MyBMABA Club Manager has designed to be an 'out of the box solution' meaning it requires no technical setup or installation. You can start using the platform immediately, but to get the most from the technology, there are a few basic configurations you'll want to do when you first get started, just to really make it home for your club.

If you're a management account, instructor or lead instructor, you can setup and oversee an unlimited number of club platforms. If you're an assistant instructor or volunteer, you can still help run the club but you'll need to be invited first.

Here's your complete step by step getting started guide;

Let's start by setting up your club. Click on the Club Manager link and you'll be taken to a page that asks you to Request Access, and prompts you for a Club Name. Enter your club name, and click 'request access'. Once done, you'll be taken to your new dashboard;

The green arrow shows the club selector. You can have multiple clubs under your control (we'll come to that later) and this allows you to toggle through.

The yellow arrow shows you how to collapse the left hand menu. The top right double arrow icon (not highlighted below) expands the main screen width, should you be working on a tablet and want a full-screen experience.

The MyBMABA Club Manager is now fully live for you, with no actual setup needed, however there are a few essential steps you'll want to take to get started.

Head to your club settings;

The tab at the top allows you to move from the settings. We've kept this as simple as possible deliberately.

On the first tab (Settings) you can change your club name.

On the second tab (Access) you can provide full access to an unlimited number of your team. This is great if you plan to have multiple team members helping run the club, or managing their own attendance and so on.

You'll see a summary of who has been granted access, and why. To add a new colleague, press 'Add User' and select them after searching. The search results will show a full name and their email, obscured for privacy. You can search by either.

Once you've selected the correct person, press Create Access.

They'll automatically be granted access without impacting any other clubs they might be managing in MyBMABA Club Manager, although they won't be told you've granted them access so do let them know.

On the third tab, Custom Fields, you can create a near endless amount of custom data fields for student records. We've input a few initial examples for you, but you can edit or delete these if you wish.

To add any new custom fields, press 'Add Field'

When creating fields, you can change the field type, selecting checkboxes, pill buttons, text areas, dates and more. You can also 'Sort' the various options via the 'Sort' button, on the Custom Fields Page.

Finally, you have the ability to import student records, which we'll give a separate heading now to make it clear.

We know many clubs will want to import their student data on mass for ease of access, rather than manually onboarding everyone. That's absolutely fine. On the fourth tab of settings is 'Import'.

On this page, you'll see CSV Import Guidelines to help you understand exactly how to do this successfully. You'll also see a ready made template, which we'd recommend downloading to help with formatting.

Here's an example;

In this import, the user has decided to bring in the two compulsory fields (first and last name) but will then just introduce date of birth, gender and status. You only need First and Last Name to import data on mass, but the more associated data you bring in on initial import the less data entry needed on your part once onboard!

Take that CSV, and import it back into MyBMABA Club Manager. The platform will confirm safe import.

The second to last thing to setup (and this is the most fun in our opinion!) is your grading structure. Head to the Progression tab.

You'll see no options initially. Head first to the Belts tab.

From, there, press 'Add Belt' and the modal will open;

Here you can setup and add your entire syllabi.

Start by naming your Belt Group. This should be something you'll be able to easily understand, such as 'Kickboxing' or 'Karate' etc.

A couple of import notes;

You can setup either Full Colour Belts, or Belts with one stripe, or a double stripe.

The belt colour decides the primary belt colour, and the stripe is applied to either the one stripe or double stripe setup.

Once done, save your belt structure and you'll see any belts in place on the edit screen. You can update, change or add to any of these setups downstream as needed.

If you use tags, head to the tags tab.

Here you can create any number of tags or markers you might wish to use throughout your club.

Once done, the final bit of setup is to create your class schedule.

On the Classes Schedule you'll see an overview of all scheduled recurring and one-off sessions.

This makes it easy to see all current classes, including running-orders, capacity and status. You can create a new class via the '+ Add Class' button.

Here's the class creation modal;

And the corresponding legend;

Class Name: The name of the class as you wish it to show on calendars, bookings and so forth.

Class Description: Optionally, you may include a description for any public-facing aspect of the calendar.

Instructor: Optionally, for the public, you can show who's teaching.

​Capacity: Optional, but very helpful for remaining within ratio, you can set up any maximum class capacity.

​Class Location: The address or venue for the class - either the full address, or just the venue name.

​Attendee Type: You can select mixed ages, adults only or children only.

​Class Start Date: The date from which you wish to start recording attendance.

Class End Date: Some clubs need to have an end date, for example short-courses or term time sessions. If you're running your class on an on-going basis, you can set a distant future point - i.e: 5 years from now - to ensure you don't have to revisit this for some time!

