Fitness clubs are fast-paced environments.

A lot goes into managing a successful fitness club. At any given moment, there are a dozen tasks that need to be completed in order to keep a facility running smoothly. While one staff member works the check-in desk, another may be walking the gym floor, or restocking towels in a locker room. At the same time, one staff member may be juggling scheduling, checking invoices, and creating a social media campaign. With so many parts of the business to manage, it can feel like there are never enough hours in the day to stay on top of everything, much less strategize and plan for future growth.

In the competitive world of the health and fitness industry, facilities and organizations that fail to adapt and evolve with a rapidly changing market are at a great disadvantage. That makes creating the time and space to focus on big-picture growth absolutely essential. One of the easiest ways to do so is to cut time spent on tedious everyday tasks. By streamlining and simplifying processes like payroll, reporting, and check-in, fitness club owners can focus their attention on projects that will improve their clubs and take their offerings to the next level.

Here are the top 5 fitness club management tasks to automate with the help of a fitness club management software.

The check-in process is often a member’s first impression of a fitness club. For members looking to squeeze a quick workout into a busy schedule, being greeted by a long line at the check-in desk is extremely off-putting.

Rather than relying on a front desk team member to manually search for and check in members via a computerized database—or worse, invoke a paper sign-in process—put the control directly in your members hands with key cards and fobs that allow them to simply swipe or scan to sign-in. With a connected, cloud-based facility access system to automate the check-in process, staff members can better utilize time to focus on bringing in new members and improving the member experience for current members.

Membership is a huge priority for fitness clubs. Clubs constantly seek to attract new members, while retaining as many members as possible. Communication plays a large role in being successful at both. As membership numbers grow, so does the job of making sure members are informed, engaged, and clued into everything that’s happening at your club.

A mobile app can be a great tool for automating processes associated with membership. With the ability for members to pay bills, sign up for programs, and update their membership information all via an app, you can eliminate several staff jobs traditionally associated with member management. In In lieu of picking of a phone to call a never-ending list of members, utilize push notifications or SMS messaging to automate the communication process.

Automatically send reminders about payment due dates, appointments, and new programs based on programmed member information. When it comes to adding new members, a strong communication platform makes it easy to follow up with prospects, increasing your chances of converting.

Employees are the fuel that keep fitness clubs running, so getting them paid on time, every time is paramount. Automate the payroll process with a software that generates payroll based on custom rates or a time-tracking feature. Rather than relying on a staff member to input individual codes for paystubs, an automated payroll software makes the process run without a hitch at a time period customized by the club.

Staying on top of member payment processing and billing is key to maintaining a steady and predictable revenue stream. However, chasing declined payments and making sure all members pay their dues on time can be a huge headache. Having to manually update outdated credit card information, rerun declined cards, and call members to absolve payment discrepancies can take up hours upon hours each week.

Even with a team member or two dedicated solely to the purpose of managing payments and billing, fitness clubs still lose a substantial amount of money—not to mention time—to declined credit cards. A dedicated payments and billing solution automates the process with monthly member statements, pay reminders sent through multiple communication channels, an easy online payment portal, proactive card account updater, and SmartDate resubmission services.

As fitness clubs grow, using data to drive business decisions becomes increasingly important. From big-picture data points like month-to-month revenue and yearly new joins to more specific numbers around individual program registrations or check-ins during a certain time window, everything comes together to tell the story of a club and guide it toward future success.

With so much data at your disposal, mining through spreadsheet after spreadsheet of raw data can take significant time and still not produce the in-depth insight needed to make tough business decisions. A reporting software can put all the right numbers at your fingertips—and format it all in a way that’s easy to understand. With reporting customized through self-set parameters and filters, fitness club owners can get a detailed look into each portion of their business.

Sophisticated analytics can show how a fitness club is trending over time and even provide side-by-side comparison with industry averages and peers. Automated reporting not only saves time, but can get a fitness club to a deeper level of insights and understanding than achievable with manual efforts.

Are you ready to start automating your fitness club processes? Schedule a demo with Club Automation today, or download a copy of our Strategy Playbook for Fitness Clubs.