Gymdesk Adds Fob-Based Door Access, Built with Rhombus

Membership status now controls the door. Freeze or cancel a member and the fob stops working — no second system to maintain.

‍

‍

Gyms have been asking us for fobs for two years. Today they’re here.

Gymdesk now includes door access built with Rhombus, a cloud-managed physical security platform, so the door and the membership finally live in the same place. Assign a fob from a member’s profile, and their access follows their membership for as long as they hold one. Freeze them, cancel them, let them lapse—the fob stops working on its own. Nobody has to remember to go revoke it.

If you run access control today, you know the version of this that doesn’t work: one system holds your members, another holds your doors, and keeping the two honest is somebody’s Monday morning. A member cancels in January and their fob still opens the front door in March, because the cancellation happened in one place and the key list lives in another.

“Gym owners kept asking for door access that’s actually tied to their memberships," says Gymdesk CEO Alex Cuevas. "When a gym member freezes or cancels their membership, the fob should stop working, without anyone maintaining a second list."

That's where Rhombus comes in.

"We could have built our own hardware," says Cuevas, "Partnering with Rhombus was the better answer: they’re excellent at access control, we stay focused on gym management software, and they built this with us rather than just selling us a product. That’s the part that made it work, and it’s why I’m optimistic about what comes next for our customers.”

What it does

• Access follows the membership. Freezing, canceling, or renewing a member in Gymdesk updates their door access automatically. Every tap is validated against their status at that moment.
• Fobs are managed from the member’s profile. Assign, revoke, and replace them where you already work. There’s no second member list to maintain and no information to enter twice.
• Attendance logs itself. Every entry through a Rhombus reader writes attendance to that member’s profile, so you can see your real traffic patterns instead of guessing at them.
• Permissions are set by tier, not by person. Decide once which doors a membership tier opens, and new members inherit it at signup.
• Every entry is attributed to one member. A fob binds to exactly one profile, which is a different thing than a shared keypad code that twelve people know.

Running the gym when nobody’s at the desk

This is the part most owners are actually buying. You set your gym’s hours—including different hours on different days—and members with valid memberships get themselves in. You can unlock a door remotely when someone needs it.

And if your internet goes down, the Rhombus door controller keeps working from a cached member list, so people who should be able to get in still get in. It syncs back up with Gymdesk when the connection returns.

“Our mission at Rhombus is to build true partnerships and deliver simple, smart, and powerful solutions that fit each customer’s needs," says Jeremy Gulley, Director of Ecosystem at Rhombus. "We’re building the infrastructure layer for physical security, enabling companies like Gymdesk to put our cloud-based access control right inside their software, so gyms can manage members and doors together in one system.”

Getting it installed

You don’t handle the install. Rhombus connects you with a certified installer who surveys the site, quotes the work, and does it. Hardware is standard 13.56 MHz NFC—worth checking what your existing fobs are before you assume they’ll carry over, and your Gymdesk rep can help you confirm it.

Availability

Door access is available to Gymdesk academies now. To get started, talk to your Gymdesk representative or request a walkthrough.

‍

About Gymdesk: Gymdesk supports 4,500+ gyms, martial arts schools, and fitness studios, bringing memberships, billing, scheduling, attendance, and now door access into one platform.

‍