As a gym owner, you know how valuable time is. Once it’s gone, it’s gone—and that’s time you could’ve spent growing your business. That’s why adopting a time-saving approach is essential to reaching your gym’s goals, generating more revenue, and increasing profits.
Day-to-day operations and administrative tasks can eat up hours, but with the right system, you can streamline those tasks and free up time for business growth activities. Plus, it helps you save resources, reduce errors, promote safety, and enhance member experience.
📖 Read more: How to Level Up Your Gym Business
Gym management software takes the heavy lifting off your plate by automating processes that normally eat up your time. In this guide, we’ll show you:
- What gym management software is
- How saving time can boost your business
- The top 12 time-saving features you should know
- How to get the most from those features
Let’s dive in. 👇
What is Gym Management Software?
Gym management software (GMS) is a digital product that provides tools to help gym owners complete gym-related workloads much faster and more efficiently than manual processes. It can offer various features primarily available through member and staff channels. For these reasons, implementing gym management software in your gym business can help it run more efficiently and cost-effectively.
A gym management software solution like The Kilo Stack often features reporting and analytic tools to monitor your gym’s performance, revenue trends, and member retention. With these data-driven insights, you can make more informed decisions, saving even more time in your daily business operations.
How Saving Time Helps Grow Your Gym Business
Customer experience is the new battleground in business. This is why 88% of businesses make it a top priority. Also, an Esteban Kolsky study found that 72% of clients will share positive customer experiences with six or more people.
In the gym world, member experience drives retention, engagement, and referrals. By automating time-consuming tasks, gym management software frees up time for you to focus on delivering exceptional member experiences.
For example, the Kilo Stack automates all the supporting tasks in the background, allowing you and your staff to devote more time to your members. Kilo streamlines and improves core duties like:
- Generating fitness schedules
- Staff management
- Member engagement
- Payment processing
- Booking classes
- Report generation
💡 To save even more time and boost gym growth, it’s best to choose gym management software features that tackle the areas eating up your most valuable work hours and resources.
Top 12 Time-Saving Features of Gym Management Software
While these features offer plenty of benefits, they’re on this list because they offer the best time-saving qualities.
Let’s explore each one in more detail. 👇
1. Online Bookings and Class Schedule Management
A primary feature of gym management software is online booking and scheduling, allowing members to easily reserve spots in classes or book personal training sessions. This feature can replace time-consuming phone calls or in-person scheduling, saving both your staff and members valuable time. Additionally, automatic reminders reduce the time spent managing no-shows and last-minute changes to class schedules.
From a managerial standpoint, this software helps you save time when:
✅ Building and posting timetables
✅ Holding special events
✅ Allowing staff to track and organize their daily schedules
✅ Managing bookings and class schedules across all devices and channels
Quality gym management software allows you to manage various events based on their specific needs. For example, if you want to create a personal training program with in-gym training sessions, the scheduling feature lets you offer dedicated time slots that clients can easily book through the app on any device. This same convenience extends to:
- Classes
- Appointments
- Monthly subscriptions
You can also offer pre-scheduled programs, allowing members to sign up for a four-week course or an entire program instead of time slots. Your membership can have the option of a one-time or single-session fee for the programs. Regardless of your booking and scheduling needs, this feature is flexible enough to manage various activities essential to your gym business.
2. Membership Management
Gym management software is a great time saver for membership management. It acts as a central hub for all member information, letting you quickly access contact details, attendance history, membership status, and personal preferences. This tool makes it easy to track attendance, monitor engagement, and complete other member management tasks. As a result, you can substantially cut down on the time spent on these these administrative duties.
💡 If you're looking to boost your marketing campaigns, a top gym management solution like Kilo can automate your outreach and help generate leads for your gym. It also tracks your leads and assigns them to your staff. With these tools in place, you’ll have more time to focus on marketing strategies and follow-ups.
You can save even more time with auto-renew and auto-pay membership features. These tools can eliminate the inefficiencies of manual processing. For instance, when members upload a membership card online, the software can auto-charge the card on their renewal date—whether it’s monthly, quarterly, or annually.
3. Mobile App Integration
Integrating mobile apps into your gym management system can save your members and staff time in several ways. For example, members can use their smartphones to:
- Make payments
- Book classes
- Receive notifications
- Monitor fitness progress
This feature can save your members a trip to the front desk to handle these matters. As a result, you and your staff can have more time to enhance member experience.
💡 Mobile app technology also provides a direct communication channel to keep members informed and engaged.
4. Staff Management and Payroll
Managing staff, tracking hours, and handling payroll often consume a lot of a gym manager’s time. But with quality gym management software, much of this can be automated. It allows you to:
- Create and edit staff schedules
- Track attendance
- Manage time-off requests and substitutions
- Evaluate performance
💡 Integrated payroll features also enable automatic calculations of wages, taxes, and deductions, making your payroll process more seamless and efficient.
5. Inventory Management
If you sell merchandise at your gym or plan to, gym management software can save you hours typically spent on inventory management. It can:
- Manage purchases
- Monitor stock levels
- Alert you when it’s time to reorder
💡 This feature eliminates the hassle of tedious, time-consuming manual inventory checks. It also ensures you don’t run out of popular products or lose sales opportunities.
