Top Gym Accounting Software for Gyms

When you are busy running the day-to-day gym operations while finding ways to increase your gym membership in a competitive market, it’s easy to ignore your gym accounting. If you try to save on costs by relying on the good old MS Excel or Google Docs for gym bookkeeping, you will make far costlier mistakes and lose a lot of precious time struggling to get the accounting right.

Professional gym accounting software is one of the smartest investments you can make as a gym owner or manager. This puts you in control of your finances and cash flows, minimizes the risk of serious accounting errors, and saves you precious time and money. In this guide, we consider some of the top-rated accounting software for fitness centers. This will help you evaluate your options carefully in order to make an informed decision.

Advantages of Using Fitness Accounting Software for Your Gym

Finance is the lifeblood of any business, including a gym or fitness center. Managing your accounts and cash flows effectively is the key to long-term success and sustainability of your gym operations. Here are some of the key reasons why using a reliable and efficient gym accounting software is a prudent choice for your fitness business: 

Automate Your Invoicing and Billing 

One of the most frequent, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks related to gym accounting is invoicing and billing. With good accounting software for fitness centers, this task can be automated and streamlined, saving you a significant amount of time and resources, and minimizing errors. 

Ensure Accuracy of Your Financial Reporting 

In order to manage your finances and cash flows smoothly, you need a clear picture in terms of profit and loss statements, cash flow statements, and balance sheet. A top fitness accounting software not only helps generate accurate financial reports, it also lets you track your income and expenses (and cash inflows and outflows) at any given time at the click of a button. 

Manage Your Payroll with Ease and Efficiency

When you hire employees to help in managing your gym operations, you have the responsibility to pay them on time, while also ensuring accuracy of pay calculations and tax computation. Professional gym accounting software can assist you with payroll management, generating accurate pay stubs and making automated computations of taxes and deductions.

Stay Compliant with the IRS Regulations 

To remain exclusively focused on running and growing your fitness center business, you should put systems in place that eliminate distractions and give you the peace of mind to create a thriving enterprise. By using proven and trusted accounting software for fitness centers, you can save time and money in terms of generating tax forms, filing taxes, and staying compliant with the latest tax regulations, so that you don’t have to worry about an IRS inquiry or scrutiny. 

In the coming sections we explore the leading gym accounting software you should consider to make your fitness center business financially robust and resilient.

Intuit QuickBooks

QuickBooks from Intuit is a globally popular brand for small business accounting software. While it is not exclusively designed as gym accounting software, you may consider this solution if you are looking for a big name in the world of business accountancy programs. 

If you have large or multi-location gym operations, you may select from the wide variety of services QuickBooks offers, including the development of a custom accounting package tailored to the unique needs of your fitness center business.

QuickBooks offers online and cloud-based desktop options as well, so the key is to choose a solution that fits your gym accounting needs. Their basic packages can help you track income and expenditures as well as manage bills and invoices.

Gymdesk

Gymdesk isn’t accounting software, but it is a comprehensive, all-in-one solution for the management of gyms. What sets it apart from some of the largest and highly renowned international brands in accounting software is that Gymdesk is designed specifically for gyms, fitness centers, and martial arts schools.

Gymdesk is great for helping you do your own basic accounting on its own, but if you need something more advanced, it can supplement traditional accounting software well.

Financial Reporting with Gymdesk

Gymdesk’s fast, appealing, and user-friendly dashboards let you view your detailed financial reports at a glance. At any point of time, you can get to know how your gym operations are doing financially. At the press of a button, you can get the status of: 

• Your gym’s membership acquisition, retention and turnover rates
• Monthly revenue generation and annual estimates
• Notifications on memberships, member status, overdue or expired payments
• Real-time sales reporting and tracking of revenue growth and profits

Billing and Invoicing with Gymdesk

Billing and invoicing for your gym members does not have to be a cumbersome and error-ridden process. With Gymdesk’s advanced billing solution, you can:

• Take full control of your payments by seamlessly integrating with Stripe, Square or Authorize.net using the recurring, scheduled, and on-demand payment features of Gymdesk. 

• Minimize payment failure rates to avoid revenue losses with the automated resolution of billing issues through re-billing and member notifications.

• Improve membership payment compliance with Gymdesk’s automated member notifications about upcoming payments, overdue payments, or card expiry.

Oracle NetSuite

NetSuite from Oracle is another global name in cloud-based accounting software, which can support your fitness center business. If your gym business is rapidly growing or expanding, this program may serve as reliable accounting software for fitness centers. That’s because NetSuite is designed to scale as your fitness business continues to evolve, and you can keep incorporating more support from the company. 

The highlights of Oracle NetSuite’s fitness accounting software include: 

• ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP is a scalable and advanced solution to run all your gym back-office and financial operations. 
• CRM: Customer Relationship Management or CRM from NetSuite provides customer upselling, cross-selling, and to-order management opportunities to grow sales. 
• PSA: Professional Services Automation or PSA from NetSuite is a set of cost management, timesheets, and project management tools, integrated with accounting capabilities. 

