What is the best gym software for managing my facility?
In today’s everchanging fitness industry, it’s easy for gym owners to get all caught up in all the hype of the newest features or next greatest gym software. However, it’s important to remember that the features that wow you today might not be essential to your gym’ s long-term success. In fact, you will find that some of the popular gym software features come with a high price tag and are unessential to the growth of your fitness business. Therefore, it’s important to look at all the essential features that your gym needs before choosing the best gym software for your facility.
What should you look for?
Customer Support
When choosing a gym software partner, one of the most under-rated and over-looked features is the level of customer support provided. This is why it’s important to make sure your software company has a team in place to be able to support you from the start as well as in the long run.
Do they have a customer support team that can answer your questions and assist you with getting your business started? What about on the technical side? If there are issues, how will you get those issues resolved? Do you have an account manager that you can call? How long have they been in business? These are all important questions to ask before choosing a gym software. The last thing you want to do is to choose some fly-by company that you have no way of getting a hold of and will not be around for the long-term to support your business.
Pricing
Do your research on your software providers to make sure the software fits your monthly budget. Pricing can range anywhere from $49-$200 per month depending on how many members you have. Do they offer a flat monthly rate or tiered pricing? You will find that some gym software providers will offer tiered pricing depending on how many active members you have. So, keep that mind as well because the pricing can rapidly change as your grow your fitness business. Also, check for hidden fees. A lot of times you will find that some software providers will charge low monthly fees in exchange for high payment processing costs. Therefore, you should do a full business analysis and total out your estimated software and payment processing costs before purchasing any gym software.
The software might look good at first glance, but if you can’t go to your partner for support or see past the fancy features, you could trap yourself into a long-term financial commitment that could hurt your business.
What are some essential software features that you need?
An efficient software system should have the basic functionality needed to help simplify your gym management. What does that mean? The goal of any software company should be to make your life easier as a gym owner so you can reduce you and your staff’s time spent doing administrative tasks and you can focus on growing your fitness business.
The right software for your business should be designed to save you both time and money in the short-term as well as in the long run! Therefore, you should consider a system that is simple and easy-to-use for you and your staff members. Be aware of software vendors that will overpack their gym software with unneeded features, making it very difficult for you and your staff members to use. The last thing you will want to do is invest thousands of dollars in a new gym software system and spend endless hours re-training your members and staff. Instead, focus on the core essential features that you need for your gym and a simplified software system that can deliver on excellent customer support.
Below are 5 essential software features that you need for your gym:
- Membership Management
The gym software should give you the basic capability to set up your gym’s membership types for free trials, family packages, punch-card, and unlimited classes. This way you can sort your gym members by membership type and properly segment your trials, current members, or past members.
- Automatic Billing
The software solution will need to have automatic billing so that you can collect membership fees. The gym solution should give you the functionality to set up one-time or recurring payments to bill your members weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly from your software. Be sure to check that the software solution offers the functionality to run both ACH and Credit Cards transactions from within your software. You will find that ACH will save you the most money in the long run.
- Class Scheduling
Another essential feature for your gym is class scheduling. The software should provide the basic functionality to set up custom classes and appointments for your fitness classes or training sessions. With most software vendors, you can integrate your calendar on your website or mobile app to allow your members to reserve classes online or from their phone.
- Gym Check-in
The gym check-in process is another important area that you will want to simplify from your software. The gym software should provide a solution for your members to sign-in in person or online with key cards, mobile apps, or sign-in kiosks. If you are a 24-hour gym you will also need to look for a software company that offers a 24/7 door access control.
- Attendance & Financial Reporting
As a gym owner, you will also need the functionality to track your members’ daily and monthly attendance from your software. This way you can track the amount of classes each member has attended and who your loyal members are. The solution should also allow you to easily create and export financial reports from your dashboard to track monthly membership sales, products purchased, and member retention.
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