I was asked yesterday “What is the difference between online schedule management and other forms of scheduling like paper, Excel, Outlook calendar, I-calendar or Google calendar?” I realized that to me, a co-owner of Volo Innovations, a company that does online schedule management, the question answers itself but lots of people don’t see the differences and think they are all interchangeable.

The first two, paper and Excel, you can create a calendar on and are some of the most common methods that our clients used before upgrading their business.

The last three on that list are all online but they all end in the word ‘calendar’ not ‘schedule’, this is the fundamental difference. A paper, Excel or online calendar is where you can enter your events or appointments for the day week or month but that is it; an online schedule manager focuses on management of your schedules and tracks, reports and bills for all of the scheduled events or appointments.

What does this mean for a fitness business? Control, without being a control freak.  You want to be able to control the business process or systems and billing for any services, memberships or packages the fitness business offers.

Online schedule management allows a fitness business to use the latest and greatest in software technology to advance their business and improve their business management, systems and billing. This is done by connecting all of the activities that are on the schedule to a powerful CRM (customer retention manager) and in-depth billing features. So everything that happens on a schedule is tracked to the member or client’s account and is either deducted from pre-bought packages or the software will store the activities to be billed for at a later date. No matter how you charge your clients there is a way for us to bill and track your money.

With Volo’s online schedule management system you can easily create new online schedules and manage them separately.

By having different appointments and packages tied to each schedule you,the business owner, have the ability to personalize the schedule based off of your business logic.

Addin this dynamic flexibility to your fitness company will allow you to grow, enhance, build or adapt your business to the often changing market.

Whether you decide to use Volo’s online schedule management or one of the calendar options you must decide what you want for your business.

• Do you want to grow?
• Do you want accuracy in billing?
• Do you want to be viewed as a professional?
• Do you want to know what your business is doing through in-depth reports?
• Do you want unlimited access to your schedules, accounting and business systems?
• Do you want a system that can adapt to how you run your company?
• Do want to save time on administration of your business?
• Do you want to save money eliminating costly errors?

If you answer yes to the above then you have essentially figured out what your business needs an online schedule manager or another form of scheduling like paper, Excel, Outlook calendar, I-calendar or Google calendar. The five options listed cannot provide any of those benefits to your business only an online schedule manager can.