“Gym Owner’s Guide: The Power of the 12 Month Contract for Successful Gym Membership Management“

As the new year approaches, here at Ashbourne we are looking at how we can support our gyms as we enter 2023 and what we are able to offer members in order to stabilise a gyms income.

The 12-month contract is a concept that needs little introduction, and for good reason. A staple in the fitness industry since the 1970s, the 12-month contract became the dominant form of contract agreement in Gyms and Fitness Clubs. It reached such an extent that, to borrow a popular phrase from the time period, it seemed that ‘there was no alternative’.

However, with the rise of the internet and the budget chain gyms that have come to define city centres across the UK, the temptation has been to shift away from the 12-month contract. Is this fiscal prudence or another part of the desperate ‘race to the bottom’ that these chains have prompted?

In today’s article, we are going to examine the place of the 12-month contract in the post-Covid-19 world, determining whether it is an ailing juggernaut that is running out of steam or a pillar of the industry that should only be shunned at great risk. Few things are as vital to a gym or fitness club’s continued success as its ability to successfully manage the members and extract their membership fees. 

Click To Skip Ahead and Discover The Power of the 12 Month Contract!

1. Reliable Income, Predictability and Marketability

2. Why are 12 Month Contracts Preferable?

3. Collecting Money Methods

1. It is more than just a more reliable income, it is predictability and marketability.

While it is a guiding principle in many different sectors, in the fitness industry there seems to have been a slight bout of amnesia when it comes to WHY the 12-month contract was a mainstay to begin with.
This is, of course, partly understandable. With the rise of the ‘budget chains’ it has, as I love to say, come to resemble a race to the bottom. And under such pressure, it is natural that gym owners would look for an attractive, low-commitment response.

But as with all business decisions, it is important that we look at why this reaction is happening, without mindlessly citing that it is because ‘others are doing it.

The big ticket draw, especially in the pre-internet boom era, was stability. It was about creating an obligation to pay for your membership and creating an obligation that was long enough to be impactful and versatile enough to model business growth and potential sales on.

When it came to either seeking investment and buyers, the ability to state that you have X many members obligated to pay their Gym membership for the next 12 months, and Y members obligated to pay for 11 months was, and remains, a powerful pitch and testament to the value of a Gym.

We will cover attrition, loss rates, and non-payers (something of a specialty for us here at Ashbourne) later. But safe to say in our experience most of your members will be honest and pay on time. Most, if not all, should be signed up to direct debits so the act of manually paying has somewhat disappeared from the market.

We are now going to do a comparison of what an independent gym or fitness club owner can infer about the state and the value of their business if they engage in 12-month contracts or 1-month rolling contracts. 

First for our comparison, we are going to look at an independent gym or fitness club that uses 12-month contracts.

For the sake of hyperbole, we shall say this Gym only has 60 members. 

Membership is worth £30 a month. For a full 12-month span, therefore, the gym or fitness club owner in question collects £360. 

For the sake of neatness we shall assume that 5 members have 12 months remaining, 5 have 11 months remaining, 5 have 10 months remaining, and so on.

5 x 12 months = £1800

5 x 11 months = £1650

5 x 10 months = £1500

5 x 9 months = £1350

5 x 8 months = £1200

5 x 7 months = £1050

5 x 6 months = £900

5 x 5 months = £750

5 x 4 months = £600

5 x 3 months = £450

5 x 2 months = £300

5 x 1 month = £150 

Keeping in mind that this is done with an intentionally low number and a below-average, non-variable membership rate. Even still, just on these numbers alone, our gym or fitness club owner is still on track to make just shy of a contractually guaranteed £13,000. Even if he didn’t sign another member for the whole year. We will get into non-paying and loss rates later, but in our experience as a membership management company, this number pales in comparison to the majority that pay, and pay on time.

Now let us compare this gym or fitness club owner who works with 12-month contractual agreements versus another club owner who doesn’t and what happens to them if there are no 12-month contracts in place. Suddenly there is no guaranteed income and specifically, no lowest guaranteed income. Essentially this means, to both the gym owner and any relevant business interests, all that is guaranteed is the cash that is going in at the end of the month. 

So now we go to the tale of two owners who are trying to sell their gyms. The only thing they differ on is that one has primarily 12-month contracts, and the other does not. Both have assets, which are either the lease to the property or the property itself as well as any equipment and the like.

For our one-month membership gym owner, that is pretty much all she wrote. But for our 12-month gym owner, not only do they have all of the above. They also have a very pleasing stack of contractual obligations linking the owner of that gym and the existing membership. Not only is that an asset, but it is also a guarantee.

Without that guarantee, any potential buyer (or even investors) faces a very real uncertainty when viewing a gym. If there is a firm, legally binding contract in place across the majority of the membership, this helps provide a picture of what the immediate future of the gym looks like. This is even more vital when it comes to selling, as it means the new owner or owners will have time to convince the current membership that they should stay. 

The same applies to any changes that need to be made. This doesn’t need to be from a new owner but also applies to internal changes an existing owner may wish to make. Without long-term contracts, members can easily vote with their feet within a month if required. If a popular member of staff needs to be let go, or something needs to be cut back due to the current cost of living crisis. In a short-term contract scenario, members can organise in a month and leave. If they are signed into contracts of various lengths, that sort of rebellion becomes all but impossible. 

As such, you can see that the argument for securing cash flow through contracts is not something that can be discarded with the ease we sometimes see in the modern fitness industry. From the perspective of membership stability, investability and sellability, a long-term contracting system provides a lot of tangible benefits. 

Even if a gym owner has no desire to sell, for the simple health and stability of a gym or fitness club it is advisable to look into this method. 

2. Why are 12 month contracts preferable?

While 12 month contracts don’t fully protect a gym from the attrition of membership loss, they can help mitigate a large swathe of it throughout the churn of a normal business year (remember what those were like?). 

The reason that monthly contracts come up short in our mind is that monthly losses, by their very nature, are separated. This makes the attrition of a year look different when compared to monthly membership totals. 

To take some example statistics that have been seen. 

Opened ended, monthly renewal attrition rate  = anywhere between 4% and 8% in a given month. 

Twelve month contract attrition rate = less than 1% a month, or between 9% and 12% annually.

With even these generous figures, it becomes clear that the illusion of stability and sustainability granted by monthly open ended gym memberships is just that, an illusion.

The reason for the widespread adoption of this system? A short time rise in sales. Often you will hear the same story ‘We switched to primarily pushing for one month open ended contracts and our sales skyrocketed’. All well and good. Potentially even true. But as the late, great Jimi Hendrix once said, castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually. 

