“It’s all wrong.

All of the financial and performance data we had in our spreadsheet—membership renewals, class attendance, billing, subscription plans—it’s all wrong. There’s an error somewhere because the numbers are way off.” 

A local fitness studio has a big problem. 

Their five-person team uses an Excel spreadsheet to track the performance of their gym. 

Someone on their team has just made a major mistake.

This means they’ll need to: 

1. Manually retrace their steps, going line-by-line through their spreadsheet OR  
2. Revert to a previous version. Employees will have to re-enter their data from memory (good luck) OR 
3. Save both the current and previous versions of your spreadsheet and reconcile the data when you have time. This option leads to employees asking, “Which spreadsheet do we add our data to?”  

These outcomes are disasters. 

That’s the problem with using an approach like Excel; it can work, but it doesn’t work well. As your business grows, your problems with no/poor software grow as well. 

Understanding Gym Management Software

When it comes to gym software, most businesses gravitate towards one of four options. 

1. No software. Some companies rely on low-tech options—they write a customer’s name on a 4×6 notecard, and someone at the front desk manually stamps their card every time they come in. Missing or inaccurate data is a consistent problem. You’re never really able to fully trust your “data.” 
2. Low software. Companies use software (i.e., spreadsheets) to record important metrics and details of the business. As the business grows, inaccuracies, errors, and duplicate entries make managing the company more and more difficult. 
3. Frankenstein software. Some gyms cobble a group of software together to try and create a workable solution. These gyms often rely on a bizarre mix of workarounds, website integrations, custom code, and hacks to get their tools to work together. One mistake is all it takes to severely hurt their business.  
4. Integrated software. Software that’s purpose-built for gyms, handling all aspects of their core business—sales, marketing, booking, attendance, member management, billing, point-of-sale, and reporting. These tools integrate with other third-party tools you may not expect, e.g., keyless entry systems, payment gateways, and video calls. 

Which options make the most sense for a fitness studio preparing for growth? If you guessed integrated software, you’re absolutely correct. 

What Integrated Software Does for Your Gym 

From a marketing features standpoint, integrated gym management software helps you grow. When it comes to boosting sales revenue, there are really only four levers you can pull to do that. 

• Boost leads. You increase the number of leads you bring into your fitness business. This can also include increasing lead conversions over time.   
• Add more customers. You increase the number of customers (not profit) you close in your fitness studio over a set period of time. This is about getting prospects to buy, nothing more. 
• Increase margins. This comes down to a simple question—”What else can I sell to the clients joining my fitness studio?” It’s about increasing your revenue and profit per customer.  
• Increase purchase frequency. This is all about getting customers to purchase more often. There’s a balancing act to this—too many offers; you throw the value ratio off. Strike the right balance, and you can double your sales.

With integrated software, you can manage the routine tasks of your gym’s operations from A to Z. This means you can manage members and member data, personal trainers, administrative tasks, payment processing, and even facility access from a centralized software tool.  

• Gym owners get the data and reporting they need to monitor and improve their daily operations.
• Managers get the features they need to streamline gym operations. 
• Personal trainers have the tools and support they need to grow their fitness business.

You can’t really do that with a spreadsheet. You need the features that come with integrated software.

What Are the Key Features of Great Gym Management Software?

Great gym management software gives you several important features. As a whole, these features must meet a few important criteria:

(a.) It’s immediately useful—with these features, you can manage your growing business as it is now.

(b.) Help your gym to scale rapidly yet safely.

(c.) Collect, observe, and manage performance data over time. 

Core features (must-haves)

These core features are the foundation—the must-have features you need to manage your gym operations consistently. 

These core features cover: Cash flow, communications, systems/workflow, and legal management.

Here’s a short list: 

#1. Member management

Track member data, class attendance, and payment history.

Great member management is about problem-solving. On the front end, customers, clients, and students expect your team to secure their data, handle customer service and support issues, manage facility access control, and address any hygiene or cleanliness issues.

On the back end, you’ll need to manage even more—internal marketing, member retention, customer feedback, support, onboarding, financial management, and reporting. The unfortunate part about this? Many fitness studios choose to take the Frankenstein software approach. Great gym management software manages this in a single, centralized dashboard, keeping everyone on the same page.

#2. Billing and payment processing

This feature includes billing, invoicing, and payment processing automation.

