As gyms are opening back up and gaining new members, seeing members again that may have paused their memberships or dropped off over the past 6 months, it’s important to keep track of these memberships and their invoices so gyms can actually get paid and can maintain a steady cash flow. With the influx of new members, that means a spike in invoices to manage. Keeping track of which members paid and when, which members haven’t paid and why - it’s an extremely time-consuming process.
Gyms feel the pains of managing a schedule, different types of memberships, payments, and debt collection without an automated solution in place. If you knew of a solution that could automate your entire billing process with just a few clicks - how could you say no?
Let’s see how it can be done and how much time it can save you and your gym!
Frank Trousselot has been involved in the fitness industry since 2014 after leaving a career in the software industry. He founded LIJFSTIJL Coaches with his brother Rob, and it has become a leading personal training franchise network in the Netherlands with 125 franchisees and over 25,000 members. LIJFSTIJL Coaches focuses on training, nutrition and coaching with indoor and outdoor workout sessions and 1-1 personal training guidance sessions.
As LIJFSTIJL Coaches expanded quickly, Frank was frustrated that his staff was still processing invoices manually. The process involved:
- Choosing the invoices & checking the selection was correct
- Exporting the SEPA file of LIJFSTIJL Coaches’ invoices
- Uploading the file to their bank’s portal
The bank then processed the invoices, debited the members’ accounts and sent a CAMT file of invoices back to LIJFSTIJL Coaches. Then the staff continued by:
- Uploading the CAMT file
- Checking which invoices were paid and registering unpaid invoices as outstanding
- Including outstanding invoices in the next SEPA file sent to the bank
However, if an invoice was still not paid after 60 days, members risked getting locked out. Frank was potentially missing out on significant income when invoices weren’t paid on time or chargebacks were made, because his staff needed to follow up on outstanding and missing payments manually, which was a time-consuming and error-prone process. When Frank started digging into a solution, he realized that it was possible to automate the whole process within Virtuagym!.
Since LIJFSTIJL Coaches was using Virtuagym’s all-in-one package, Frank could easily start automating this tedious process in the Memberships & Billing module.
In order to set up Automated Payments, Frank needed to make sure he had an online payment provider enabled . Virtuagym works with the payment provider Mollie in the EU and since Frank is located in The Netherlands, he chose this popular payment provider. To get started with Mollie, Frank created a free account through the Virtuagym portal.
Once his account was set up, he copied the API key into his Virtuagym portal. This was easily accessible in his Virtuagym portal under System Settings in the side-bar menu. He scrolled down to the Manage section, and clicked on Payment Methods where he selected his preferred methods.
In his portal, Frank toggled on “Automated Payments” and chose the frequency in which he wanted the invoices to be sent automatically - daily, weekly, or monthly. The invoices were then picked up at 2 am Netherlands time and sent directly to Mollie. To see which invoices were sent, Frank’s staff went to the Financial module and selected Outstanding invoices + Direct Debit or Credit Card with a daily, weekly or monthly filter. Mollie automatically updated the invoice’s status in Virtuagym from Pending to Paid or Outstanding if there was a failed payment or chargeback.
In this filtered view, Frank’s staff saw the first and recurring invoices that were sent to Mollie and could check on any exceptions. All recurring payments were sent to Mollie so the payment could be processed. Once a payment was processed, it was automatically updated in Frank’s Virtuagym portal.
Now LIJFSTIJL Coaches and Frank’s billing is hands-free and stress free. Frank has time to increase client experience, work on retention (which means more revenue for Frank and LIJFSTIJL Coaches down the road), and with the extra time, he can earn more money in different ways. The ease of mind alone of not having to manually process invoices was worth it to Frank. According to him, it really does “make your life easier.”
Now, with all invoices, payments and tracking done in one place, it saves LIJFSTIJL Coaches, Frank and his staff time and money. What used to take ½ a working day every month to export the invoices and review them, is now done in a few clicks. The entire process was automated from day 1 and there is no longer a need to track payments or send reminders. There is a simple interface which allows for oversight of who has already paid and what outstanding invoices are waiting.
