It’s been nearly ten years since my partner Barry and I opened our own personal training studio. Like all trainers, we believed that running our own facility would be better than working for others – and it is!
But we quickly realized that for our business to succeed, to grow and to prosper we would need to be more than just great trainers. We would have to become – Business People.
Not the role most fitness professionals want for themselves! Our passion is for training, for working with our clients, seeing their health, their fitness and their lives improve. Every minute spent on bookkeeping or scheduling was a minute stolen from the gym. Accounting and data entry were sapping our energy.
If this sounds like you I have some very good news. It is possible to keep doing the training you love AND run a successful, profitable business at the same time. But you need the right systems in place to streamline your operations.
Whatever business you’re in the two biggest challenges are to control scheduling and to control billing. Time and money. Lose track of these and your chances of succeeding in a competitive business like ours are not good to say the least.
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Choosing software to help you run your business is a big decision.
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There are a lot of options out there and it is a bit overwhelming. Figuring out what questions you need to ask, what features you need and what is going to make your life easier and help improve your revenues.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Do you work day to day in your business?
If you do then you will be wearing lots of different hats and you will want to make sure the software has an interface that you are comfortable with for the day to day activities like booking appointments or making a sale as well as the reporting options that you will need when you have your owner/manager hat on.
- Do you offer services like personal training, massage and group training that needs to be tracked accurately to billing?
The more services that you offer the more challenging it can be to ensure accurate tracking of sessions to billing. You may sell packages for training, do monthly memberships and bill your corporate group training contracts at the end of the month. Make sure that the software that you choose can handle the different ways that you have set up your business in as few clicks of the mouse as possible. Be aware the number of clicks to complete daily activities can add up so think about that when you are assessing software.
- Do you want online software or desktop software?
This is a matter of what you are comfortable with and if you want to be able to run your business from anywhere. Do you want to be able to go on holiday and still run your monthly billing? If so then online might be the better choice for you, if you live in a remote area with poor internet connectivity then maybe not.
- Do you want to give your members control of their schedules?
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you finish training clients or teaching classes and realize that you have 4 emails, 2 voicemails and 3 texts from clients that need to change their schedules? If you can relate to this then using online software that has a member portal that you can set what your members are allowed to do will save you a lot of time.
- Are you primarily membership based?
Do you need the ability to check members in through a card scanner? Are you 24 hour access? Can the software you are looking at help you with these or will it have to be separate? When a member checks in will you be notified if they have a valid membership or unpaid invoices? You want software that will handle all components of your business in one. As soon as you start having to work with multiple pieces of software there is room for error.
- Do you want to accept credit card, is it critical that it is integrated with your software?
By having your credit card processing integrated into your software ensures more accurate data entry, if you are using a separate terminal you or your staff will need to manually enter the data into your software. Some online software will have an integrated e-store for you to use when you sign up for integrated credit card processing.
- Do you want to handle failed payments with your clients or do you want a debt collection service?
None of us like being a debt collector however you need to think about how big your business is, how close you are with your clients/members and how much you are willing to pay for this service. Typically companies that offer this as part of their software handle all of your billing and charge you a higher percentage on all of your payment processing regardless of whether or not the transaction fails. If you are not working day to day with your clients this might be a good solution for you.
I hope this helps you think about what you need to ask yourself so that you can make sure that the software that you are choosing is the right fit for you and your business.
To learn more about Volo, our online scheduling, billing and member management software enter your name below and we will email you the pre-recorded webinar to check out or call us for a private demo at 1-866-303-1038.