5 min
In the daily operations of a gym, there are always a bunch of processes that cost considerable time to perform. Think about the creation and management of schedules, membership renewals, the processing of invoices, and others activities. Luckily, with the help of modern technology, a lot of these processes can be automated, saving valuable time for your staff. In many gyms, like Akasha London , process automation using gym management software has been proven to save many hours a week. And less hours spent on performing menial tasks means more time that can be spent on growing your business and increasing your bottom line. Here are some ways how automation can prove to be essential to the success of your gym.
Scheduling
One of the activities that costs a considerable amount of time for gym staff is managing the scheduling and booking. But this process can easily be automated using a proper scheduling software tool. Proper gym management software with a scheduling tool will give you the option to easily create schedules that practically work automatically, allowing your clients to book their own classes, either online or in an app. Key benefits of automated scheduling software include:
- Online Booking
- Credit Session Deduction
- Automated Notifications
Online Booking
Before recently, booking and scheduling was often done through a combination of spreadsheets and lots of phone calls with clients. Manual work like that is of course prone to errors - it’s easy to fill the wrong spreadsheet cell. Furthermore, it’s just plain inefficient.
The amount of time spent on scheduling and booking can be reduced through using online scheduling tools and smartphone gym apps. Let clients book their own classes via a gym app. Imagine the time it saves on phone calls. It increases the user experience of your clients as well, reducing the hassle of booking a class and reducing the threshold of visiting your gym - a simple boost to engagement.
Credit Session Deduction
What if your gym works on a pay-per-class system? It’s one thing to have clients book for classes, but how do you keep track of who is allowed to attend? With an integrated credit system, members of your gym can pay in advance for session credits, which will be automatically deducted if and when they book a class. If your scheduling tool is integrated with gym management software for memberships, these session credits can easily be added to various types of memberships, which you can assign with maximum flexibility in terms of credit validity, costs, hours, and so on.
Notifications
Remember we talked about cutting down on the time spent on the phone? What if you have a waiting list for popular classes and a spot opens up? Or what if an instructor is ill and a class needs to be cancelled? This is where automated email notifications come into play, allowing you to notify your clients - and staff - whenever something happens they need to know of. Of course, a solid gym management software tool will allow you to customize these notifications to reflect your brand and tone of voice.
Membership Management
In many ways, automation can save you time when it comes to membership management. In a solid gym management software tool which provides membership management tools, you can not just add members and assign memberships to them, but also control all peripheral business related to memberships automatically as well, such as:
- Credits and Renewal
- Access Control
- Reports
Membership Renewal and Credits
In the past, gyms would keep papers, papers and more papers with the details of members and their payments. Now this is not necessary anymore. Moreover, by automating processes, you can handle membership renewals, credit renewals (whether it’s on a monthly basis or pay-as-you-go), periodical discounts, pausing of contracts, and so on. The possibilities are endless, without costing you extra time.
Access Control
We’ve talked about automated scheduling tools and membership management. But what happens when you link this to access control? By integrating these tools, the access control can give direct feedback to clients and staff based on information in the other gym management software modules. If a client doesn’t have enough credits, for example, access can simply be denied, at which point it’s time for a trip to the reception desk where they can immediately purchase more credits via an online payment.
Reporting
Any proper gym management software will visualize all that automatically processed data in the form of reports. Doing things automatically doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have clear insights into how the various aspects of your business are performing. That way, you know where to step in, and where to let gym management software do its job.
Invoicing
Gym management software can be used for automation of invoicing processes as well. Those memberships and credits we talked about need to be bought and paid for, after all. You can save your staff a lot of time, by adding a touch of automation to invoicing.
By having your membership management linked to an automated invoicing tool, membership renewal becomes trivial. Invoices will be automatically generated when they need to and can be automatically sent to the relevant members via email. Of course, make sure your clients have the freedom to pay those invoices in a variety of ways for a good client experience - think of direct debit, cash, credit card, online payments, and so on.
Is Gym Management Software Right for Your Club?
There are many ways to save time through the automation of processes in your gym. Scheduling, membership management, and invoicing can be much more efficient with gym management software. Instead of spending hours on the phone, tinkering with spreadsheets, or manually processing invoices and other requests, think about making the switch to gym membership software. After all, less time spent on manual tasks means more time spent on spreading your brand, strengthening the relationship with your clients , and growing your bottom line. More and more gyms, big and small, are already taking advantage of these management tools. What about you?