While the sales may skyrocket, keep in mind what they are selling is 1/12th of the value. Doesn’t sound so great does it?

3. Methods for collecting money, why it is important, and some thoughts on month-to-month membership.

As with any aspect of a successful business, factors flow into one another. One success can be supported by a multitude of factors. One failure can have multiple repercussions. Very little happens in isolation.

As such, it is pertinent to talk about not only the varying schools of thought on collecting monthly memberships but also the actual Collecting of monthly memberships.

For the amount of effort it takes to build membership on either a monthly rolling basis or a 12-month contractual term, it is important to make sure that 100% of the contractually obliged money is collected. 

A common mistake we see with gyms and fitness clubs that aren’t partnered with us is that they over-sign and struggle to collect. It is a story as old as time. The more members being processed manually, the more will slip through the cracks.

So ask yourself these three pertinent questions: 

Do you have enforceable contracts in place for all your members?

Do you have exact numbers on how many of these members are in each tier, be it 1 month, 3 months, or 12 months?

Is your membership being managed by a third-party financial specialist?

Well, we can help you with the third. Here at Ashbourne, we have over twenty-five years of experience in the fitness industry, servicing, administrating, and collecting gym and fitness club memberships from facilities across the UK and Ireland. 

From our bespoke software to our membership collection team, every aspect of our business is set up to ensure your members receive the best service and you receive every penny or cent of your contract.

With contracts built to suit you and your business, we are able to help give you the stable base for growth we’ve been discussing throughout this article.

Interested in finding out more? Don’t hesitate to book a demo with our team today. 

Conclusion

We hope we have highlighted why a 12-month contract could be the answer for these troubled times. While it may initially feel counter-intuitive, there is nothing wrong with striving for a stable income. 

A 12-month contractual agreement with your membership could unlock hitherto unknown stability within a gym or fitness club. And by working with a third-party membership management company, you can ensure that your foundations are solid and secured. 

So while the 12-month agreement may seem like a relic from a more civilised age, we would argue it has its place in the modern arsenal of gym owners. Don’t be lured by the short-term satisfaction and sales boost of a monthly contract. Both have their place in the modern market. 

“Should I Increase My Gym’s Prices?”

Certain industries and sectors have little to no reservations about putting up their prices. The council is all too happy to dictate when their cut will rise, as are the trains and the petrol stations. But unfortunately for some in the fitness sector, the rise of national chain budget Gyms has turned the health and fitness industry into an arena of constant price warfare.

As such, we will be taking a look at each of the most common questions and concerns that gym owners have to try and navigate in this minefield when they increase their membership prices.

We’ve recently carried out our own price increase in our test gym “The Fit Club Redditch“, so you can follow our roadmap for increasing your prices and building your club’s revenue.

All your questions answered (click them to skip ahead)…

Is it time to raise the price of your Gym Memberships?

How much should they increase by?

Should you increase the price for all members?

How should you communicate the price increase to your members?

Should you be wary of increasing your prices?

Is it time to raise the price of your Gym Memberships?

The aforementioned price war is not necessarily a bad thing. It certainly leads to a lower price for the consumer. But in times of budget squeeze, the ability to remain competitive will naturally come into conflict with the ever-increasing, real-value cost of running your Gym.

As such, when it comes to contesting the percentage of the population who will actually purchase Gym or fitness club membership, the subject is best approached with, at the very least, caution.

With increasing property rents and energy prices, the time has come where the industry is wondering if even the budget chains will be able to sustain their rock bottom price metrics.

 

And of course, unlike many economic factors that assail the industry, property rents and energy prices are both concerns that impact the spending habits of the consumer. The economical and societal upheaval of the last two years has left many consumers in a very different position when compared to 2019.

It is important that we keep this in mind when both considering and communicating potential price rises.

More than ever, consumers will be concerned about the value they are getting for their service.

We will go into more detail when it comes to communicating the price rise but it is important to highlight in this section that your price increase cannot come with no benefits. At the very least be prepared to showcase how your Gym has improved, is improving or will be improved. If you can’t showcase this, a price increase may well result in a net loss of revenue.

To expand, it is important we reinforce that increasing the prices of your Gym or fitness club membership is not a silver bullet solution.

It is possible that, if mishandled, your club could end up with less collected in membership fees than before.

This is, of course, a worse case scenario but it is a consideration that should be held at all points of a membership price review. As we previously mentioned, there is an increasingly price savvy consumer base out there as the public starts to cut unnecessary costs. Many people will be reacting in a knee jerk fashion. A poorly timed or poorly communicated price increase could be just the thing to cause an exodus of people looking to reduce their monthly expenses. It is also important to consider that the obligatory communication may alert sleeping members to the fact they are still paying for your service. 

If either of these take place during a price increase, it may be significant enough to reduce or even negate the benefit of a Gym membership price increase.

How much should you increase membership prices by?

While this is possibly the most important question here, it is also, unsurprisingly, the one with the most nuanced and situational answer. This will require not only a comprehensive review of your membership but also of the competition in your local area.

Before increasing the price, it is vital to research the entire fitness market in your area.

Understand if any of your competitors have already increased their price. If you don’t know their price previously, merely understanding the different benchmarks for different Gyms in your area is still valuable information. Even if you feel like an increase of £x is justified, if it prices you out of the current market in your area then it is time to ask some intrinsic questions. 

In regards to your current membership, it is important to understand several different aspects of their current situation.

It is vital to understand how satisfied your current membership is with the gym or fitness club.

The two primary methods of achieving this will be social media, reviews and surveying. Thankfully consumers are very willing to give their feedback in the internet era. Review all outlets of feedback for your Gym, including review sites such as TrustPilot and Google Reviews, as well as your most active social media accounts.

If your clue is not meeting the expectations of your members at the current value, it is very hard to justify a price increase, let alone a significant one. It is important to keep your finger on the pulse of your customer’s opinion. Too often we all complain of businesses being out of touch, but in a value driven, competitive market, being in touch is paramount.

Only then will you be able to have the necessary confidence in the service you are providing to justify increasing your price.

Should you increase the price for all types of members?

The answer to this question will once again depend on the nature of your Gym or fitness club. From our (very, very long) experience in the fitness industry, we know that Gym membership categories are as varied, if not more varied than the number of clubs.

The reason we have decided to write this as its own section is to reinforce that you should take into consideration every membership when conducting a price review. 

Even if you are perfectly happy with the price point of certain membership tiers, it is still necessary to communicate effectively across the entire business.

