What's new in FencR

Support

• Help now lives in your dashboard. Click Help in the sidebar and you land on the Support page. It opens on a search box that covers the documentation and our written answers together, so there is nothing to decide before you start typing. Results appear as you type, and near misses like waver still find waivers.
• Answers written for your role. The answers below the search are grouped by topic and scoped to who you are. Admins see setup, billing, roster, and waiver questions. Coaches see scheduling and attendance. Athletes and parents see booking, plans, payments, and signing waivers. Everything else is still there if you want it.
• Fixes for the things that actually go wrong. Troubleshooting cards walk through the specific problems clubs run into, like an invite that never arrived, a member stuck on Waiver required, a Zelle payment that has not cleared, or a cancelled booking that did not return its credit.
• Report an issue in seconds, screenshot included. Pick a topic, say how much it is holding you up, describe what happened, and attach one screenshot if it helps. Your request reaches us the moment you send it, night or day.
• See what happened to what you sent. Everything you file appears under My requests with its current status: Received, In progress, Fixed, or Closed. No separate helpdesk login and no ticket number to hold onto.
• Available before you even have a club. Support works whether or not you have joined or created a club yet, because that is one of the most common things people need to ask about.

Plans

• One plan can now cover lessons and practices. Lessons and practices are set independently on the same plan, each either a number of credits or unlimited. A membership like 8 lessons plus unlimited practices is now one plan your members join once, instead of two plans they have to hold at the same time. Each side keeps its own credit pool, so booking a lesson never eats into practice credits. Existing plans are untouched and keep working exactly as before.
• Plans can end on their own. A recurring plan can run for a set number of cycles and then stop, which is what a season or a term actually looks like. Nobody has to remember to cancel it. Leave it on Renews forever and nothing changes.
• Choose how you get paid, per plan. Each plan carries its own payment settings: card, Zelle, cash, or any combination, with one starred as the method invoices use. You can run card-billed memberships and Zelle-collected packs side by side. Options you cannot fulfil stay hidden, so Zelle only appears once a handle exists and card only once Stripe is connected.
• Collect by Zelle without publishing your handle. A plan can route to Zelle while leaving the handle off the member's copy of the invoice. Routing, your own view, and marking invoices paid all work exactly as before.

Members

• Assignment controls that say what they do. Adding someone to a group, a location, or a plan now uses labeled controls instead of chips you had to guess at. The plan picker shows price, billing cycle, and what is included, and anything that bills or notifies a member asks you to confirm first and tells you which it is.
• Know who you are acting on. Hovering a member anywhere you pick people out of a list brings up their card: photo, role, groups, and their active plans with credits remaining. Useful when two athletes share a first name. You can assign a plan straight from the card.
• Removing a plan now stops the billing too. Unassigning a Stripe-billed plan cancels it on the Stripe side as well, so nobody keeps getting charged for a plan they no longer hold.

Schedule

• Your coaches hear about bookings. Whenever somebody books or cancels a session, your admins and that session's lead and assistant coaches get a notification, and it names who is leading and who is assisting. It works the same whether the athlete booked themselves, a parent booked their child, or a coach assigned them. Coaches no longer get pinged about sessions they are not on.
• Booking a lesson got easier to follow. Pick a coach and you now see their photo, and they stay visible while you choose a time. Days with an open slot are marked on a calendar, so you pick a day and see just that day's times, each with its length and credit cost.

Waivers

• Read a signed waiver without leaving FencR. Click any member who has signed and their waiver opens in the app, signature page and all, with who signed and when. The blank club waiver opens the same way.
• A roster you can work through. The waivers page now shows how many members are fully signed and how many are outstanding, and the roster has search, All, Unsigned, and Signed filters, member photos, and unsigned members sorted to the top.
• One active waiver per club. Clubs now keep a single active waiver, so what every member has agreed to is never in question. To change it, archive the current one and upload the new version. Signatures already on file are always kept.

Club settings

• Settings you can actually find. Club Settings is now six tabs: Club profile, Locations, Lessons and booking, Getting paid, Public page, and Your data. Each tab has its own link. Everything saves as you go, so there is no Save button to hunt for, and changing your club URL is the one thing that asks you to confirm because it breaks published links.