​Class Dates: Select the days of the week on which the class will run.

​Start Time: Start time, in 24 hour format

​End Time: End time, in 24 hour format

​Belt Group: Select the belts you wish to apply in terms of attendance tracking for this class

​Class Colour: This is the colour the class will show up in your calendar, and your student's calendars.

Class Status: This is purely for your records. You can set classes as 'upcoming' if they're yet to start, 'Ongoing' if you're currently running, 'Ended' if the term of course is over, or 'Cancelled' if it's no longer running.

Once you're done, save the lesson.

Once you've setup your classes, you can manage them from the Class Dashboard. Press 'Manage' next to the class you wish to edit or manage.

The top bar, shown in yellow brackets, show a class overview. The green brackets allow you to edit or update (or delete - with caution!) the class information, such as attendee type, timings, dates or capacity.

The tab bar (shown in a blue box) allow you to manage who's booked on, and cancellations.

You can cancel classes for any reason - be that holiday or sickness. You'll see cancellations on the cancellations tab, and also in your calendar and on the attendance tracking.

It's easy to manage who's booked onto classes. Head to the 'Students' tab and you'll see a register of who's booked on. You'll also see any linked safeguarding, medical or SENCO information in the quick-view format. Hovering over the icon will reveal the saved student information.

Clicking 'manage' will take you to the student's profile. Clicking 'Remove' will instantly remove them from the lesson.

Click + Add Student to add a new student to the lesson.

When adding a student, you can either select an existing student with the optional ability to overwrite conditional checks (such as checking a student is under 18 for children's classes, for example);

Or you can create a new student from this very screen, for quick on the spot onboarding;

You can add a new student with just the First and Last Name, so this is helpful if you're on the side of the mats and have a new walk-in. You can populate their profile later, but ensure you do pick up any medical information first!

At this point, you're fully setup.

You have custom belts and tags specifically setup to your club, any custom student information needed, you've onboarded your student data on mass, set up your class schedule and added any planned closures or cancellations, and added students to your classes.

Let's now explore the full functionality that comes with MyBMABA Club Manager.

You can control your student roster from the 'Students' Screen.

You can add new students from the blue button top right, or you can manage / delete students in the main list. You can also sort by status (at the bottom of the table) or you can increase the students per page too.

On the student profile, you'll see an avatar, and some key metrics in the top bar. Any open safeguarding cases involving the student will show at the top of the page, and you'll see labels like Safeguarding, SENCO or Medical here too.

Next, you'll see onboarding. This is a 'quick-flight' bar, which helps you see what essentials are complete. We set First and Last Name, Avatar, DOB, Gender and Address as default.

Then we move onto the full profile, which we encourage you to explore and 'have a play with' initially, on a dummy student profile, to fully understand the various fields and boxes.

Here are a few key pointers;

Heading to the CLASSES tab will show you any classes the student is linked up to.

The PROGRESSION tab will show you any belts or grades linked to the student. This could be multiple grades, if you have more than one distinct style in place within the club.

The DOCUMENTS tab shows any template documents you've created. You can create documents like licence slips, membership certificates, onboarding forms and so on from the 'Certificates' module. Make sure you create the certificate as a 'Student Document' rather than a 'Grading Certificate'.

Finally, there's a NOK (Next of Kin) tab. This is important for version 3, as it will decide on how parents access their children's accounts.

You'll see any parents details on the 'NOK' tab for quick access in an emergency. You can also add an existing NOK to any student profile, or you can use the 'Create New' function to quickly setup a new next of kin emergency contact.

Attendance tracking is a core component within our MyBMABA Club Manager.

Select your lesson, and then press Filter;

On the attendance screen, you can quickly mark a student as present (blue tick), absent (red cross) or no record (white default o). Any scheduled cancellations are shown with the yellow disruption icon, to stop any attendance being accidentally recorded.

You can filter based on dates, looking through cycles such as Last 7 days, Last 30 Days, This Month, Last Month or Custom Dates to help you really focus down on specific attendances.

You can also assign existing students, create new students, or remove students from the class from the two buttons at the bottom right of the screen.

Once you've tracked attendance, you can track grade progression.

Select the belt or syllabi you want to assess progression against;

You'll then see progress for your students, with their name, student ID, belt visual, any tags assigned, attendance, date of last grading and the action button.

In this preview, we've hovered over the first student, Olivia, and you'll note the system shows attendance of 10/24, to help you be clear on the current progress.

Should clubs operate on attendance based progression exclusively?

