The martial arts school software that speaks karate.
Kyu and dan belts, kata and kumite, gradings and tournaments — NextKick handles the running of your martial arts school so you can focus on teaching.
What NextKick runs for you
Three things every martial arts school has to get right
Kyu and dan belts, your martial arts school's exact way
Every style orders its belts differently. Set yours once — from 10th kyu to shodan and beyond — and NextKick tracks each student's promotions, testing results, and belt history on a permanent profile.
Kata, kumite, and beginner classes on one schedule
Run technical kata sessions, kumite sparring, and white-belt fundamentals as separate classes with their own rosters. Students check in from the app; you see attendance in real time.
Tuition, testing, and uniform fees on autopilot
Recurring monthly tuition, one-time grading and gi fees, and automatic reminders. Families with multiple students share one invoice and one login, with discounts applied automatically.
Grading day, without the clipboard
Set an attendance minimum per belt and NextKick flags exactly who is eligible to grade. Score kata and kumite on the day, record results, and print certificates — parents get notified the moment their child is promoted.
Eligible to grade
18 students flagged this cycle
Scoring
Kata + kumite recorded per student
Certificates
Auto-generated on promotion
10th → 1st
Kyu grades before black belt
Kata + Kumite
Class types tracked separately
One invoice
Per family, no per-student fees
Karate martial arts school questions
Can NextKick match my style's belt order?
Yes. Whether you run Shotokan, Goju-ryu, Wado-ryu, or your own system, you configure the exact kyu and dan order. NextKick tracks each student against your structure, not a generic one.
Does it handle in-house tournaments and gradings?
It does. Set up gradings and tournaments as events with their own registration, fees, and attendee lists — separate from your regular class schedule — and collect payment on sign-up.
How does billing work for karate families?
Recurring monthly tuition plus one-time testing and uniform fees, all automated. Siblings link under one family account with a single invoice and automatic family discounts.
Can students and parents see belt progress?
Yes. The branded student and parent app shows schedules, current rank, upcoming gradings, and payments — so families always know where their karateka stands.
Does NextKick work for multi-location martial arts schools?
Yes. Multi-location martial arts schools get shared student profiles, consolidated reporting across locations, and centralized billing from one dashboard.
In short
NextKick is karate school software. It supports a configurable kyu and dan structure, keeps kata, kumite, and beginner classes as separate rosters, runs gradings and tournaments as paid events, and combines monthly tuition with grading and gi fees on one family account.
What to look for in karate school software
Karate is not one curriculum. Shotokan, Goju-ryu, Wado-ryu, Shito-ryu and independent dojos each order their kyu grades differently, weight kata and kumite differently at grading, and run tournaments on their own calendars. Software that hard-codes a belt list is asking you to teach around it, which is exactly backwards.
Key takeaways
- Configurable kyu and dan structure
- Kata, kumite, and beginner tracks as separate classes
- Gradings and tournaments as events, with their own money
- Family billing and one-time fees together
Configurable kyu and dan structure
You should be able to set your own grade order — however many kyu grades you use, in your own naming, through shodan and beyond — and have the system track each student against it. A dojo that changes its syllabus should be able to change the software to match, not the other way around.
Kata, kumite, and beginner tracks as separate classes
Technical kata sessions, kumite sparring, and white-belt fundamentals have different rosters, different capacities, and often different instructors. They should be separate classes with their own attendance, not one undifferentiated 'karate class' that tells you nothing when you look at a student's record six months later.
Gradings and tournaments as events, with their own money
In-house gradings and tournaments have registration, fees, and attendee lists that are separate from your regular schedule. Payment should be collected at sign-up rather than chased afterwards, and results should land on the student's permanent record.
Family billing and one-time fees together
Recurring monthly tuition, one-time grading fees, and gi and equipment charges all need to run on the same account. Siblings under one family invoice with an automatic discount is the normal case in a karate dojo, not the exception.
The practical effect is that grading day stops requiring a clipboard: the system tells you who has met the attendance minimum, you score kata and kumite in the app, results and certificates generate on promotion, and parents are notified the moment their child is graded.
Last reviewed by the NextKick team.
Keep exploring
One platform, every martial art
NextKick is built for belt-based and round-based programs alike. See how it handles the art you teach, compare it against the software you use today, or dig into the features and pricing.
Software for other martial arts
Features & pricing
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