Email

• No more practice reminder emails. FencR now emails when something happens (a booking, a cancellation, an invoice) rather than sweeping the schedule every day. Your sessions are already on your calendar, and Calendar Sync will put them in Google or Apple Calendar if you want an alert before a session.
• Club broadcasts are more reliable. Emailing your whole roster now sends in batches with automatic retries, so large clubs no longer see messages quietly fail to reach part of the list. Members who have not claimed their account yet are skipped instead of bouncing.

Schedule

• Filter the calendar by coach. Staff can now narrow the schedule to a single coach and see every session they lead or assist. Clubs with several coaches get a row of coach filters above the calendar; clubs with one coach see no change.
• See what is bookable at a glance. A new session type filter splits the calendar into Practices, Lessons, Bookable Lessons, and Tournaments. The Bookable Lessons view shows exactly the open lesson slots athletes can book themselves, so coaches can review and edit the availability they published without leaving the schedule page. Bookable windows on the calendar now read as bookable slots, with the booked count alongside.
• Delete an event right from the editor. The event editor now has a delete button in its header, next to the close button. It always asks for confirmation first, and recurring sessions can be removed one at a time or for the whole series going forward. No more scrolling to find it on a phone.

Check-in kiosk

• A clearer way to unlock. The check-in station now shows an Admin Unlock button in the top right corner, so staff can immediately see how to exit. It still asks for the 4-digit code (or Face ID / Touch ID) before unlocking.

Joining your club

• Turn inquiries into members with Leads and Pipelines. Design a join funnel with a visual builder: an intake form, a plan payment or application fee, class placement, and a confirmation. It runs on your public club page, your embedded website widget, and the club directory. Every submission becomes a lead in the new Leads tab, with a lifecycle tracker showing how far each person got. The builder now configures everything at creation, with plan, fee, and practice cards picked right under the pipeline preview, and pipelines are archived rather than deleted so lead history is never lost.
• Approval-gated joining. Clubs that review new members can require approval: sign-ups wait in a queue until staff says yes, and applicants get a clear message instead of a silent dead end. This now works consistently everywhere, including Google and Apple sign-in.
• Application fees, handled honestly. The fee amount is shown right after the application is submitted, admins are notified the moment an applicant pays it, and someone applying twice sees a clear message about what is already on file instead of an error.
• New members choose their first practice. Instead of being silently placed, a new member gets a welcome banner and picks their first practice from the sessions the club set up for newcomers, booking through the normal credit system.
• See your funnel traffic. A traffic card on the Leads tab counts visits to your join surfaces, so you know whether you need more visitors or a better pitch.

A calmer schedule

• Practices are assigned by coaches; lessons stay self-serve. Athletes and parents now see their own sessions, not the club's entire calendar: the practices a coach has added them to, their booked lessons, and tournaments. Coaches and admins build practice rosters; members book lessons themselves when the club allows it, and anyone can cancel their own booking. The self-enrollment toggle in Club Settings now governs lesson booking only.
• A roomier session editor. The Add to Schedule window grew into a two-column layout with the basics on the left and the people on the right, so nothing hides behind a scrollbar. Star badges on the staff calendar now say Lead or Assist next to the star, and coaches land on their own sessions by default.
• Calendars for every assigned coach. Sessions now sync to the Google Calendar of every assigned coach, lead and assistants alike, even when an admin created the session on their behalf. The public schedule embed shows your practices and tournaments, never private lessons.

At the club

• A self-serve check-in kiosk for the front desk. Put a tablet at the door: athletes tap their name to check in for today's sessions, and staff unlock the roster view with a fingerprint or face. Check-ins flow straight into attendance.
• Announcements and coach notes, posted on the session. Post an announcement on a practice (room change, bring your gear) and every enrolled member sees it. Internal notes stay visible to staff only. The session detail view was overhauled around them.

Coaches who fence too

• Join any session as a participant. Coaches and admins can enroll themselves in any session from the schedule with the new Join as participant button, spending a plan credit like any athlete. Coaching a session never costs a booking or a credit; only training does.
• Your calendar shows your hats. Session chips on the staff calendar now carry small badges: a filled star where you lead, an outline star where you assist, a green dot where you are enrolled, and your children's avatars on the sessions they are booked into. Filter pills narrow the calendar to All, Coaching, Mine, or My kids.
• Coach and lesson analytics. New analytics track sessions led and assisted per coach, student lesson history, and taken versus missed lessons, so private lesson programs finally have real numbers.

