CLIENT MANAGEMENT SOFTWAREYou need to use some type of management software to manage your clients, billing, and financial operations. An excel spreadsheet with client information and billing dates will simply not cut it. Spreadsheets are definitely useful for a lot of things when running your business, and can even be helpful to track new signups and conversion rates, but complex tasks such as attendance analysis, client billing, and class structure are best managed using software that was developed for those specific purposes.
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There are a few options out there to choose from. MindBody, Zen Planner, and WOD Together are just a few.
Analyzing Attendance
Using Mindbody, you can run a report to analyze which class times, days, and coaches are most popular at your box. This is helpful when you are analyzing trainer costs, allocating your marketing budget, and determining which classes actually have enough regular clients to pay the trainer costs and any overhead associated with that class.
Popular Coaches
Another report you can run is your Attendance Analysis by Coach. You can use this to see if there are any trends or patterns associated with attendance based on the coach who’s teaching a particular class. After time, you can use this to determine which coaches are drawing more clients to their classes.
Analyze Your Conversion Rates
For this analysis we use a spreadsheet. Google Drive is extremely convenient and it allows you to create documents that can be accessed anywhere you have a web connection. You can also share the documents with anyone you choose. We created a spreadsheet that has the date at the top, and a matrix of all our class times for each week (much like you would see on any Box’s Schedule Page). Any time we get a new signup, we add them to the spreadsheet in the time and date they requested. If they do not show up for their trial class, we highlight their name in red. If they show up and do the Trial Class, but do not purchase a membership, we highlight them in yellow. If they show up and purchase a membership, we highlight them in green. Using this simple system, we can go back and analyze the conversion rate of Signups -> Arrivals -> Purchases.
Client Billing
Make sure you get a terminal that accepts Credit Card payments. This is a must. 95% of your clients will want to put their memberships on their credit cards. Ensure you get a terminal that links with your management software. Your bank is going to want to lease you a credit card terminal from one of their affiliate companies. Keep in mind that your bank does not care whether the terminal links with your software. If you get a terminal that doesn’t link with your software, you will be able to accept payments, but you will not be able to set your clients accounts to auto-bill. This means that you will have to track every clients billing date, and ensure you go in each month and manually bill their credit card for the appropriate amount.
Analyzing Attendance
Using Mindbody, you can run a report to analyze which class times, days, and coaches are most popular at your box. This is helpful when you are analyzing trainer costs, allocating your marketing budget, and determining which classes actually have enough regular clients to pay the trainer costs and any overhead associated with that class.
- Here is a simple equation to analyze your attendance: Let’s take Client Jones. Client Jones comes to the 9:00a.m. class 3-4 times per week. Client Jones pays $150 per month. Take Client Jones’ monthly membership fee ($150) / average number of days he attends per month (15). 150 ÷ 15 = $10 per attendance. That’s how much you earn each time Client Jones walks through your door. Do that same equation for each client that attends the 9:00a.m. class. The sum of those numbers is how much you earn each time you run your 9:00a.m. class. If that number is less than what you are paying the coach for that class, you may want to consider cancelling that class, focusing your marketing efforts to increase attendance at that specific class, or teach it yourself to save on trainer costs. Of course there are other factors involved, and you can’t make your decision solely based on numbers. If you know that Client Jones refers 3 new members a month to your afternoon classes, you may want to keep that 9:00a.m. class to keep Client Jones happy since he’s bringing you a good stream of revenue in the form of new clientele.
Popular Coaches
Another report you can run is your Attendance Analysis by Coach. You can use this to see if there are any trends or patterns associated with attendance based on the coach who’s teaching a particular class. After time, you can use this to determine which coaches are drawing more clients to their classes.
Analyze Your Conversion Rates
For this analysis we use a spreadsheet. Google Drive is extremely convenient and it allows you to create documents that can be accessed anywhere you have a web connection. You can also share the documents with anyone you choose. We created a spreadsheet that has the date at the top, and a matrix of all our class times for each week (much like you would see on any Box’s Schedule Page). Any time we get a new signup, we add them to the spreadsheet in the time and date they requested. If they do not show up for their trial class, we highlight their name in red. If they show up and do the Trial Class, but do not purchase a membership, we highlight them in yellow. If they show up and purchase a membership, we highlight them in green. Using this simple system, we can go back and analyze the conversion rate of Signups -> Arrivals -> Purchases.
Client Billing
Make sure you get a terminal that accepts Credit Card payments. This is a must. 95% of your clients will want to put their memberships on their credit cards. Ensure you get a terminal that links with your management software. Your bank is going to want to lease you a credit card terminal from one of their affiliate companies. Keep in mind that your bank does not care whether the terminal links with your software. If you get a terminal that doesn’t link with your software, you will be able to accept payments, but you will not be able to set your clients accounts to auto-bill. This means that you will have to track every clients billing date, and ensure you go in each month and manually bill their credit card for the appropriate amount.