Fitness reports: The basics of reporting for gyms

Fitness reports and dashboards are important to the success of any gym or fitness club. Find out more about reporting and how to REALLY make it work for your business.

Sales. Finance. Operations. Understanding performance across your business will help you focus on the right things to drive growth.

Yet, you can easily find yourself pouring over numbers for hours on end. And struggling to know what you need to act on. Sometimes you might not even use a report.

We’re here to help you navigate the basics of reporting. So, you’ll be able to avoid overwhelm and get straight to the metrics that matter most for your unique business.

Let’s get stuck in!

Fitness reports: What? Why? How?

Before we go any further, lets answer some key questions:

What are fitness reports?

Fitness reports are tools. Tools that you can use to track and analyse aspects of business performance.

Reports consolidate specific data from across your business into one place. And can feature information on sales, attendance, revenue, bookings, and more.  

You can use fitness reports to understand how your club is performing. And make impactful decisions.

Why are fitness reports important?

When used strategically, fitness reports can play a vital role in the long-term success and growth of your business. Reports can help you:

• Manage specific tasks effectively
• Find growth opportunities
• Get ahead and make improvements to turn around negative trends

In short, gym reports help you make informed decisions. Decisions that improve business performance and your bottom-line.

How can fitness reports be used?

Fitness reports can be used in a wide variety of ways. Exact use will depend on what you’re looking to achieve with a gym report. And who within your business needs the report.

Common uses include:

• Assessing financial performance
• Improving sales
• Reducing member attrition
• Optimising revenue collection
• Adjusting timetables and programming

Fundamentals of effective reporting

Running a gym is hard work. There’s always plenty to do. And plenty you could be doing. So, efficient reporting is a must.

All too often, gym operators become bogged down in data. This leads to overwhelm. And makes it tough to action what’s in front of you.

Want to use reports to your advantage? You need to firstly consider these two questions:

1. How are you going to use the report?

Many gyms and fitness clubs fall into the trap of creating fitness reports just because they’ve always done so. Often, the report goes untouched. Or, at best, someone glances over the data without really knowing what to do with it.

So, even if you’ve always had a certain report, start by working out your goals for the report:

Do you even need the report?

If you struggle to work out exactly how you’re going to use a particular report, then consider if you really need it at all.

Fine-tune your approach to reporting and focus in on only reports that will be genuinely useful for your business. And you’ll free up time and thinking space to concentrate on other things that will push your business forward.

2. Who needs the report?

Particularly in bigger businesses, different stakeholders have different needs from a report. When creating reports, make sure you understand exactly who will be using them.

For example, if you’re running a sales report, a sales manager will likely need more detail than a board member.

Common metrics that matter for gyms

There are several measurements – metrics – that you should look at to understand the health of your fitness business.

And while these can vary gym-to-gym, the following metrics will help you measure your financial and operational health:

You can then use these metrics to calculate and track performance indicators. For example:

New member sign ups

New member sign ups let you know if your marketing and sales approach is working. This performance indicator shows:

When combined with increased retention, consistently attracting new members will help you achieve growth. The more new members you sign up each month, the faster your potential growth could be.

Calculate by:

Tip

Adding up the total number of new members who sign up in a certain period (e.g. monthly). Compare with previous periods to track performance.

New member conversion rate

Go beyond new member sign ups to get a fuller picture. How? By looking at new member conversion rate. Compare the number of leads/prospects you attracted to the number of new members you signed up.

This will tell you how effective your sales approach (and team) is at turning enquiries into paid members. It shows you how well your joining process is working. And will help you see where your leaving opportunities on the table.

Calculate by:

Tip

Dividing the total number of new members by the total number of enquiries/leads in a specific period. Times the result by 100 to get a percentage.

Attrition rate

Attrition, churn, and retention rates are 3 ways of looking at a similar core metric. Tracking these will help you see how happy your current members really are.

You need to understand why members quit the gym. Identify any trends fast. And make any appropriate changes to reduce cancellations – and so support business growth.

Calculate by:

Tip

Dividing the total number of cancellations in a month (or other period), by the total number of members at the start of that month (or other period). Times the result by 100 to get a percentage.

Visit frequency

Want to understand how much your club is used by your members? You need to track frequency of visits. This is an important metric to pay attention to if you want to retain more members.

Retention Guru, Dr Paul Bedford, has found that most fitness club members visit about once per week. Any less than this, and members are at risk of cancelling soon.

Improve visit frequency to reduce the number of members at risk – these re-engagement strategies can help.

Calculate by:

Tip

Dividing the total number of visits by the total number of active members each month.

Total revenue

Finally, this metric is an important one for every gym business – your total revenue. This can include any revenue coming into your business. Including, membership fees, passes, pay-as-you-go visits, food/drink sales, merchandise sales, etc.

Understanding total revenue will help you measure how profitable your gym business is.

Calculate by:

Tip

Add together the amount of income from all your memberships and other sources.

How to report on the performance of your gym business

So, we’ve run through the basics of fitness reports for gyms. Looked at what it takes to effectively choose the right reports for your business. And reviewed common metrics you could pay attention to.

Next, let’s explore exactly how you can go about reporting on the performance of your gym business.

Step 1: Set your business up for success

Ideally, you’ll have an all-in-one gym management system in place that has a selection of gym reporting software options available.

A single source of truth. A golden record. Master data. Having all-in-one software in place will empower you. Arming you with a definitive source of information on your business performance.

Step 2: Review your reporting needs

Once you have your business data in one place, it’s time to ask yourself the two all important questions explored earlier in this article:

These will help you choose the best fitness reports and metrics for the needs of your business. So, you focus in on the right information. And it’ll be easier to choose the best reporting formats to take meaningful action fast.

Remember, if you can’t work out how you’re going to use a report then you might not need it at all.

Think about frequency

Tip

If you’re moving from using many systems to a combined platform. One with ready access to a wide range of metrics and reports, it can get overwhelming fast. Approaching reporting with those two questions in mind can help. You should also consider when you’re looking at what’s available – review reports at specific intervals (e.g. monthly, fortnightly, weekly).

Step 3: Find the right reporting format for your needs

Next up, it’s time to find info that matters for your reporting needs.

Your gym management software should give a variety of ways to view key metrics and more detailed datapoints. Keep your purpose in mind when choosing a reporting format to get straight to the info you need.

With Xplor Gym you get:

Fitness reports: The wrap up…

Gym and fitness reports help you track and analyse different areas of business performance. Reports can help you efficiently manage tasks. Identify growth opportunities. And address negative performance trends.

In short, reports let you make informed business decisions. Decisions that ultimately result in improved profitability and growth.

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with data and reports. So, when thinking about your reporting needs, always start by asking yourself:

New member sign ups. Conversion rate. Attrition rate. Visit frequency. Total revenue. These are all common metrics that you could focus on as a gym operator.

Your gym management software should give you access to all you need to understand business performance.

You should be empowered with definitive information on your business. And have a variety of reporting format options to support the task in hand. Even options that let you do everything you need to do without leaving your software.

Get in touch to find out how Xplor Gym can give you the power to use reporting to increase profitability and grow your business.