Everything else is ready: open Settings, Online Checkout, and the Ready to sell panel tells you if anything is missing.
dojomesh.com/docs/online-checkout/
Week of September 14, 2026
Take card payments on a Square reader, straight from DojoMesh Sep 19
If your academy runs its payments through Square, you can now pair a Square Terminal or Square Reader to DojoMesh and charge the card straight from an invoice. No more keying the amount into the Square app and then coming back to mark the invoice paid by hand.
- Pair a reader in Settings, Gym Settings, Card Readers. DojoMesh gives you a five-minute pairing code and you type it into the reader.
- Open any unpaid invoice and press Collect on Card Reader. The amount goes to the reader, the member taps, and the invoice flips to Paid on its own, usually in well under a minute.
- Writing the invoice at the front desk? Create and Collect on Reader sends it to the reader the moment it saves.
- Memberships extend and inventory comes off the shelf exactly as they do for any other payment, and the payment shows up in Square with the invoice number on it.
Two things worth knowing before you pair one. A reader that is paired to DojoMesh takes its instructions from DojoMesh, so it will not ring up walk-up sales in the Square POS app until you sign it back in the normal way. And refunds still happen in your Square Dashboard: refund there first, then use Reverse Payment on the invoice here. DojoMesh watches for that and will tell you if the second step gets missed.
There is nothing to request and nothing to switch on. If your Square connection is already set up in Gym Settings, the Card Readers card is waiting for you now. If you are not on Square yet, connect it first and the readers appear on their own.
dojomesh.com/docs/square-terminal/
Spam filter for leads Sep 15
Bot submissions no longer land in your Leads list. Every new lead from your website form, free class booking, embed form or the API is scored, and anything that looks like a bot (a hidden field filled in, a form submitted in under three seconds, an impossible phone number, an email domain with no mail server, generator-made names, a burst of similar submissions) goes to a Suspected spam section at the bottom of the Leads page instead, with no email or text notification. One click on Not spam brings a real person back and the filter remembers them; a Mark as spam button on any lead teaches it too. Quarantined leads are deleted automatically after 30 days.
Waivers and agreements Sep 14
You can now set up the agreements your members sign, such as an indemnification and liability release or a media release, under Settings > Waivers. Required waivers must be accepted; opt in or out waivers record a Yes or a No, and a media release keeps the member's photo permission in sync. The agreements appear on your website signup form and free class booking form, on the embed code for your own website, and on the API for custom sites, with the typed name as the electronic signature and the exact text version, time and IP recorded. Under-18 waivers appear when the date of birth says so, and a parent or guardian signs. Each member's profile shows what they have signed, staff can record a paper signature and attach a photo or PDF, and a status report lists who still needs to sign. A waiver can list several acknowledgment lines that each need a tick, carry a parent or guardian statement that appears only for participants under your age of majority (set it on the Waivers page, 19 in BC), and use merge tags such as {academy_name} and {province}. A standard assumption of risk and release template is one click away as a starting point, and every signature keeps a copy of the exact text that was agreed to.
Week of September 7, 2026
New: DojoMesh + Custom Website, your own domain and a developer on call Sep 12
For $25 a month on top of your plan you now get your own domain (yourschool.com), a complete custom-designed website built on your DojoMesh data, and an assistant that keeps it up to date. Email it your photos, new wording, a YouTube video or a design change and the site is updated within a few minutes, with a reply confirming what changed.
Your live timetable, free-class bookings and contact form all flow straight into your dashboard, so there is never a second system to keep in sync. Hosting, the security certificate and search optimisation are included.
It is like having a skilled web developer on hand 24 hours a day. The page you already have at your-academy.dojomesh.com stays included with every plan. Reply to this email and we can setup a zoom call to show you how it works or we can set you up with your own demo.
dojomesh.com/docs/website-and-domain/
A much bigger API Sep 12
Beyond adding leads, the API can now find members, record payments with a Square transaction ID, list your plans and tax rates, return your weekly class schedule, book a trial class and take a contact message. If you have a website or a developer, this is everything needed to run it on your DojoMesh data.
- Every call is logged, so we can tell you if a key has been used
- Full guide at dojomesh.com/docs/api, with live examples on the API page in your dashboard
Regenerate your API key yourself Sep 12
If your API key has ever been shared or pasted somewhere public, go to Settings, then API Integration, and click Generate New API Key. The old key stops working the moment you confirm.