Chasing customers, clients, or students for money is inefficient and messy. Asking them to update their credit card or dealing with declined transactions should be semi-automated. For many gyms, this is a problem.

Their employees chase down declined, late, and non-payment accounts when these processes could be automated.

#3. Scheduling

Manage personal training sessions, group classes, and appointments. 

Scheduling is an integral part of gym operations. Your personal trainers need an automated method they can use to book appointments and schedule calls with clients. Scheduling tools mean your personal trainers spend more time directly working with clients and no time playing phone tag with prospects they’re trying to close. 

What about group classes? Scheduling tools should provide groups of people with the booking, scheduling, payment, and reminder options they need to sign up for the events you offer. Growth is much easier when your scheduling tools are all under one roof. 

#4. Communication

Send automated emails, SMS, and notifications to members. 

Internal and external communication are must-haves. You need to be able to communicate directly with your employers, customers, and partners. Every part of your business flows through communication channels.

It’s not as important as good cash flow management, but it’s a foundational area of your business you’ll need to grow. 

#5. Reporting and analytics

Track key performance indicators and make data-driven decisions. With integrated gym management software, you should be able to track these metrics and KPIs: 

• Attendance
• Member lifetime value
• Member retention rate
• ARPU (average revenue per user)
• Conversion rate
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Profit margin
• Revenue per member
• Average membership lifespan
• Total revenue
• Churn
• Frequency of visits
• Leg (length of engagement)
• New signups
• Recurring revenue
• Return on investment
• Customer satisfaction
• Leads
• Membership usage
• Net profit
• Revenue per square foot
• Total members

These aren’t complicated reporting requirements, but they are necessary. If you’re using spreadsheets, how do you automatically track and measure metrics like leads generated (or your cost per lead)? If you’re using Frankenstein software, how do you get these apps to talk to each other? Are you forced to rely on additional tools like Tableau or Power BI?

Growth Features

Think of these features as value generators. They become more necessary as your business grows. These growth features take you from where you are now to where you’d like your business to be. 

Here’s a short list:

#1. Marketing tools

Create and manage marketing campaigns, promotions, and discounts.

How many tools do you need to create landing pages, add forms, and add tracking codes to your pages? Can you automatically route new leads to the right people? Send them to booking, scheduling, or meeting pages?

With integrated software, you can create content and marketing campaigns, send visitors to your website, and use website forms to qualify prospects. 

Track leads as they come in, then follow up with them individually based on where they are in the buying journey. Add them to automated marketing campaigns to convert them to members.

#2. Membership management

With the right management tools, you should be able to manage membership plans, pricing, and benefits.

You should also be able to manage and track members, leads, and payments at your gym to streamline gym management.

Is it a hassle for customers to upgrade or downgrade their membership plans? Can you pause, edit, or transfer membership plans to a new party (folding a personal membership into a corporate plan)? Are you able to add, adjust, or remove benefits and offerings in your membership plans? Which portions of your membership plans are self-service? If customers wanted to update their credit card data, could they do it, or would they need to ask an employee for help? 

These tasks are a daily part of doing business. You should be able to offload most of the heavy lifting to gym management software. 

#3. Fitness center administration

This includes managing studio bookings, classes, and instructors.

As boring as they can be, administrative tasks keep the wheels turning in your gym. With integrated software, you can automate 80% to 90% of the administrative tasks in your gym. It’s also great at sculpting customer expectations, which improves student retention. Huh? How does gym software do all of that? By setting (creating) customer expectations and then meeting them consistently over time.

It really is that simple. 

#4. Third-party app integration

Integrate with popular apps and services like payment processor and social media platforms.

No integrated software solution will meet 100% of the items on your wishlist. Yet that’s exactly what many customers expect and hope for. A  better option would be to choose an integrated software solution that works with most of the third-party tools you already use in your business. 

This is a huge hidden value-add. You aren’t forced to switch to new software and retrain your business. It’s a seamless integration that boosts performance and productivity. 

#5. Martial arts school Management (optional)

This includes managing student progress, belt tracking, and promotions.

Like it or not, promotions keep your student base engaged. Whether you have an official methodology or not, it’s an important detail that directly impacts your ability to grow your gym. 

With integrated software, you can take much of the guesswork out of student performance tracking and administrative requirements.

So, we’ve taken a look at what gym software should include. How do we identify and choose the best gym management software for our business? 

