The 28-day sweet spot

Credits are an important concept within GymOS, and it enables GymOS users to operate in a way that most systems are unable to support.

Whilst simple in concept, they can often be “over-thought” and become a source of confusion. This article explains the recommended implementation for GymOS credits, and the mechanisms around it that keep it simple – both for gyms and their members.

If you have not already done so, we recommended that you read the Credit Principles article first.

The most important thing

Perhaps the most important thing to understand is that the credit schedule is not related to the payment schedule in any way. They are independent and, by design, two different things. One does not effect the other. “My member has paid but hasn’t got their credits” is conflating two unrelated events.

The reason for why GymOS works this way is pretty straightforward:

Most gyms charge on a monthly basis, but sell their product on a weekly basis. E.g. “£269 per month for 2x SGPT classes per week”

A month is a variable time (28 – 31 days), whereas a week is a fixed length (7 days). Therefore, if credits were issued on the same schedule as a monthly payment, the member would either have too many or too few credits issued to them.

The solution is to therefore operate the payment schedule and credit issue schedule as two independent process, which is what GymOS does.

A typical example

A common example of a typical membership a gym might sell their members is:

For each week, you get:

• 2x SGPT sessions
• 1x large group “SWEAT” sessions
• 1x large group “PUMP” sessions

Over a week (7 days), that is four sessions. Over four weeks (28 days), that is sixteen sessions.

But what happens at 29-31 days? You can’t divide an SGPT session. Do they get one more or not? Do they get an extra SWEAT session or an extra PUMP session or both? The problem becomes obvious. You cannot pro-rata a small number of items. There is no such thing as 0.3 of a SGPT session.

Why this is not a problem

As the above example shows, 28 days is a clean four week period. It is the sweet spot that we recommend GymOS clients use, and there are many reasons for this. GymOS supports almost any credit issue schedule, but the 28 day recurring schedule is the one we strongly recommend for regular, recurring memberships.

Following the GymOS recommendation, there are two schedules running in parallel:

i) The payment schedule, which runs on a monthly recurring basis (anniversary recommended, but fixed payment date is also an option)

ii) The credit schedule, which runs every 28 days (four weeks)

The role of grace credits

Grace credits play a valuable role in the credit schedule equation. Again, they are often overthought. A grace credit is simply a regular credit with a different name. At any one time, a member would typically have a set of regular credits (those valid within the current time frame) and a set of grace credits (those valid for a future time frame). Both may be used at any time, as long as the sessions being booked match the validity period of the credit (whether that be “regular” or “grace”).

When a membership is first added (and assuming grace credits have been left enabled as recommended), the member will be issued their first 28 day block of “regular credits”, plus a subsequent 28 days block of “grace credits”.

At the point their membership starts, and subject to any booking restrictions you apply to your schedule, they can book up to 56 days in advance. As they progress through the 28 day block, this decreases down to 28 days in advance. At that point, their next block is issued, and they’re back up to being able to book 56 days in advance once more.

The cycle repeats. The member is always able to book at least 28 days in advance (subject to any aforementioned schedule restrictions).

Explaining this to your members

One of the key elements to member understanding comes from a simple explanation at the time of sign-up. This can be supported by an automated email using merge fields from GymOS.

A typical sign-up conversation might go:

“Amazing Beth. It’s great to have you join us.

So, in summary, you’re signed up for 2x SGPT sessions per week, 1x SWEAT, and 1x PUMP.

We take your payment on a monthly basis on 1st of each month, using the card you added on GymOS. Please keep that up to date.

You can book through the app. You book sessions using credits, which we issue to you every four weeks and you can always book up to four weeks in advance. So, for your membership, we’ll issue you 16x SGPT, 4x SWEAT and 4x PUMP every 28 days – so you always have the right number to use each week.“

Members know how many sessions they have subscribed to. The most common cause of members not having enough credits is them knowingly booking and attending more sessions than they pay for, and then eeking more free sessions out of the gym by saying “I’ve run out”. Beware of this trick – more gyms fall for it than you might think!

Why not weekly?

You can issue credits weekly in GymOS if you want, but it has limitations. For a start, at the shortest point, a member can only book 7 days in advance. This will frustrate many.

Another common question is “can I fix them to be issued on a Monday?” Well, yes, you can – but there are lots of reasons this will likely cause you more headaches than help. Amongst them:

• Do all of your new members start on a Monday? If not, you have the above pro-rata issue all over again.
• What if a member pauses for 10 days (one and a bit weeks)? What credits to they get? Do they get the SWEAT or not? Again, the pro-rata issue once more.
• Are you open seven days a week? If you’re only open six, the pro-rating is even less fair and will result in even more member annoyance.

The argument is often “members think Monday – Sunday”. That is not untrue, but the broader picture is that members just want to feel comfortable that they have the credits to book the sessions they subscribe to.

28 days is the answer.

Membership pauses

If you fix your credit schedule or use a very short schedule, you significantly complicate your life when it comes to membership pauses.

A pause will typically move credits, ensuring the correct allocation remains – without the member receiving too many or too few.

If you fix a credit issue period to every Monday, this will move the first time a member is paused – and cause confusion down the line.

A cover for a capacity issue

Trying to manage credit issuance to cover a capacity issue will lead to increased member frustration. Members can comprehend not being able to book a session because it’s already full. Them being prevented from booking a session they perceive they have paid for will lead to annoyance.

There is a fair and not unreasonable argument that members should be able to book sessions for the period they have paid. With the 28 day rolling credit recommendation, this is possible.

Your system, your choice

This article has been written to provide guidance from many years of having gyms successfully use the GymOS gym management system. However, it remains your choice how you choose to implement your system and GymOS provides a wide variety of options (including those we don’t generally recommend).

One thing to be aware of is that it is best to make a commitment to one way of working at the time you set up your system. Whilst it is relatively easy to change process for new members, changing payment or credit schedules for existing members is complex and would involve a chunk of manual administration on your part.