Quicken

Quicken is a user-friendly solution that can successfully serve your requirements of a gym accounting software. No matter whether you have past experience or knowledge with finance and accounting, you can use this software quite easily.

Quicken will provide insights into your gym’s operating expenses and income, and help you see what particular revenue streams are generating more income from your members. Once you know which of your fitness center services are generating higher revenues, you can make better marketing and promotion decisions and do your resource allocation more effectively.

When you use Quicken as fitness accounting software, it can help you with the following services too: 

• Generating, sending, and tracking bills and invoices
• Taxation assistance 
• Managing finances remotely via a mobile app

Xero

If you are looking for a low cost automated solution to perform the role of gym accounting software, you may consider Xero as an option. An entry-level subscription of Xero will limit you to sending five bills and invoices, and bank reconciliation will be restricted to a maximum of 20 transactions. While this low-cost option may work for a personal trainer, it may not be a suitable option for fitness center accounting.

As a gym owner or manager, you may consider higher membership tiers from Xero, such as the Growing Plan. Their app has an advanced expense management feature, which will let you manage your operational costs more efficiently. As accounting software for fitness centers, Xero provides you multiple options for generating reports, budgeting plans, and data sharing with your accountant.

Wave

Wave is a cloud-based online accounting service, which gained wide popularity because of its free-of-cost service model. This fitness accounting software supports its free service for sending invoices and issuing receipts through ads, and charges customers for tech support (tech support isn’t free).

As a gym service provider, it is usually better to choose Wave’s paid version, which will give you access to their full accounting services. According to the company, you will receive the following advantages and more once you sign up for a Wave account: 

• An intuitively designed dashboard, which a gym owner who is not an accountant can also use with equal ease. 
• A comprehensive picture of the financial health of your business, which you can access from wherever you are. 
• Meticulous tax management so that you are well-organized and stress-free ahead of the tax season. 
• Access to Wave’s in-house team of coaches for accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll.

Kashflow  

Kashflow is an online accounting solution accessible 24/7 for small businesses, including gyms and fitness centers. This gym accounting software provides intuitive, easy to use bookkeeping and financial reporting for your business. The software is designed to handle all your cash flow tracking, income and expense, and invoicing needs. 

Some of the key benefits of Kashflow according to their customers are as follows:

• Ease of use: You can handle it yourself without involving an accountant.
• Online access: No software downloads are required, and you get a completely web based access.
• Subscription model: You can sign up online, pay the subscription, and start using the service immediately.
• Easy data transfer: You can move data from Sage, QuickBooks, Excel, or Google Docs easily.
• Streamlined reporting: Automated reports, graphs, and charts to provide a snapshot of your business and finances. 
• Link with banks: Get an up-to-date bank position and quick reconciliation of transactions.

Sage

Sage can work as a reliable and affordable accounting software for fitness centers. The software has a user-friendly interface and can be managed through a mobile app or on a desktop. The company offers good customer support along with web assistance and tutorials. With more than four decades of experience, Sage software is trusted worldwide for accounting, payroll, and HR by more than two million small business customers. 

You can perform the following tasks and more for your fitness center with Sage: 

• Customize, send, and track your invoices 
• Forecast and manage cash flows 
• Connect with your bank seamlessly 
• Get paid faster from customers
• Get your taxes organized
• Manage payroll for up to 100 employees 
• Accurately compute employee pay and deductions
• Stay compliant with the regulations 

TopNotePad

This fitness accounting software has been exclusively designed for the quoting, invoicing and accounting tasks involved in running a gym or fitness center. By combining gym accounting software with database management in a single product, TopNotePad is able to offer the following features and functions:

• Generating quotes and estimates 
• Invoicing members and collecting payments online  
• Recording bills of purchase for gym equipment 
• Log operating expenses (such as rent, utilities, wages)
• Track cash flows 
• Prepare profit and loss statements  
• Calculate tax liabilities 
• Submit compliance reports

Conclusion

We recommend that gym owners and managers should choose a specialized gym accounting software that is built exclusively to solve management and accounting issues for gyms, fitness centers, and martial arts schools. Gymdesk is the software of choice whether you use it as a standalone accounting solution or as a supplement to another software program. 

With its simplified billing and smart reporting features, Gymdesk will help you streamline your fitness center accounting and free up your time so that you can focus on growing your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key features to look for in gym accounting software? 

Invoicing and financial reporting are the two central features you must have in your fitness center accounting software. 

How does accounting software for fitness centers help in managing member payments? 

Fitness accounting software helps manage membership payments by automating the billing process, tracking overdue payments and expired payment cares, and sending payment reminders ahead of time.

Can gym accounting software help with tax compliance? 

Fitness accounting software can improve tax compliance through its key functions of accurate invoicing, bookkeeping, and financial reporting.

Will I have better control over finances with gym accounting software? 

Solid accounting software for fitness centers provides a user-friendly dashboard with snapshots of the actual financial position and cash flows of the gym business operations, enabling better control over finances.