Billing and reliability

• Prices stay in sync with Stripe, both directions. Edit a plan price in FencR and Stripe follows. Edit it in your Stripe dashboard and FencR now follows too, with a notification to your admins, an automatic sweep when you open the Plans page, and a Refresh from Stripe button per plan. Checkout always charges exactly the price shown on the plan card.
• Free packs enroll instantly. A free token or pack never routes through a payment page anymore. Assigning one to a member activates it immediately with its credits.
• Double-payment protection. Paying an invoice from two tabs can no longer create two charges, and if a member pays online while a coach records a cash payment, admins are alerted instead of the second payment vanishing without a trace.
• Security hardening. This release also closes several security findings from an internal audit, including tighter role handling on sign-up and safer redirect handling after login.

Your data

• Download everything FencR stores about you. From Settings you can now export your personal data, including your profile, memberships, bookings, plans, invoices, waiver signatures, and messages, as a set of spreadsheet-ready CSV files. If you manage children's accounts, their information is included too.
• Clubs can export their full records. Admins can download the club's complete records from Club Settings, covering the roster, schedule, bookings, plans, billing, waivers, and messages, as CSV files ready to open in any spreadsheet.

Members

• Deleting an account keeps the club's history. When a member deletes their FencR account, their personal details are removed but the club keeps its record of the practices they attended and the payments they made. They move into the club's Archive, marked as a deleted account, so your attendance and books stay complete.
• A welcome home before you join a club. People who sign up before joining or creating a club now land in a personal workspace instead of an empty dashboard, with a clear path to create a club or accept an invite.

Schedule

• See where each practice is held. Practice and lesson details now show the location, so athletes, parents, and coaches always know which of your club's locations a session is at.
• A simpler way to set the lead coach. Assigning the lead coach on a session is now a single dropdown, with additional coaches listed separately, in place of the old star toggle.
• Cancelled sessions no longer linger. Sessions you cancel no longer appear on the dashboard overview, matching the rest of the schedule. Cancelling upcoming sessions clears them from the calendar, while sessions that already happened stay in your history.

For clubs everywhere

• Set up your club from any country. Club creation and your location settings now let you choose any country, with the address fields adapting to match (for example State and ZIP in the United States, Province in Canada, and region and postal code elsewhere). Your club page and the Find a Club directory show your country, and the directory adds a country filter once clubs from more than one country are listed.

Members

• History stays with the person, not the role. When you promote a member to coach or admin, their past as an athlete no longer disappears. Their bookings, plan and credit history, and attendance stay visible on their member profile.
• Role changes are on the record. Promotions and role changes now appear in a member's activity feed, so you can see who changed to which role and when.

Find a Club

• A cleaner directory. Club cards in the Find a Club directory no longer show a member count, keeping the focus on each club's name, location, and weapons.

Guides

• How to Run a College Fencing Club Team on FencR. A new guide at fencr.app/resources built for student-run collegiate teams: collect semester dues, invoice teammates for equipment orders and tournament travel, publish your practice schedule, gate membership on your university waiver, and embed your live schedule on your university club page. Like everything on FencR, it is completely free for your team and your members.
• The newest guide always leads. The large card at the top of the Resources page now always shows the most recently published article, so the latest guide is easy to spot the moment it ships.
• A clearer name for the setup guide. The flagship setup walkthrough is now titled How to Manage a Fencing Club Using FencR, a better match for everything it covers beyond initial setup.

Documentation

• Waivers, fully documented. A new documentation section covers the whole waiver flow: uploading your waiver, requiring it for membership, in-app signing (including parents signing for minors), the paper-upload fallback, and publishing a new version with an optional re-sign requirement.
• Bookable lesson blocks, explained. Another new section walks coaches through lesson lengths and credit costs, publishing blocks that tile into bookable slots, moving a single session or a whole series, and managing the block roster.
• Catch-up across existing sections. The documentation now also covers the month view and drag-to-move on the schedule, free plans, the three ways to deactivate a plan, archived members, and the schedule and join widgets you can embed on your own site. The documentation sidebar also picked up a small entrance animation.

• No more sideways drift. The dashboard no longer pans left or right when you swipe on a phone. Everything stays put, exactly where you left it.
• Every button within reach. Page actions like Send Email, Add Member, Invite Member, and the schedule view controls now sit on their own row on small screens instead of running off the edge.
• Member and plan details sized for your screen. The member and plan detail views now fit phone screens properly, with nothing hidden behind the browser bar and comfortable spacing throughout.
• Photo controls that work on touch. Removing a profile photo or club logo used to require a mouse hover. On phones and tablets the remove button is now always visible.