6. Automated Marketing and Communication
Rather than wasting staff time on emails and phone calls, you can use automated communication tools like Gym Lead Machine to keep members updated on class schedules, promotions, new equipment, and other important notifications. These tools—such as emails, SMS, and push notifications—ensure smooth and effective communication with your members.
Automated communication features also allow you to launch targeted marketing campaigns based on member behavior and preferences, saving time on traditional marketing research methods.
7. Access Control
A simple, efficient check-in process is essential for cutting staff time at entry areas and increasing security. Gym management software has the ability to integrate card systems, biometric scanners, and mobile apps for seamless access control.
📖 Read how Kieran Williams successfully operates two 24/7 open-access gyms without staff, making $30k each month.
These digital tools eliminate time-consuming front desk tasks, freeing up staff to focus on member experience. Plus, members can avoid waiting in line by checking in with a quick swipe or tap.
8. Client Progress Tracking
Traditional methods of tracking member progress can take hours of calculation and evaluation, especially if you have a large client base. However, performance monitoring technology provides real-time data insights, allowing you to track your members’ progress effortlessly. This includes monitoring exercise routines, heart rate, calorie burn, and physical improvements. You can also use these insights to modify training plans to yield better results for your members.
Performance monitoring offers the following advantages:
✅ Members can access their progress reports through a portal, saving trainers time from manually updating and distributing reports.
✅ Trainers can quickly create customized training plans for each member.
✅ You or your trainers can assess a member’s strengths and weaknesses faster, reducing the risk of overtraining your client.
✅ Client performance insights help you and your trainer reduce accidents and safety concerns involving your clients.
Clients motivated by tracking their progress are usually happier and stay engaged longer. For this reason, performance monitoring promotes member retention, saving you the time and cost of constantly replacing old members with new ones.
9. Payment Processing and Management
Handling payments is one of the most time-consuming tasks in gym management. However, electronic billing and payment processing features can help you avoid time-consuming transactional paperwork, making it easy to process payments, send invoices, and manage member accounts. These features provide vital data like:
- Payment history
- Billing specifics
- Unpaid balances
- Processing details
With this information, the software can automatically generate payment reminders, set payment schedules, and create configurable billing cycles.
💡 By automating this critical payment task, gym management software like The Kilo Stack streamlines and simplifies the entire process for both staff and members, saving time and increasing member satisfaction.
10. Artificial Intelligence Bots
Gym management software like Kilo lets you use the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technology to save time on various activities, including:
- Marketing
- Customized fitness regimens
- Billing and payments
- Customer engagement
- Analytics and insights
For example, an AI assistant or bot analyzes your members’ preferences and habits before offering customized suggestions based on their goals and conditioning. This feature saves you and your staff hours manually reviewing each client’s record, writing new training plans, or modifying old ones.
📖 Read: How to Use AI for Better Gym Business Performance
However, Al assistants help you save the most time and resources by automating tedious administrative tasks, giving you and your staff more time to focus on your members’ needs. In addition, AI bots can provide 24/7 assistance to your members without requiring staff involvement.
11. Member Online Sales and Engagement
Gym owners often spend long hours managing membership sales, making it feel like they’ve sold their soul to the business. You can avoid this time drain with a robust online membership sales and engagement system supported by gym management software. This feature lets potential members browse memberships, sign up, and make payments without leaving home.
💡 Online membership sales and engagement give prospects a quick and straightforward way to shop price plans, payment choices, and membership options. It often includes promotional incentives and customizable landing pages to attract new users.
12. Analytic Reporting and Insights
Informed decision-making is vital to the success of any business. It can mean the difference between growing your gym and making costly mistakes. The analytics and reporting tools in gym management software can supply you with the precise, trustworthy, and timely insights you need to make sound managerial decisions. These tools help you evaluate key performance indicators (KPIs) such as:
- Revenue
- Member attendance
- Churn rates
- Retention rates
- Financial performance
With this data, you can make data-driven decisions that optimize operations, save time, and boost revenue. Additionally, real-time performance tracking allows you to quickly adjust gym operations to keep things running smoothly without costly delays.
Ensuring You Get the Best from These Time-Saving Features
Getting the best results from these GMS time-saving features largely depends on the software provider you choose. When you partner with Kilo, you can check off these critical must-haves for gym management software:
✅ Implementation: Kilo ensures a smooth onboarding process and offers active customer support.
✅ Software training: We help you and your staff quickly learn the time-saving features, with ongoing collaboration to maximize the software’s potential as your gym grows.
✅ Up-to-date package: Kilo provides the latest gym management tools, including AI bots, mobile apps, and more.
✅ Gym industry expertise: Kilo is run by successful gym professionals who are committed to helping other gym owners succeed.
Move Forward with Time-Saving GMS
Nobody can buy time, but these 12 gym management software features can save you plenty of hours by automating many of your daily business-related duties. This lets you leverage the extra time to focus on growing your gym and taking it to the next level.
To maximize these benefits, partnering with a top-notch gym management software provider is key. Book a call with Kilo to learn more about implementing these features.
