FencR 1.6 Is Here: The Whole Front Door, From First Inquiry to First Check-In

FencR 1.6 is live for every club. It is our biggest release since 1.0, and it has a single idea behind it: the everyday moments of running a fencing club should be handled where they actually happen. Someone finds your club online. Someone walks in the door. Practice changes rooms. A coach wants to fence in the practice they just scheduled. A price changes in Stripe. All of that now has a home.

Here is what shipped, and where to read more.

A join funnel, not a sticky note

Leads and Pipelines turns "can I try fencing?" into a process. Build your club's join funnel with a visual pipeline editor: an intake form, a plan payment or application fee, class placement, a confirmation. It runs on your public club page, your embedded website widget, and the Find a Club directory. Every submission becomes a lead with a lifecycle tracker, so you can see exactly who filled out the form, who created an account, who paid, and who made it to their first practice.

Clubs that review new members can turn on approval-gated joining: applicants wait in a queue until staff approves them, and they see a clear "your application is in review" message on every path into the club, including Google and Apple sign-in. A traffic card counts visits to your join surfaces so you know whether the funnel needs more visitors or a better pitch.

Full deep dive: Introducing Leads and Pipelines.

The front desk runs itself

Put a tablet at the door and the self-serve check-in kiosk takes it from there. Athletes tap their name to check in for today's sessions; staff unlock the roster view with a fingerprint or face. Check-ins flow straight into attendance, which flows straight into analytics.

Full deep dive: Self-Serve Check-In for Fencing Clubs.

Say it on the session

Room changed? Bring your gear? Post an announcement directly on the practice and every enrolled member sees it. Staff-only coach notes live on the same session, visible only to your team. The session detail view was redesigned around them.

Full deep dive: Session Announcements for Fencing Clubs.

Coaches fence too, and now the app knows it

Plenty of coaches train at their own club, and plenty of parents who manage their kids' fencing pick up a weapon themselves. FencR 1.6 makes that first-class:

• Enroll yourself from the schedule. Coaches and admins now see an "Enroll Yourself" section on every session, right alongside the "Your Children" section parents already know. Enrolling spends a plan credit like any athlete; "Join as staff" adds you to a session without one. The button says what it does: Enroll, not an ambiguous "Sign Up."
• Your calendar shows your hats. Staff calendar chips now carry small badges: a filled star on sessions you lead, an outline star where you assist, a green dot where you are enrolled yourself, and your children's avatars on the sessions they are booked into. Filter pills narrow the whole calendar to All, Coaching, Mine, or My kids.
• Coach and lesson analytics. New charts track sessions led and assisted per coach, each student's lesson history, and taken versus missed lessons, so private lesson programs finally have real numbers behind them.

Billing that stays truthful

Two billing improvements round out the release, both born from real club support cases:

• Plan prices sync with Stripe in both directions. Edit a price in FencR and Stripe follows, as always. Edit it in your Stripe dashboard and FencR now follows too: the change syncs within seconds, your admins get a notification, an automatic sweep runs whenever you open the Plans page, and each plan card has a "Refresh from Stripe" button as a manual backstop. However a price drifts, checkout always charges exactly the number shown on the plan card. Free tokens and packs never route through a payment page anymore; assigning one activates it instantly with its credits.
• Double-payment protection. Paying an invoice from two browser tabs can no longer produce two charges. And if a member pays online at the same moment a coach records a cash payment, the second payment is recorded and your admins are alerted, instead of it vanishing without a trace.

This release also closes a set of security findings from an internal audit, including tighter role handling at sign-up and safer redirect handling after login.

Free, for every club, always

None of this is gated, capped, or tiered. FencR is free for clubs and members; the platform is supported by partners, never by charging you. If your club still runs on spreadsheets and group texts, this is a good week to try something better.

The complete change list lives on the Release Notes page, and every workflow above is documented step by step in the Documentation.