Of course not! As a club, you'll be best placed to decide which metrics you work against when assessing grading readiness. The most important thing to be sure about is the student's technical proficiency to move forward. That said, its absolutely best practice to setup 'expected milestones' - roughly standardised 'expected sessions needed' to help you understand where a student is at.

For example, if you typically grade once every 4 months and expect a student to attend once per week, you might have 12 Sessions between each grade. If a student trains twice per week, they may be hitting that upper end of the attendance requirement faster than others. It doesn't mean they get to move forward - it's just a marker for you and you can hold them fully complete until the grading arrives. Likewise, a student who does complete the required sessions might not be technically ready to progress, and this bar can help you spot those falling behind, pushing ahead, and those right on track as expected.

Now let's look at the actions button;

The actions button shows a summary of the student's grading status.

You can move them forward or backward (we wouldn't expect clubs to demote in a real environment, but you may need to do so as students move between Junior and Adult belts, etc) via the 'belt' drop-down;

The current belt is shown in grey. Select the new belt, and press Save.

Tags are an essential part of many clubs who wish to track aspects of development ahead of gradings, especially with children's classes. You can head to the 'tags' toggle to assign a tag. Just select a tag, and press Save.

You'll see tags on the main roster for quick-reference;

Hovering or clicking the tag will remind you what it's for, based on your tag name.

We've built in the ability for you to adjust the total sessions required on an individual basis. You can increase or decrease. To decrease, use -4 to reduce the required session count by 4. Enter a positive numeric value (i.e: 6) to increase by 6 sessions. This can be really helpful when you're fine-tuning readiness to grade, and want to extend and return to review a student's readiness at a set future interval, or where a student is making excellent progress (or coming to you with an existing grade) and you may want to get them ready for a grading sooner.

We've included a handy notes section, which can be used to record internal notes about the student's grade. Notes travel with the student grade to grade, so they won't disappear if you promote them.

You can create dynamically infilled certificates from the 'Certificates' tab. You can create or design these from certificates module. Once created, you can effortlessly issue professional, uniformed and grade specific certification from here for any of your students.

We know that many clubs struggle to accurately manage, oversee and record gradings, which is why we created a lightweight grading module.

From this dashboard, you'll see any current, past or future gradings;

You can click 'Score' to go back in and see past results for gradings already completed, and 'Edit' to make changes to upcoming gradings too.

Click 'Add Session' to create a new grading. Here's an overview of the setup modal;

Start by setting up the basic parameters - who, where and when.

Then, create a pass mark. This should be the total score you'll require a student to obtain 'across the board' in all specific criteria you wish to assess. For example, if you want to assess across 5 criteria with a maximum of ten points in each, your maximum score would be 50. You may want to allow some headway and set the passmark at 40 - or 45 - it's up to you and your club what this should be.

The criteria can be as broad or as specific as you need it. Some clubs enter each specific technique and kata, some just use broad categorisations and then increase the score to, for example, 100.

Next, select who's grading;

You may see the same student twice, if they hold multiple belts across different styles, so look out for the belt name at the bottom left corner. Once you've selected those grading, press 'Create Session'.

To administer the grading, click 'SCORE'.

You'll see the criteria you've selected show up in a table, with students along the side and techniques across the top. If you have an extensive criteria, you may need to scroll along the columns to record all data.

TIP:

Using the two collapsing sidebar buttons can help hide the sidebar menu and toggle full width, making it easier to record multiple columns. After a certain number, horizontal scrolling will be required.

Wait until you see confirmation before navigating away;

Tasks form a central part of managing the 'must do' and 'to do' aspects that busy up club admin. We've created a synchronised module just for this.

The tasks screen makes it easy to track tasks, based on state of progress, urgency, due dates and other classifications.

You can set tasks as PENDING, IN PROGRESS, ON HOLD or COMPLETED.

When creating tasks, you can quickly identify deadlines, priorities and attach documents or files too;

All tasks automatically show in your calendar, to help with visual deadlines and to-do stacking;

Our calendar tool is a unique and useful tool that helps to bring together various aspects of the MyBMABA Club Manager.

Your calendar, which initially shows in a default 'Month' overview but can be toggled between Week, Day and a List format if preferred, will automatically show you all of your classes, gradings, tasks, one-off sessions and appointments;

The differing view formats make it easy to see what's coming up too;

You can click on anything in your calendar to see an overview, where you can click 'manage' to go into that specific module and interact with it.

You can also create appointments, to help with one-off meetings, dates, calls and so on;

Whilst all appointments will show in the diary and dashboard, you can also click on the appointments tab for a dedicated list;

You'll see these appointments from the dashboard too, for ease of reference;

Our logbook provides access to a robust, secure and interactive place where you can create, store and update risk assessments, incident reporting logs and concussion reports.