On the other hand, it may be that you wish to increase the price of every membership by a set amount. The difference between say, £1 per member and 3% per member could vary massively. Both are systems that have been implemented in the fitness industry to varying levels of effectiveness.

The economic logic here is simple.

Increasing everyone’s membership by a static amount, for the sake of argument here, £1, will give the sense of uniformity.

BUT

This method will represent a smaller increase in terms of percentage for your higher paying members. Increasing the price by a percentage across the board will, conversely, spread the load more equally, but perhaps extracting less from your lower paying members. 

Another frequently asked question during a price review is whether or not loyal members should get preferential treatment. Or whether the price increase should only apply to new members. While this can be tempting and even effective, it is important to note that an increase only on new members may take months, or even years to have a noticeable impact on the margins.

How to communicate the reasons for the price increase to your members…

It is vital that when you start to communicate the price increase to your membership, it is done in a calm, clear and empathetic manner.

The tone and professionalism of the communication will be important to get the point across that you are not:

1. Making this decision quickly or lightly.
2. Making this decision due to panic or in a reactionary manner.
3. Nor that you are making this decision due to greed.
4. That you have considered all possible options and avenues before making this price increase.

In order to demonstrate that the price increase is being implemented in a controlled manner, it should be communicated well ahead of time. Preferably this should be done in writing, either via e-mail or letter.

Our Rules For Gym Price Increase Communication…

This communication should lead with an acknowledgement of the current situation. The consumer is fully aware that the price of living, energy and rent is increasing and therefore this is a solid justification for any rise.

 

Focus on the improvements that have been made to the Gym and how the service is different to what was being provided a year prior.

 

Highlight the strengths of your gym or fitness club compared to other Gyms in the area and show that the price is still competitive.

 

Highlight other improvements that will be being made in the future and where the additional money will be going.

 

Make sure to brief all staff, most importantly the managers, about this upcoming change. Make sure everyone appreciates why it is happening, so that there is a unified response to any complaints. If the team running your social media is separate from your Gym staff, make sure that they are also fully briefed.

Ask staff to refer any severe complaints to the management team. 

 

If you have more than one gym or fitness club, make sure that the price increase and the communication is tailored to the area. 

 

Offer to arrange a face to face meeting for members to attend to discuss the price raise. This will give the sense that their voices are being listened to. Set an agenda that involves improvements they’d like to see given the new price. 

Should you be wary of increasing your membership prices?

While it is a decision that should be taken with the utmost care, ultimately gyms and fitness clubs should not be scared of increasing their prices. In the current circumstances it is an understandable and necessary evil.

While there will be some inevitable pushback, any gym should be able to effectively articulate that these price increases do not come from a place of greed.

With all the disruption to the economy within the last half decade, price increases have become an accepted part of life.

With that being said, it is important to understand that you still have to be competitive within your local fitness market.

It is important to understand the strengths of your gym or fitness club, what makes it continue to appeal to your existing members.

• If it is the advanced equipment, great location or versatile facility, that is a solid foundation for a small but impactful price increase.
• If it is purely that you are the cheapest gym or club in the area, then that may make you more vulnerable to the attrition caused by a price increase.

Further more it is important not to fall into the trap of incremental, yearly rises. This will just result in a yearly exodus of customers.

It is better to announce a one off increase that can be justified and clearly communicated to your membership.

You may want to look into offering members options when you announce the increase. This could include offering them a year of membership at their old rate if they pay the full amount upfront. While this will represent a loss of income overtime, it will mean that you collect a full year’s membership where otherwise you might not.

As stated earlier, the confidence of which a price increase can be implemented should be directly linked to the sophistication of the membership monitoring systems you have in place and therefore the knowledge of your members. 

If you are confident you understand which of your members are loyal and active, and which are perhaps inactive, sleepers or non-committal, then you will understand the full implication of the decisions you take when conducting a price review.

Want to understand more about your membership?

Ashbourne can help you gain unprecedented insight.

As you can see, we really get stuck into every aspect of helping gyms and clubs succeed. Our success is directly tied to the success of our partnered clubs, so we are always ensuring that we’re at the cutting edge when it comes to helping all of our gyms grow and market themselves effectively.

If you’d like to get in touch about how we can help your club succeed, then you can always book a demo with our sales director, Grant Harrison, who would love to show you how our full club management package can help you improve and grow every aspect of your business.

No man is an island as John Donne said, and neither is any business. Your Gym or Fitness Club will naturally be affected by the competition that surrounds it, and this has never been more pertinent as Lockdown is being lifted after this most recent (and hopefully last) wave of the Covid-19 Pandemic. 

As such, the Fitness Club and Gym market finds itself in a unique position. How does our industry act moving forward? After over a year of either Pay Freezes, Price Freezes, mass cancellation and the rise of Home-Gymming. It is time to take a look at some of the basics as we move forward out of Lockdown.

So to bring it full circle from the beginning of our introduction, do not ask who the Dumbbell tolls for, it tolls for thee. 

Keep your area or each area in mind

This will be easier for a Gym or Fitness Club owner or manager who only deals with one building.

Knowing the area is vital. This isn’t as simple as knowing the competition. Understanding transport links, demographics and other external factors is vital.

Not only that, it is important, now more than ever, to not take this knowledge for granted. Just because you have operated in your area for five or ten years, doesn’t mean it looks the same post-Covid.

Demographics

Some estimates say the population of London dropped by nearly 700,000 people over Lockdown. If you operate in London, that is a lot of potential members gone. If you operate outside of London, that is a lot of potential members gained.

Cities, in general, saw a reduction in population outside of a few outliers such as Bristol and Edinburgh. Towns and Suburbia saw an increase as the British population wanted to enjoy gardens more, and cramped city flats less.

This means the demographics in your area could’ve changed dramatically.

Working from Home

Not only that, people have started working from home more, and this is not a trend that shows any sign of abating.

Over the entire lockdown, many traditionally office-based sectors such as the financial sector, software development and investment all moved to a work from home structure with significant infrastructure investments.

Costly offices have been shut down entirely during the last 15 months and working from home has never been so widespread or viable.

As a Gym or Fitness Club Owner or Manager, you need to be looking at how this affects your place in the market.

Was your Gym full of financial sector office workers because of its position in the city centre? Was it next to a suburban development that has just doubled in population size due to the urban flight?

One of these businesses is going to have significantly more members, and another might now have significantly less. You need to understand where your former members are now, and where your potential new members might be.

This represents a shift in demographics in this country not seen since the Second World War and your Gym or Fitness Club would be remiss and essentially flying blind if you did not renew your market research into the new landscape of your local area.