Choose the Right Software for Your Business

You’re about to make a big decision, whether it feels like it or not. 

You’re going to choose the software you’ll use to run your gym operations. That decision will impact every other area of your business. It’s an important decision that you’ll want to get right the first time. 

How do you do that? 

Step #1: Needs assessment

This doesn’t have to be complicated. You list the features and benefits you need to help your gym operations run smoothly. It’s a bit of a balancing act; you’re going to need to manage your needs at three levels: 

1. Business: What do you need your gym management software to do (e.g., schedule bookings, process payments, comprehensive membership management, etc.)? Take the time to add everything to your list. You can always narrow things down later. This assessment should account for the needs of your managers, employees, and the business. 
2. Contractors: Most of the time, this will point to the personal trainers in your gym, but this can also apply to specialists (e.g., yoga and Pilates instructors, gymnastics coaches, strongman competitors, etc.). You need to identify what these contractors need (not want) to achieve the results you want from them. 
3. Customers: Are customers looking for keyless entry integration? Do they want lots of handholding, or are they looking for a gym that’s largely self-service? Do they expect you to provide them with a mobile app they can use to manage their membership? What do your customers want from you? 

Now, rank each of the items in your list. You’ll want to sort these needs into four buckets: 

1. Must-haves
2. Strongly preferred
3. Nice-to-have 
4. Optional.  

You’re looking for software options that meet your minimum threshold (A & B). You’re looking to identify the best candidates that have met your minimum threshold. Those candidates are the ones who get to move on to the semi-finals. 

Got all of that?

Perfect, evaluate each option against your list. Treating this as a zero-sum game may be tempting—option A met 100% of my needs, so I will go with them.

Bad idea. 

If you do that, you may end up working with a company that technically meets all your needs but has uptime, customer service, or performance issues.

Not a great plan.

Step #2: Usability assessment

You’re shopping for software, so this is a big one. That’s the problem, though. Most decision-makers don’t think about it until it’s too late. Let’s avoid making that mistake.

First, we’ll address the most obvious question.

What’s usability? 

Jakob Nielsen, considered by many to be the father of usability, defines it like this. 

“Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use.”

Pretty simple.

You’ll want to sign up for a demo for each software tool you evaluate. You’re looking to assess their software based on five straightforward criteria. 

1. How easily can we accomplish basic tasks the first time we use your app?
2. Once we’ve learned how to use your app, how long does it take to do simple tasks? 
3. Let’s say employees take a break from your app. How long does it take for them to remember how to use it?
4. How many errors or mistakes do users make? Are they serious mistakes? Can they recover? 
5. How pleasant is it to use the design? 
6. Does the app do what we need it to do? 

If your software isn’t user friendly, your employees and customers won’t use it. That’s a financial disaster for most businesses (e.g., if customers refuse to use the app, they won’t sign in and are less likely to attend) because it increases cancellations.  

What does this tell us?

Usability is a much bigger deal for your gym operations than it is for, say, a manufacturing company. Everyone in your company will use this software. 

Step #3: Support and onboarding

Customer support and onboarding go hand-in-hand. 

When you sign up for a new software or tool, a certain amount of transitional pain is inevitable. You’re moving from the old to the latest—you’ll have to learn new rules of operating, train your team, and get help with the inevitable glitches, errors, setbacks, and bottlenecks that occur. 

There’s no way around it. 

You’ll need to define and compare your support values to the software providers you’re evaluating. Are you looking for a lot of hand holding and support? Or do you prefer self-service? Do you like to have a provider train your team, or do you want the option of calling when you need help? Take the time to think about the support and onboarding you want. 

Then, evaluate the level of support, technical assistance, and onboarding offered by the software vendors you’re considering. 

Think about the time you’ll need for training. 

You must invest time and resources to train your staff (and customers). You’ll want to prioritize the software that offers lots of support, a smooth onboarding process, and comprehensive training. 

Integrated Software is the Best Gym Management Software

Choosing the best gym management software isn’t rocket science. Most businesses gravitate towards one of four options—no software, low software, Frankenstein software, or integrated software. If you want your gym to grow quickly, I firmly believe that integrated software is your best option.  

Use the process I’ve laid out to find your answer. 

The right gym management software helps fitness businesses streamline their operations, improve member engagement, and drive growth. 

At Gymdesk, we pride ourselves on providing fully integrated gym management software that frees up your time and helps you grow.