From the logbook, press 'Add Logbook' and you'll be met with the Risk Assessment screen on the first tab. Infill the details, and upload your attached document. If you need help completing a risk assessment, we have a digital risk assessment tool in MyBMABA, available here.

Once saved, you can easily view existing risk assessments, and access the document.

From the 'create logbook' button, on the header bar, click 'Incident Log' to create an incident report.

Just as with risk assessments, you can then 'view' the log at anytime for a summary view;

A major feature of our Club Management Platform is the Concussion Report and Management Tool. You'll find it under 'Concussion Report' on the header bar;

We've built the reporting tool to assist you in the decision making process, with prompts on certain 'negative' conditions to ensure you understand potential 'must-do' obligations or liabilities. These are advisories, but it is important clubs understand the grave importance we place on Concussion & Head Injury Management. We have a dedicated policy and support in MyBMABA.

As with all our other reporting tools, it's fast and easy to see the full report and to make changes;

Our industry-leading safeguarding module allows for confidential reporting and case management of any club level safeguarding concerns.

Safeguarding Passwords

All cases are automatically password protected, for privacy.

Please be careful choosing your password, as our team can not help you regain access if you lose or forget the password here.

For involved persons, you can select multiple students concerned;

Below, the system will automatically include NOK information from your records;

Once saved, you'll be able to see all of your cases and their status from the safeguarding screen;

In order to view, you'll be asked to enter the case password;

This will then show you an onscreen summary, with an easy to use export/print function should you need to escalate to BMABA, LADO or any other authority;

We've built in the ability to quickly and easily generate either grading certificates, or club documents such as licence slips or membership certificates. You'll find these under the certificates module.

Certificates can be generated from two places in the system;

To create a new base certificate design, open the certificate module and press 'Add Certificate'. From there, name it, upload the base graphic design you intend to be the non-custom aspect of the certificate, and then select whether it's a grading certificate or a Student Document.

To edit the base design, click 'Builder';

On the editor page, you'll see you can add any of the applicable student fields - be it grading related or club profile related, and you can add it to your base club template. When you're ready, save. When you come to create the custom document in either the grade progression tab or the student profile, you'll have a 'pre-flight' chance to adjust any setup before merging your first PDF or image based export.

We feel too many clubs find the expensive and often complicated nature of accounting software such as Xero can be prohibitive. That's why we've included an easy to use book-keeping feature, under Accounting.

We want to be clear; our accounting system is not a substitute for a formal book-keeping or accounting platform and you should consult your accountant for specific guidance, but we do know lots of clubs who have exported their work from this module, and have found their accountants quite happy to work with the data output.

You can pick and choose which parts you wish to use, but we'll explore the full setup.

Let's start with;

Start by setting your monthly budget. The Save.

You'll see this update on the Overview dashboard and this will then help you keep track, at a glance, on performance.

To setup the module, head to Categories. Input all of the categories you intend to track against, for income and outgoings.

Once this is complete, head to Accounts and complete the same setup, adding any accounts you intend to track against.

You can now import transactions, via the Import tab and we do include a dummy CSV you can match data against for quick input. When time comes to share access, the Export Transactions tab will allow you to easily do that too with lots of options around which periods and filters you wish to export against.

Alternatively, you can manually add Transactions at any time from the Transactions tab;

From here, it's easy to record incoming or outgoing transactions, and to assign it to categories and/or accounts;

For this example, we're using the template CSV via the Import screen, and we've populated this with our 'real' transactions;

We'll now upload this CSV via the import box.

Once complete, confirmation is shown on-screen;

On the transactions tab, we can now see the full details;

Clicking edit on any transaction allows you to edit the specifics, or update notes / add attachments, etc;

Back on the account dashboard you'll now see an overview of your accounting position, with categorised spending breakdown and an assessment of your budget;

Your accounting dashboard helps you see a snapshot of your financial help, and an overview of patterns and outgoings etc.

Our Business Management module makes it easy for you to undertake a deep-dive strategic planning plan for your club, modelling various outcomes and possibilities.

Start by working through each tab, in which ever order you prefer;

It will ask you for all aspects of club finances - from basics like your average outgoings and projected income, to areas of potential growth, class structuring and financial stability.

At any point, you can head back to the dashboard for a comprehensive summary. This helps you then go back in to refine, replan and recraft as needed.

Finally, on the dashboard we include the option to adding any form of VAT or other taxation. This helps you plan ahead, and understand any 'real balance' left after HMRC Self Assessment, corporation tax or VAT has been applied.