What you need as a fitness club owner or manager is the ability to track both the memberships and the revenue at your club. A gym can be a frenetic place when people are streaming in during peak hours, and you need to know which the paid-up members are and who needs to pay a guest fee. Access cards provide an easy answer, but this is where you need to have the software that shows not only who your members are, but whether they are currently up-to-date with their payments. Not many people sign up for a lifetime of membership, so you’ll constantly have different contracts expiring.
Handling membership fees
There are two ways of handling membership fees. The one way would be to notice as the person enters the fitness club that their membership program has expired, and get them to pay at that stage before entering the club. However, when there are crowds of people arriving, this isn’t the most effective method. Good fitness club billing software will give you constant reminders as to whose contracts are expiring, and these members will then automatically be sent a renewal notice. Once people receive this notification, you will probably have arranged for them either to pay by EFT or by approaching a cashier before they enter the club. This will make the whole process more stream-lined and efficient, and will go some way to prevent loss of membership from those whose contracts have expired.
Tracking members
Of course, if a contact has expired and you notice that the member hasn’t renewed the contract and has stopped coming to the club, this is a perfect time for the marketing team to contact them and enquire as to the reason. Membership records should be provided by your software, which will enable you to see your drop-off or cancellation rate, and to gain valuable information through following up on lapsed members. In fact, a good software system will provide you with every possible report that you might need.
It’s very helpful to monitor guest members as well, and to try to arrange for regular guests to take advantage of a contract if that’s how your club operates. Good fitness club software, such as website will also have many other important features and benefits to make the running of the fitness club highly effective.
