5 Key Features to Look For in Gym Management Software

Looking to set up a fitness center or transforming your existing gym business? Based on your research, by now you’ve well understood that in order to provide a modern and seamless experience to your clients and reduce your and your team’s work load it is imperative that you leverage technology in the form of a gym accounting software. The sheer benefits of accounting software for fitness centers such as billing & POS, cash flow management, accounting, financial reporting, inventory management etc. make it an absolutely indispensable tool. The accounting software when clubbed with a gym management software becomes your best buddy by streamlining the administrative tasks and improving the overall efficiency of your processes. As a result, you are left with enough time to focus on other business aspects such as marketing, customer relations, strategy, and revenue generation. It is because of the immense benefits of accounting software for fitness centers that today the market for such software is growing at a CAGR of 13%. So, as a business owner or manager how do you choose the right gym management system for your fitness studio? Read along to know the 5 key features to look for in a gym management software.

• Enrollment on The Go

A gym management software should be designed to enroll new members anytime, and anywhere. The enroll-on-the go feature has multiple benefits. Aside from pacing up the on-boarding process, the online signing up feature reduces paper trail, sends digital version of the Contract to the clients, eliminates double handling of records, and ensures complete transparency. Furthermore, some systems are intuitively designed to do more such as simultaneously create a complete customer profile and save it in the customer database. Ideally, the fitness studio management software should be able to accomplish these three assignments together.

• Quick Bookings

Often the clients take up memberships to avail the facility of working out in groups. Some members are more motivated when they are working out with others and prefer to choose classes such as Pilates, Spinning, Yoga, Zumba etc. This is where a gym management software immensely helps. It allows you to roster classes and send automated alerts to clients about the upcoming class schedules. The clients can make bookings in just a few clicks on the client facing app. The system accepts bookings and dynamically updates the number of confirmed bookings, and number of interested clients. This helps in managing class size and staff scheduling. Since, clients can make the booking at their fingertips the system allows for better customer experience. Certain advanced software also allow for recurring bookings and allow the customers to make bookings upto six months in advance.

• Invoicing, POS & Accounting

Perhaps the heart of a gym management software is its POS and accounting module. For every transaction that is generated, the system generates an invoice, and accept payments through multiple gateways. The accounting software then tracks these invoices and payments to auto populate the relevant accounting entries and thus reducing the manual work of recording every transaction and thus ensuring end to end traceability. Furthermore, the fitness studio accounting software is also equipped to handle recurring receipts and payments with complete ease. Clients can set up automated payment schedule for their membership fees, class fees etc. The gyms can automate their recurring payments such as rent, statutory dues, and other expenses. Most importantly, the accounting feature gives you a complete snap shot of your daily sales, weekly sales etc. and the forecast of your cash flow such that you can take informed decisions to steer your business.

Inventory Management

Address the elephant in the room. Undoubtedly the most mundane of all the administrative tasks, and prone to human error the inventory management process is both time consuming and uninteresting. To make it further complicated, inventory swinging either way is bad for business with excess inventory affecting the cash flow, and inadequate inventory leading to loss of revenue. Amidst the top 3 benefits of accounting software for business is inventory management. The software assists you in achieving the right balance while also ensuring that no theft is happening. With software providing a real time inventory count, the staff has to just physically verify the count. Moreover, by analyzing past sales and consumption data, the software provides alerts when the inventory needs to be restocked.

Reporting

A robust gym management software should be able to provide on demand reports. Whether it is daily sales, cash flow statements, revenue or sales the software should be able to generate reports in a single click that can be accessed anytime from anywhere. Leading software should be able to provide multi report selection with data variables as per the requirement of the management. With on demand reporting, managers and owners can review the business performance on the go, and take the necessary strategic decisions, including the ones to regain lost customers.

Considering the benefits that comes from deploying a gym and fitness studio management software, we understand that you may be tempted to get one immediately. In order to zero down on your selection, it is important to have a thorough understanding of your business model and its needs.

If you are a gym owner looking to set up new operations, it is the best time to go scouting for a gym management software as your business plan will envisage the dos and don’ts of your business. Some of the renowned names in the space are Zenoti, Phorest, Vagaro, Vigyr, Perfect Gym, Rhino Fit, ZenPlanner and Virtuagym. Personally, we recommend Zenoti for its best in class features, a highly interactive UX and very easy learning curve. The software provides all the above features and much more such as employee management, marketing assist.