Monitor your competitors and their pricing levels

You should never be neglecting the pricing levels, structures and tactics of your competitors, and whenever we are exiting a Lockdown is absolutely no exception.

Keep a close eye on several aspects of your local competitors’ pricing structure. Is there a noticeable reduction in price across all your competitors in an attempt to win customers back after a period of hardship and separation from their member base? Conversely, has the price risen due to perceived increased demand in your area?

Your pricing decisions should be based on real market analysis, so keep an eye on what they’re charging for various membership types. As we covered in the last section, this could be based on research they have done that has revealed something you do not yet know.

A high tide may raise all boats, but you can still be in the best position to exploit and utilise that high tide. Look for patterns in your competitors’ movement that may indicate where your business needs to look or what it needs to do moving forward.

Cancelled Memberships: What happens next

Even if your Gym or Fitness Club froze all your memberships instantly in March or April of 2020 when the Covid-19 Pandemic’s effect became clear. It is likely you have lost some members.

Given everything we have detailed so far with the effect it has had on the country, it is hardly surprising that you may have lost some members. And without open facilities to attract new members, this means most Gyms and Fitness Clubs will be in full recruiting mode.

This will leave most regions and localities looking very different to how they have done in the past.

For once, it seems likely that every Gym or Fitness Club in a given area will be thinking ‘How do I attract New Members within the next month’. Rather than some being at capacity and some being happy just to coast.

This means there will be a lot of competition and one area worth focusing on is the reclamation and consolidation of any members that cancelled during the last 15 months between March 2020 and June 2021.

Utilising your market team to make it clear your Gym or Fitness Club is back open is the first, apparent step.

After that, it will become a matter of offers, nostalgic reminders and events that will have to get them dropping those 5kg dumbbells that live under their sofa and back onto your state of the art equipment. 

Frozen Memberships. What happens next

From time-to-time your members might have a genuine reason for not being able to attend the club but recently they’ve had a damn good reason not to attend. As such, many Fitness Clubs and Gyms took the decision at the beginning of the lockdown to freeze membership direct debits until the time it seemed possible to re-open safely, once lockdown had been fully lifted. 

Rather than letting them cancel this allowed for the mass freezing of memberships in a way that hadn’t been done before on a nationwide scale.

However, with freezing comes significant risks. There is a significant chance that even though the membership has been frozen for so long, now the world is opening up the member could turn around at the end of this freeze period, instantly stopping their direct debit now that the prospect of returning has arisen.

It has been proven that many gym-goers are reliant on momentum and habit and those are obviously factors that have been curtailed and shattered in the last 15 months.

Thus it is very important to try and work on a campaign of integration back into the club. This could range from events and clubs, to new equipment, free t-shirts and even discounts. 

If possible, get your staff to contact individual members during this period of unfreezing and lifting Lockdown to determine:

1.  When the freeze started, confirm the terms of the freeze and then check the members contact details.
2.  Ask them when they would like the freeze to end and try to encourage them back as soon as safe and possible..
3.  Try to end the freeze on the phone to reduce repeat admin and increase revenue. But make sure your staff respect the member’s wish if they do not wish to unfreeze yet!

Conclusion

The path out of lockdown isn’t going to be easy, but it does represent an opportunity.

A lot has changed and not all of it is necessarily for the worse. We find ourselves in a new environment and that environment comes with its own challenges, trials, opportunities and successes.

As we move into the summer, hopefully, this guide we have laid out will help you appreciate some of the challenges that lie ahead and how to make them work for you! 

You needn’t do it alone 

Lockdown wasn’t just an unprecedented time for Gyms and Fitness Clubs, it was also unprecedented for us as a Fitness Payment Management Solutions company.

We rose to these challenges in a big way and as such are now more ready than ever to help your club or gym move into this new future.

If you are interested in how we can help your club enter the post-Lockdown market and really power up your operation, please contact us today for a free demonstration!

We hope to hear from you soon!

5 More Questions You Need To Ask About Your Membership Payment Collection

We are back with 5 more questions that you need to be asking when it comes to membership payment collection when talking to a membership management company. As you might remember from our last article, we had a lot to say on the subject. Now we are back with more of our insight. Grab a pen and paper or open up a word document and start making your own checklist of questions you want to ask when approaching a company to potentially deal with your membership fees and payment management collection.

Once again, we have put the follow-up questions we deem to be most pertinent in their own quotation boxes, like the one below. Keep these in mind when forming your cheat sheet of questions.

Grab a pen and paper or open up a word document and start making your own checklist of questions you want to ask when approaching a company to potentially deal with your membership fees and payment management collection.

1. Are there any restrictions?

Leading on from the follow-up questions from the last blog, It is important to ask about the limitations of any given direct debit payment management company. Not every company will be able to provide every service you want as part of their standardised packages.

The relative nuances and permutations of fitness service rarely allow for such clean fits. Club fees and membership payments are always a safe bet, but as you get into the other services, you may find that there are restrictions cropping up with each of your prospective direct debit payment management candidates.

If you are reading sequentially you’ll already be thinking about the challenges that could be presented if a payment company isn’t able to work around certain aspects of your business.

What if they are unable to deal with the payment and booking of specialised workout classes? Or what if they don’t deal with the organisation and payment of personal trainers. 

Perhaps this is acceptable to you and your business. If so, great. You might already have the infrastructure in place to deal with it and be willing to take the hit of dual-systems.

However it is important to consider whether this is prudent or necessary. If the company you are talking to has an alternative. Is it worth considering the switch?

One key thing to look out for is how the company handles cash payments. If a company can incorporate cash payments into their system on the fly, this is a good sign that their system will be adaptable. 

Think of the detriment that could occur if a system is inflexible and can only take electronic, or worse, only set payments. This would hamper your ability to cater to something as simple as a club member bringing their friend to your establishment or business. 

Equally, you need to ask yourself at what point too many restrictions become a deal breaker. What are your red-lines? What are the services you need to receive from a payment management company. What are the services you’d like to receive? What are the services you don’t mind not receiving, or have alternative solutions for. 

A simple tiered checklist like this can make all the difference as you navigate the various offerings provided. 

Follow-up questions to consider: 

• Are the restrictions reasonable?
• Is the company willing to accommodate your needs? Are their systems versatile enough?
• How do they respond to your concerns as a potential client?

• How do they deal with cash payments and one-off payments? If casual cash transactions can be incorporated into the payment management system, this will afford you greater flexibility moving forward.

2. What percentage of my funds will you hold back?

Much like our discussion around charging and price structure in our last outing, this will vary hugely from one payment management company to the next.

