5 Health Club Billing Tips for Increasing Revenue | Exercise.com Learn: Your Fitness Business Resource

5 Health Club Billing Tips for Increasing Revenue

Using a variety of health club billing tips can help your business improve revenue. Sticking to a standardized payment schedule with automated payments can help keep your members, staff, and owners on the same page. Increase health club revenue by getting payment information upfront and establishing guidelines for delinquent accounts.

Thomas Barnett is a writer for Exercise.com and a Professor of Exercise Science at Keiser University. He has over eight years of experience working in rehabilitation, personal training, and strength and conditioning. Additionally, Thomas holds a Master's Degree in Human Performance, a Bachelor's Degree in Exercise Science, is an NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), a Certifi...

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UPDATED: May 11, 2021

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  • Increasing health club revenue is possible through a variety of health club billing tips
  • Automated payment reminders and late payment notifications can help keep health club members current on payments
  • Gym management software can help you manage business reports and payment processing/reminders

Part of operating a health club or gym is receiving payments. Using a few of our health club billing tips can help your business avoid any unnecessary financial losses. As a business owner, you’ll be working with a wide variety of clients and guests that might forget payments, change payment methods, or even try to get out of paying their membership fees.

Since health clubs face a relatively high attrition rate, some clients may agree to the terms of a contract but discontinue use of the health club services far before the contract expiration date. Adequate planning and versatile gym management software can be helpful. We’ll outline a few health club payment tips to maximize revenue and avoid undesired losses.

Operating a gym or health club can be a challenging task. Before reading our top health club billing tips, learn how Exercise.com can help your health club with business management, payment processing, and more by booking a demo today.

Top 5 Health Club Billing Tips

The growth of fitness clubs is dependent on the ability of the business to create and maintain revenue. With so many technological changes, fitness club trends have become more reliant on convenience. These trends have established a handful of important changes relating to health club billing services.

Creating an organized billing system is important to ensure your health club establishes strong and sustainable profits. Whether you’re against forgetful members or those looking to establish cost-free access to your facility, these health club billing tips can help you create a fool-proof billing system that increases revenue.

Creating a Uniform Payment Structure

One of the simplest health club billing tips is to standardize how and when you collect money. This means that all members will pay for membership fees on the same day, at the same time. This makes billing easy to track for members, staff, and health club business owners.

What if members don’t sign up on the same day of the month? Many health clubs accept prorated payments for the first month. For example, if you accept monthly payments on the 30th of each month and a new member joins on the 25th, they’ll pay in advance for 5 days.

Having a uniform payment structure is also helpful for your staff. Many health club receptionists will only work at the front desk until they become personal trainers, massage therapists, or another related expert. Organized payment dates make it easy to train a revolving door of receptionists or customer service employees.

Implement Payment Communications

Are health clubs profitable? Not if you don’t receive payment. Having an organized payment structure helps reduce the necessity for constant payment reminders, but it doesn’t eliminate it. There are many circumstances where members need reminders about upcoming or late payments.

Communication refers firstly to providing your members with automated reminders. This is especially helpful in case a member got a new credit card that they forgot to provide to you. With so many monthly payments, sometimes members can forget to update payment methods for each and every service.

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It’s also helpful to send an SMS to the member as soon as they default on a payment. Not everyone reads their emails religiously, so a text message can sometimes help encourage members to get up-to-date with missed payments. Exercise.com offers custom-branded health club mobile apps that help by sending clients notifications for urgent information like missed payments.

Incorporate Fitness Business Software

Whether you’re looking for help with member management, payments, or a combination, fitness business software can help your health club grow with outstanding reviews. Fitness business software should help you implement payment processing so that your structured payment system is executed appropriately.

Strong fitness business software will also help with client scheduling services, website design, marketing services, and more. Exercise.com even offers workout creating and logging software that can be sold and automated to be included in your clients’ monthly bills.

Workout software often helps provide clients, virtual or face-to-face, with additional workouts, fitness assessments, or nutrition plans to help them reach their goals. These items can be automated or sold individually with flexible fitness ecommerce software.

Avoid Free Memberships

As you might imagine, many health clubs and gyms are facing strong competition. In some cases, gyms offer free memberships lasting from a week to a month. This can lead to issues in some cases at the expiration of the trial membership, as the guest continues to use the facility without making any payments.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t offer trial memberships, but it does mean that you should make those trials money-bound with an operable payment source on file. For example, you could offer a one-week trial for $0.07 (a penny per day) that can only be paid with a credit card. The trial member would be required to cancel by the seventh day to avoid being charged for normal membership fees.

By charging upfront for membership fees, you won’t have to worry about guests abusing their trial memberships. It also helps to verify new members’ accounts are correct sooner rather than later.

Commit to Management

Many health clubs become lenient as time goes on. What does it mean to commit to management? Think about the following:

  • Manage bad debtors (overdue/canceled accounts)
  • Restrict access to non-paying members
  • Review financial reports

There are always some bad apples out there that will try to get out of paying. It’s important to be stern and block non-payer entry to the gym; sooner rather than later. This will encourage them to make a decision, which hopefully means paying for your health club’s services.

Overview of Health Club Billing Tips

Operating a health club is much more than just creating a class schedule and signing up members. To be successful, you need to properly manage your members and ensure you’ll receive payments in a timely manner.

These health club billing tips should help you establish reliable practices that can protect your business. Book a demo with Exercise.com to learn more about fitness business software that can enhance the management of your health club to increase revenue.

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