Create Your First Program

A Program is the activity you offer, such as “Adult Karate”, “Junior Ballet”, or “Competitive Gymnastics”. Everything else in Kanri (schedules, memberships, levels, billing access) connects back to programs, so this is the right place to start.

Step 1: Create the program

You need permission to manage programs. If the creation controls are missing, ask your school’s administrator to check your role.

1. Go to Programs in the main navigation.
2. Click New Program.
3. Give it a Name (e.g. “Adult Karate”).
4. Click Create Program.

That’s it. The program now exists and you can start adding classes and levels to it.

Tip

On Professional and Enterprise plans you’ll also see a Show on Lead Page toggle (controls whether this program appears on your public enrolment page) and fields for attaching waiver document templates. You can leave those for now and configure them later when you set up your lead page or documents.

Step 2: Add a class

A Class is a named type of training within a program. For example, within “Adult Karate” you might have “Beginner Karate”, “Competition Class”, and “Open Mat”.

1. Open Classes in the main navigation and click New Class. You can also start from the add icon on a program’s Classes card.
2. Give it a Name (e.g. “Beginner Karate”).
3. Select the Program and confirm it is the one you just created.
4. Turn on Counts towards attendance if attending this class should count toward level promotion requirements. Check this explicitly rather than assuming it is enabled.
5. Click Create Class.

Tip

The class form also has optional Minimum Level and Maximum Level fields. Use these if this class is only appropriate for members within a certain rank range. You can leave them blank for now.

The form also has member and trial booking-capacity fields. Leave a capacity blank for unlimited spaces, or enter a limit deliberately. See Classes for program assignments and booking configuration.

Add as many classes as you need. Each class can have its own schedules.

Step 3: Add class variants (optional)

If a class runs in different formats, for example “Sparring” and “Kata” as variants of the same class, you can add variants. Variants let you distinguish what kind of session members attended without creating separate classes.

1. Open a class.
2. Find the Class Variants card and use its add icon.
3. Give the variant a name (e.g. “Sparring”), then select Create Class Variant.

Variants are optional. If a class has no variants, it runs as a single unified session type.

Step 4: Add levels (optional)

If your school uses a ranking system (belts, grades, skill tiers), add levels to the program now. Levels are entirely optional. Skip this section if your school doesn’t use them.

Creating levels

1. Open the program and use the list icon on its levels card.
2. Click New Level.
3. Give it a Name (e.g. “White Belt”).
4. Optionally set Min Classes and Min Days, the requirements for moving on from this level.
5. Leave Next promotion is at next grading off unless your school intentionally uses Beta grading-based progression.
6. Click Create.

Repeat for each rank. You can create all your levels first and arrange them afterwards.

Arranging the progression order

Levels are managed in a visual hierarchy editor. The order of levels in the list is the order of progression from top (lowest rank) to bottom (highest rank).

Each level row has arrow buttons that appear on hover:

• ↑ / ↓ — move the level up or down in the list to change its position in the progression chain.
• → (Move in) — nest the level under the one above it, making it a sub-rank. Use this for ranks like “White Belt 1st Tip” or “White Belt 2nd Tip” — intermediate ranks that sit inside a parent belt rather than between two separate belts.
• ← (Move out) — un-nest the level, moving it back up a tier.
• + (Add child) — create a new level directly nested under this one.

Kanri uses the order and nesting of the list to determine the full progression chain. When you promote a member, they advance to the next level in the chain.

Tip

The → Move in button nests a level under the sibling directly above it. The ← Move out button reverses this. Use nesting for sub-ranks (e.g. tips or stripes within a belt), not for the main progression from one belt to the next.

Next step

Create your first schedule →