There is no standardised system across direct debit payment management companies and so this has the potential to be as varied as the number of companies that are out there. This, more than any other section, it is most important to think of what your business needs.

Do you require bi-monthly payments? Is once a month sufficient? Or would weekly be preferable. Each payment that the management company makes will have its own administration costs, their own infrastructure to consider and their own scheduling to account for.

All of the questions in this guide are fundamentally designed to help you approximate the value of a direct debit payment management company to your business. This question brings that goal into focus in a big way. The delivery of your funds is the crux of your relationship and it will be somewhere where the potential benefits and pitfalls of your relationship with the company will become apparent. 

If they are upfront and earnest in the functionality of their fund delivery schedule and systems, it could be a positive sign of your future working relationship. If they are inflexible and impersonal, it could be a bad portent of things to come.

3. How long does it take to get set up?

This question, like many of our questions, will serve two purposes. There are the practical considerations of the time it will take to set up a payment management company within your systems, and then there is also their philosophy and approach whilst doing so.

As such, this is another question that will be a vital indicator and source of insight into the business partnership you are setting up with the payment management company. Exploring what the initial setup phase will look like whilst you are sounding out different management companies will give you a good idea of what to expect.

Whilst the time taken to set up is not necessarily an indication of the quality of service you will be receiving, it will be a defining incident in your working relationship with the payment management company. Therefore it will be worthy of close scrutiny, from the beginning of your first demo or consultation through to implementation and beyond.

If a direct debit payment management company has a swift setup procedure, this is usually a good sign. It will often mean they have a simple, intuitive system that can blend in easily with existing structures.

Furthermore, it means that respect you as a client, are not overstretched and are dedicated to results.

With that being said, it is important that they are willing to understand your needs from the setup. There is a fine line to tread between a swift and professional service, and a hasty and impersonal one. 

As such, you should be on the look-out during demonstrations and asking questions that will help illuminate whether the foot you are getting off to with the management company is the right one.

4. What customer support do you offer?

Customer support will mean two things when it comes to a direct debit payment management company. The customer service it provides to your members, and the customer service it provides to you. 

Depending on the sophistication and complexity of the payment management company you elect to go with. You could be finding yourself dealing with multiple extra systems and it is important that the company is willing and able to talk you through these systems at a moment’s notice.

A dedicated customer care team, preferably only a phone call or a live chat away, can be invaluable to ensuring that any pressing query about your new (or old!) system can be answered with immediacy.

And of equal importance, you need to be able to rely on that same swift and effective service when your customer’s have a quandary that needs solving. It is no use them coming to you if you then have to send off a cumbersome email. It’ll leave them unsatisfied and you feeling out of control. 

Ask questions about the specifics of customer support, draft some queries that come up in your club or business and test the endurance and flexibility of their customer support systems. 

Follow-up questions to consider: 

• What technical support is available to you as a business owner (or your staff) if the direct debit payment management company is going to be introducing new systems to your business?
• What are the opening times for the customer support lines?
•  Do they align with your gym’s opening times?
• What is the availability like on the business/client support team? What are the average wait times? What are their SLAs for responding to queries?

5. What happens if a customer misses a payment?

An unfortunate but inevitable part of running a business such as a fitness club or gym. What if a customer misses a payment. It can be unpleasant, it certainly isn’t desirable. But it needn’t be your concern.

One of the largest benefits a direct debit payment management company can bring you is in their dealings with your late fee members and those who enter sustained arrears.

As such, this becomes an important question to ask and an important topic to dedicate time to in your search for a payment management company. If the company has a system in place for members who miss payments or pay late. This can be invaluable.

When factoring in the comparison between different payment management companies. Consider the amount that you might need to pay if you were to chase these fees yourself, or to employ a separate time to do so. This figure will only need to be a broad estimate before you start to see why a company that deals with this tumultuous area for you is worth the extra money.

Certain companies will charge extra for the handling of arrears reclamation. This can be a valid service and will definitely help to delineate where your money is going. With that being said however, it can also result in the service being an afterthought. It is worth looking into whether the payment management company considers this to be a keystone of their business or an ambitious afterthought. In such a delicate field, an amateur operation can great a lot of heartache and concern. 

Direct debit payment management companies that deal with missed payments will often have a specialised team in place to resolve these matters. Often they will be handled entirely in-house and in a professional, caring and correct manner.

It is, however, important to confirm that this will be the case. Ask for examples and case studies of how their reclamation or arrears department has dealt with missed payments in the past.

Missed payments will always be a sensitive subject even if it is just a simple administration error on the part of the member and especially if it is more systemic than that. It is of utmost importance to maintain a positive relationship with your members even during these trying times. It should go without saying that you are more likely to receive the money you are due if these matters are entrusted to a professional debt reclamation team.

More than that, your company will be less likely to be exposed to negative stories resulting from the mishandling of collection, the approach will be ethical and regulated and you are more likely to retain the member if their financial situation improves. 

Follow-up questions to consider: 

• Are there examples of arrears reclamation emails, calls or other correspondence that can be provided to prove the quality and values of the operation?
• What are the success rates for their reclamation team?
• How long has the arrear reclamation team in question been operating as part of the business?

• How experienced are the team? How is that experience being utilised within the team?
  

• Does the team understand the regulatory requirements? Are they prioritising the wellbeing of your business and your members. 

Forewarned is Forearmed! Come Ask Us These Questions And See How We Answer

Now your existing batch of questions from the last blog has been beefed up, it is time to put them into practice. And why not start with us here at Ashbourne?

Ashbourne provides a service that goes far beyond just the collection of direct debits and some rudimentary software. If you go with Ashbourne, the team at your service know that there’s a lot more to managing a great gym or fitness club than simply collecting payments on time.

Hopefully we have given you an idea of what to look out for, approach our team and book a demo and we can continue what we have started  here on this blog today.

If any of the questions and concerns we have covered resonate with you, then we might be the company for you.

If you want to simply talk about how we could help your club, or see the specifics we can offer, please do not hesitate to reach out and one of our team will talk you through how we can help take your club to the next level.

5 Questions You Need To Ask About Your Membership Payment Collection

When looking for a company to manage your Direct Debits, it’s important to do your research and find the one which is going to work best for you and make the perfect partnership. Here are some key questions to get your discussion going and compare different providers with one another. In addition, we’ve added some follow-up and related questions. As this series of blogs goes on, we may expand some of these questions into full articles.

Furthermore, we’ve highlighted one follow-up question we deemed to be particularly important when you are considering your checklist of questions for any potential membership payment management collection company.

1. How can I sign up customers?

The importance of this question cannot be overstated and as such we’ve placed it first on our list of must-ask questions when it comes to looking for a company to manage your Direct Debits.