• How to Build a Club Using FencR. A new guide at fencr.app/resources walks coaches and club admins through the whole setup: creating the club, finishing club settings, inviting members, connecting Stripe if you charge members, designing membership plans, and publishing a bookable schedule. It also makes clear that billing is optional, so clubs that just want scheduling, communication, and member management can run entirely free with no payment setup at all.
• Better answers from search and AI assistants. Resource guides now publish step-by-step structured data, so search engines and AI assistants can point people at the exact section that answers their setup question.

• FencR is completely free. Every club gets every feature with no tiers, no member or location caps, and no upgrade prompts. Payments you collect from your athletes go directly to you.

Scheduling

• Every session type. Group classes, private lessons, open fencing, and tournaments with open sign-up. Sessions can repeat on a schedule, and the calendar offers both list and day or week time-grid views.
• Bookable coach time slots. Coaches publish availability windows that athletes claim as private lessons. Clubs set the lesson lengths they offer plus a base length, and slots tile to it automatically.
• A schedule scoped to each athlete. Athletes see the sessions for their groups and training locations rather than the whole club calendar, and every session at a multi-location club shows where to be.

Membership plans and credits

• Flexible plan shapes. Recurring subscriptions (monthly, quarterly, or annual) and one-time lesson packs, each with lesson or practice credit quotas or unlimited entitlements. Athletes can hold multiple active plans at once.
• Credits that match lesson length. A lesson at twice the base length uses two credits, and the exact amount comes back if a booking is cancelled inside the cutoff window. Coaches and admins can also grant or refund credits manually.
• Enrollment your way. Let members enroll themselves or keep assignment staff-only. Plans can require payment upfront, and coaches can assign a plan (including a private one) before a member has even joined, so it is waiting as a Set up payment prompt.

Payments and invoicing

• Stripe, Zelle, cash, or check. Connect your own Stripe account (new or existing) for card and ACH payments, or route invoices through Zelle and mark cash and check payments by hand. Funds always settle directly with the club; FencR never holds money.
• Full invoicing. Per-plan, custom, and tournament invoices, with automatic overdue reminders and invoices for minors routed to the parent.
• Refund tracking. Refunds you issue in your Stripe dashboard appear on the matching FencR invoice automatically, and revenue analytics report net of refunds.

Members and roster

• Build your roster fast. Add members one at a time or paste a list of email, name, and role. No emails are sent until a coach or admin sends the invite, and people who already use FencR are matched by email and invited rather than joined silently.
• Organize with groups and locations. Tag members into groups, assign training locations, then filter, sort, and bulk-assign plans by either dimension, and broadcast email by group.
• Know every member. A member detail view shows plan usage, token-pack history, a participation chart, and a running activity feed of bookings, cancellations, credit changes, and plan events. Removing a member keeps their full history in an Archived view.

Waivers

• Digital waivers built in. Upload your club waiver, collect legally signed copies in the app (with the signature added to the PDF), or upload paper copies. Members who still need to sign are held in a pending state until they do.

Families

• Parents manage their children. Parents enroll their kids in plans, book sessions and tournaments for them, and pay their invoices from one dashboard. Child accounts follow a COPPA-compliant consent flow, and a child can claim their own account when they are ready.

Communication

• Message your members. Compose rich-text emails to individuals, groups, or the whole club. Automated emails cover invites, booking reminders, invoice notices, and renewal reminders, and in-app notifications keep everyone current.

Analytics

• See how your club is doing. Practice attendance, cancellation notice patterns, membership growth, and revenue broken down by line type and by coach.

Your club online

• A public club page and embeds. Every club gets a public page with its schedule and join flow, a listing in the club directory, and schedule and join widgets you can embed on your own website.
• Calendar sync. Members sync their bookings to Google Calendar or subscribe from any calendar app via an iCal feed.

Help and answers

• Ask AI about FencR. From the documentation page, open Claude or ChatGPT with a ready-made prompt and get answers about the FencR platform in plain language, or copy the docs to paste into any AI assistant you already use.
• A resources hub. Guides and articles at fencr.app/resources, including a complete walkthrough of what admins, coaches, athletes, and parents can each do.