Signing up customers to your gym’s payment scheme is one of the most important steps of the entire process and in this age of automated, easy access gyms it is important that the process be as streamlined as possible.

Streamlined not just for the customer but for you, the owner. Neither side wants to be dealing with tedious forms or complex websites when a customer is trying to sign up to a new gym. This is where your initial research will be vital. It can be complex to disentangle yourself from a Direct Debit management company that isn’t well suited to you and/or your customers.

Most reputable companies will offer some form of demonstration for the service they are providing, and we would recommend noting down any of these questions that you feel might be pertinent to your concerns. In relation to this question, it is important that you are able to visualise the process slotting into the current structure of your gym. Or, alternatively, that the new structure it will usher into your Gym will be an improvement.

If during the demonstration you are starting to imagine the work-arounds and hardships that a system will bring when it comes up signing up new customers and gym members to your gym, it probably isn’t the system for you.

From the sign-up stage and through the entire lifespan of their member, the relationship with a Direct Debit Management Company  has to be one that benefits you, your gym and your customers.

As such, we recommend looking for modern, hands-off, time saving measures that the company offers.

Paper free sign-up is a big one to be looking for. In this age of instant communication, there are few reasons to be shackling your customers to a physical form. With the rise of fully automated gyms, many customers simply do not have the appetite for anything as involved as a pen and paper.

Think about the space you have. How will the sign-up be occurring? On your customer’s personal phone? On an iPad or tablet presented to them by a member of your Gym’s staff? On a static computer at a reception desk? Or on a laptop balanced on the top of a Shoulder Press machine?

Make sure that the services that they provide will work for your area. If you only have enough room for mobile or tablet sign-up, then making sure they have a mobile system that allows you to do 100% of the sign-up becomes even more important. 

It is also important to note the market has shifted, members are much more likely these days to sign-up to a gym online before they have even set foot in the premises. This represents new opportunities and it is important not to get left behind. 

To conclude this section, your sign-up system should never feel like it is impeding your customer or your business. Sometimes the bureaucracy of signing up can feel like a necessary evil, but it is quite an unnecessary one in 2021. As we have covered, by doing your research you can ensure that the sign-up system will work for you and your customers, integrating them into your gym’s payment system as quickly as possible, with minimal administration on your side.

Follow-up questions to consider: 

• How many different methods are there for customer sign-up?
• How long does the sign-up process take?
• Where can it be done?

• What tools can be used to sign-up? (Phone, computer, tablet, static terminal). Does your gym have those available. How will it fit in with your existing structure?

• How does sign-up work for additional services?

2. How do I submit payments? Can This be Automated?

Submitting payments has never been easier and as such there is no reason to accept anything less than the smoothest operation when it comes to the payment collection company you use.

By looking for a company that uses direct debit collections, you are already eliminating many of the hassles associated with collecting and submitting payments. Not only is this system paper free and admin-light, it is also ripe for numerous strives towards automation, in the right hands!

By hiring a company to handle your direct debit payments, the question of how you submit a payment will become a thing of the past. With the right company, you will be in full control with only a minimal time investment. This will allow you to choose increases and decreases, payment periods, membership categories and more.

Payments will be taken by direct debit directly from your members bank account by the direct debit company, held in a secure, liminal account, ready to be paid into your account. But not before it has gone through rigorous data capture, for both security and feedback.

Which leads us effortlessly onto our next question.

3. What reporting do you provide so I can track payments?

It is the year 2021 and Data is King. The days of knowing roughly what is going into your accounts are over. 

With the right direct debit payment management company, you’ll be able to take your gym’s data outputs to the next level. As we hinted at in the previous, the focus on data capture has never been more pronounced, more automatic or more automated.

This means several things for your business. It means that services that used to require significant human labour have drastically reduced in costs. This has opened up powerful reporting operations for very low charges, providing the company you link up with is ahead of the curve (excuse the graph pun). 

Detailed reporting power when it comes to your cash flow has many benefits that go well beyond just the monthly pay. It will allow you to examine trends in your business, breaking down important aspects of the customer journey and potential pitfalls that are losing your members. 

In addition, all that data comes in very handy when it is time to satisfy the regulators. The chances of you finding yourself with the 10pm coffee, ready to crunch numbers into the night, dramatically reduces. 

Finally it will give you security, the ability to more confidently manage your business in the present and in charting out the future. When the span of data becomes years, you will be able to build a firmer picture of your business. Invaluable when it comes to creating strategies for the improvement and growth of your business.

Follow-up questions to consider: 

• How are these reports delivered?
• Are direct debit payment reports generated automatically? 
• Will there be an obstacle to seamless reporting? Mis-aligned Data that will require monthly or weekly human intervention?
  
• What software do they use?

• Do they use their own software? Will it be easy for you to learn? Will you be able to transfer it if your business with the company ever comes to an end?

• Is their data usable in existing common systems Excel? SQL? Google Sheets?
• Are you comfortable using the software and data formats that they use?
• Can you integrate these new reports with your old reports to fully map your data?

4. Is it possible to integrate your system with my accounts?

This question should be firmly on your notepad or desktop post-it notes as you consider the company you want to manage your direct debit payment management. 

As we discussed earlier, the year is 2021 and there is no need to generate more hassle than necessary. Any direct debit payment management company worth its salt will be able to seamlessly integrate their operation with your existing account structure (providing you don’t do all your work on Typewriter or Windows 95). 

This question should be near the top of your list (as it is near the top of our list) and you shouldn’t accept anything less than ease of access, ease of use and a concerted focus on integration during setup. 

Any decent direct debit payment management company will have their focus on reducing your administration workload and one of the easiest ways to manage this is by starting your relationship with them correctly.

Ask questions that will help you understand how their operation works, how they handle data and money, and how that can potentially merge with your own, existing accounts infrastructure. 

The way a prospective payment management company responds to this question (and the others) will give you a good idea of how your relationship with them could pan out. If they are versatile, flexible and professional, they will have no trouble adapting to even the most rudimentary or bespoke accounting system that you may have in place. 

Conversely, if their head isn’t in the game, you might quickly find yourself having to deal with more issues than they are solving for you. This is why it is vital to ask pertinent questions up front when you are scoping out the type of company. 

Follow-up questions to consider: 

• Is the company going to be able to deliver or present the accounting data in a format that works for your existing operation?
  

• Will reporting be automatic or will there be a manual exchange of e-mail every month. Does this increase expense or the capacity for human error?

• What file types do they use?

5. How much do you charge per collection?

This simple question should have a simple answer for each company you approach. But the answer should have large implications to whether or not the company in question is the direct debit payment management company for you.

However, most companies will be slightly different in how they run their payment collection operation. Here we will cover several models that companies in the industry are currently using, discussing their benefits and their detriments.

Some will charge per month for a set number of users. This can be useful if your business is at capacity, or you have a solid idea of the amount of people you want using your business every month. 

This can be simple, but it is imprecise. It might feel effective and intuitive to say ‘My business has under 100 members’ and therefore select the package based on that. But this can present a real challenge for growth, even in the smallest metrics. If your business suddenly goes from 100 members to 101 you might find yourself negotiating in a high tier bracket that completely wipes out the gain of that single member. 

Not to mention all the hassle of renegotiating and maybe not even being able to sign them up. What started off as a simple time-saver could easily become a shackle and a burden to you and your business.

Some will go even more abstract, charging different packages based on a ‘business size’. This has advantages, you could find yourself in a favourable bracket. But it is a double-edged sword and you could find yourself just on the cusp of the next tier up and suddenly your fees will double.

In our opinion, precision is key for any fair business dealing and this logic definitely extends to a company managing your payments. 

A popular model will charge per transaction and this can be useful when growing a business. This method is closer to the ground in terms of representing value.

It has an added bonus of being incredibly flexible. That situation we outlined above where a business went from 100 to 101 members and suffered for it? Under this model that situation would be of no concern whatsoever. 

This situation can be reversed as well, to further show the versatility. Say that same gym from before goes back below 100. There is now a choice of paying well above the service level you are receiving or once again going down.

Given the Covid-19 pandemic that we are still feeling the effects of, you can understand why this system can sometimes generate more problems than it aims to fix. 

Therefore, as you can hopefully see, the real benefit of charge per transaction system is it keeps all costs firmly linked to profits. Keeping your business model as lean as possible, ensuring there are no excess profits being lost. 

Follow-up questions to consider: 

• Ask about different types of collection. One-off payments for day passes might be processed differently?
• Consider asking whether the system could also be used to integrate classes, personal trainers and other add-ons. The potential costs of these features and the potential time benefits they might bring?

• If the system is per transaction, ask about broader fees. Setup, processing fees?

5 More Questions to Ask

If you still have questions you want answered, we’ve put out another five questions that Gym and Fitness Club owners need to be asking when they approach Membership Payment Management Companies.

Follow this link for more questions to add to your checklist, or look below for information regarding booking a demo or talking to a member of our team!

NOW THAT YOU KNOW WHAT TO ASK, COME ASK US!

Unlike other direct debit payment management companies. The services that Ashbourne provides isn’t just some basic software and the ability to collect your direct debits. No, the team at Ashbourne knows that there’s a lot more to managing a successful club than simply collecting payments.

Now that we have armed you with the pertinent questions for navigating the world of payment management companies, we want you to come and ask them to our customer team.

If any of the questions and concerns we have covered resonate with you, then we might be the company for you.

If you want to chat about what we offer, or simply run through how we can help your particular health club, then get in touch with us and our team will contact you to talk things through.

An Introduction to Direct Debits 

Direct Debit Payments are a crux of modern living for the majority of consumers and businesses. As a method of payment it is only going from strength to strength. It has even found itself firmly in the Cambridge Dictionary and the Collins Dictionary! According to a broad study from 2017, at the time it was revealed that 9 out of 10 people in the UK with a bank account had at least one Direct Debit. In addition, over a third of combined households were totalling over 6 Direct Debit payments.

What we are trying to say is that this isn’t something that will scare customers away. The Direct Debit is an ingrained and accepted part of everyday life for most consumers. Direct Debits are something that many younger (Or tech-savvy older!) consumers will be able to manage and manipulate on their phone with ease. 

As such, it is a system and methodology to be embraced and we are here to lay out the reasons why Direct Debits will help make life easier for your business and your customer. 

Here is a list of just some of the points we will be covering today.

• How a direct debit can help reduce the running costs of your business
• How a direct debit will increase membership retention and customer satisfaction 
• How a direct debit will give you give you more control over your business 
• How a direct debit gives you the freedom and flexibility to make price changes with ease
• How a direct debit contributes to an easier administrative load with reduced admin costs
• How a direct debit system will integrate and enhance the potential (or continued) automation process of your gym.

Quite a hefty list, can we back it up? Be assured that with over 25 years of handling payment management within the fitness industry, we hope to convince you swiftly that we know our stuff.

1. Direct Debit lets you increase fees when you need to

Flexibility has always been key to surviving in any business. But with the advent of digital technology, agile work methodology and ever more competitive business practices, it matters now more than ever.

How could this relate to direct debit payments? Well the clue is in the section title. 

The price of any given service will always be subject to flux, whether it is due to external factors such as Covid-19 or currency, or internal factors such as the renovations on a gym or increased membership. With other, more archaic payment systems, keeping track of who is paying what could be a significant challenge. Let alone attempting to instigate any sort of mass increase in member fees. 

If you take the relative of the direct debit, the standing order for instance. This would require the customer to cancel their existing standing orders and create a brand new one in it’s place. Often this cannot be done as simply as a direct debit on a mobile phone and even if it could, it is still an inconvenience. And a dangerous one at that. 

The last thing you want is for a customer to have to cancel a standing order and have to do tedious admin whilst suffering the indignity of an increase in fee.

Safe to say that all of this can create hassle for your customers, it could cause delays or even lead to your customers letting their membership lapse. 

With the direct debit this ceases to be an issue at all. You are able to monitor, review and most importantly, change the amount you are collecting without needing any input from your members.

This flexibility can bring a lot of new options into the picture. Given our recent experiences in the Covid-19 pandemic, the direct debit proved its strength as a format that could be quickly amended, paused or continued. In unprecedented times it is all the more necessary to have an adaptable, reliable system in place.

2. Direct Debit reduces administrative load and it gives your business more control

The administrative load associated with more traditional methods of membership payment collection are daunting to say the least. Cash, cheques, standing orders. If you are collecting a combination of these then it can quickly add up to long nights of tedious reconciliation activity.

But how could the direct debit ever compete as an alternative to cash or currency? That tried and tested method since Mesopotamian shekel? Well, it might’ve taken 5,000 years but we think we have an alternative. 

With direct debits, unlike standing orders, they can be easily and effortlessly set up on a computer terminal, phone or tablet. 

This means that it is as easy to whip out a portable electronic device and arrange the bank as it would be to say, hand over £10 (or Mesopotamian shekels if you are feeling nostalgic). 

In many cases this might be easier. A lot of modern sports equipment (running bands, gym shorts, etc) is being outfitted with a place to hold your debit card or credit card securely. But the same isn’t to be said for cash, which is obviously bulkier and impossible to recover if lost.

As such, the direct debit is a natural fit for the transforming habits of most gym-goers.

Sounds pretty good? Well, as an added bonus, you’ll receive an added layer of control and data feedback regarding what has been paid and what is due to be paid. This is something you don’t get with standing orders.

With direct debits, you will be aware as soon as one has been cancelled, even if it isn’t pay-day. This is due to the nature of the direct debit (as discussed in security and regulations). It isn’t like a standing order, which exists only as an instruction on a given day.

The benefits that this can afford you are numerous. It can allow you to react quickly to a cancellation, perhaps even contacting the member in question to understand what has occurred. It also has the very tangible benefit of allowing you to understand how much money can be expected from your members in real time. Invaluable.

It is no surprise that changing from Standing Orders and Cash to direct debit can be like switching on a flashlight for many gym and club owners. We have had it stated that it is like being fully in control for the first time. 

Which makes sense when you consider that a drabble of cash and standing orders that need to be painstakingly reconciled and catalogued at the end of each month would cause massive admin costs and consistency issues.

Which brings us effortlessly onto our next point.

3. Direct Debits can reduce administration costs 

It may seem like a no brainer with the reduction of administration load but we think this deserves its own section.

The amount of wage saved in the potential reconciliation of cash, cheque and standing order could be massive, especially to a small business. It used to be taken as a given that any physical business would invariably have to deal with multiple streams of income in different formats. But as we move forward into the digital age, this is becoming less and less likely. 

Imagine replacing all of that costly counting with a single tablet. That counts as your sign-up, your monthly fee and also covers any potential increases in fee, decreases in fee, fee pausing or cancellation?

All of these actions would have required additional admin, in addition to the monthly admin just to make sure that your books are fully reconciled!

And with human reconciliation comes the inevitable human error, which will only lead to more admin. With the direct debit, the cash flow is automatic, regular, easily recorded and instant. 

In addition, full integration of a direct debit system into a club management system can reduce administration costs even further if you use it to tackle the actual membership and entry to your club. With digital technologies it has never been easier to seamlessly integrate membership and payment, rather than having to track them on two disparate systems.

And finally, it will also make your year to year easier. No longer will you have to go to 1 of 18 spreadsheets. No longer will you be forced to painstakingly recheck your hand-written notes from 10 months ago to make sure you didn’t misread something.

It is incredible what a powerful effect such a simple tool can have. All the more important to state the impact that a direct debit can have on a gym or fitness club.

4. How Direct Debits can greatly assist your Regulatory Compliance and Payment Security 

Regulations are never fun but that doesn’t mean they aren’t extremely necessary. Mercifully, with direct debits you can cross out tedious from that list of attributes.

As we tried to stress in the introductory paragraphs, the direct debit is an industry standard and as such it is not only fully compliant (vital) but incredibly secure. 

It is covered diligently and thoroughly  by the FCA (the Financial Conduct Authority, the UK government regulator for financial transaction). The FCA covered direct debits in a piece of regulatory mandating known as the Payment Services Regulations directive. We won’t bore you with anything further than that but it is safe to say that this affords the direct debit a large degree of security and compliance that is unmatched.

Once it is confirmed that the chosen billing provider is FCA accredited, you can have the utmost confidence that the transactions and membership fees that occur will be compliant, trusted and most importantly, safe for your customer and your business. 

5. Get more from your data and make the data work for you

The data outputs from a traditional gym membership payment system can be, lacking to say the least. Unless it was set up by someone of extraordinary vision it will most likely have fallen to place naturally as memberships are received by cash, cheque and standing order as and when applicable. 

This ad hoc process, while perfectly acceptable, isn’t winning any awards for innovation. At best the data will have to be collected and processed into a usable format. At worst? Well, it won’t be, and the business will be stumbling around in the dark like we discussed during Point 2. 

With a direct debit system, the data outputs and reporting capabilities are digital, immediate and powerful. With the right systems and support, the versatile data that it will generate naturally will allow you to see a business from angles previously inconceivable. 

This will allow you to understand what is happening in your business, whether it be in a given hour or over the span of years, with hitherto unknown speed. 

You will be able to make and generate reports to keep others in the loop, allowing you to develop specific areas and quickly inform others of the needs of the business.

6. Customer Service

And finally, and perhaps most importantly. The customer, your members, will also receive significant benefits from this system. We have covered some of these previously, but they will bear repeating together for a true picture of how this change could benefit every aspect of a business.

The effects will be tangible and instant and include:

The ease of signing up to a direct debit when they first enter your fitness club or gym will be immediately noticeable to them. No longer having to worry about bringing cash per session, or the lengthy process of setting up a standing order.

The efficiency of changing members fees will not go unappreciated. No member relishes paying their fee, let alone paying an increased fee. So adding on the unnecessary and tedious bureaucratic hassle of making them update their own increased payment won’t always go down well. Remove the issue and make the unfortunate news of a price increase all the more palatable with clear, professional communication and the reassurance that no action is required from them. 

Furthermore, if your gym introduces tiered systems, it will allow customers to easily upgrade to the next tier or section. If your gym or fitness club opens up additional classes, it will be no bother for them to quickly up their fee for the additional services you are offering.

The reassurance of security you will be able to give to your members will not go unappreciated. And the clear paper-trail, compliant regulated practices and easy trouble-shooting of any issues will be an extra feather in any businesses cap compared to the labyrinthine processes of yesteryear. 

And finally, your members just get to spend less time thinking about money and payment and more time thinking about the gym. Ideally you want your club members thinking as little as possible about their payments. A direct debit lets their membership payment become part of the background flow of the month for both of you. Allowing you both to focus on the service that is being provided. 

INTERESTED IN DIRECT DEBITS? COME ASK THE EXPERTS

Ashbourne Membership Management has been growing over 25 years to handle every single aspect of club management. From direct debits to website maintenance and handling your energy bar sales – Ashbourne handles it all.

When it comes to Direct Debits, we can drastically reduce your admin and free up your staff in 5 simple steps:

• We provide you our software to track all your members
• We provide you with direct debit guarantees and set them up
• We set up your direct debits
• We handle all contact between your members and their payments
• We handle all debt collection for any defaulted payments

If you want to take a look at what your club could be with a system in place for direct debit collection, then we can give you a completely free demo and consultation, simply to run through the process, our systems and answer any questions you might have.

Simply book a free demo with us and let us show you the future of your gym.