Gym Management Glossary

Revenue and billing

MRR: Monthly Recurring Revenue. The predictable total a gym collects every month from active memberships, not counting one-off charges like day passes.
Churn rate: The share of members who cancel or lapse in a given month. Lose 5 of 100 members in a month and churn is 5%.
Retention rate: The flip side of churn. A gym holding 95 of every 100 members month to month has 95% retention.
LTV: Lifetime value. The total revenue one member is worth over their full membership, roughly the monthly fee divided by monthly churn.
CAC: Customer acquisition cost. What it takes in marketing spend to sign up one new paying member, compared against LTV to judge a channel.
ARPM: Average revenue per member. Total monthly revenue divided by active members, useful for spotting whether growth comes from more members or better plans.
Dunning: Automatically retrying a failed card and emailing the member to update billing, before a membership lapses over an expired card.
Proration: Charging or crediting a member for only the partial period they used when they change plans mid cycle, instead of a fresh full charge.

Initiation fee: A one time charge collected when a member first joins, separate from their recurring monthly fee.
Freeze or hold: A temporary pause on a membership. Billing stops or drops to a small hold fee, and the member cannot check in until they unfreeze.
Grace period: A short window after a failed payment, usually a few days, where access continues while the charge is retried.
Month to month: A membership with no lock in contract, cancellable any time with notice.
Punch card: A prepaid block of visits or classes a member draws down, instead of a recurring subscription.
Day pass: A single visit pass sold to a non member, often used to try a gym before committing.
Waiver: A liability release a member signs, often electronically, before using equipment or attending a class.
PAR-Q: Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire. A short health screening form that flags members who should see a doctor before training.

Class fill rate: The share of available spots booked. A 20 capacity class with 17 bookings has an 85% fill rate.
Waitlist promotion: Moving the next person on a waitlist into an open spot the moment someone cancels, without staff stepping in.
No show fee: A charge for booking a class and not attending without cancelling in advance.
Schedule template: A recurring weekly class layout that expands automatically into individual bookable sessions, week after week.
Capacity: The maximum number of members a class or room can hold.

QR check-in: A member scans a rotating, time limited code to log attendance, instead of a staff member checking a list.
Front-desk kiosk: A tablet or shared device at reception used for check-in, day pass sales, or staff lookups.
Attendance heatmap: A visual of check-in volume by day and hour, used to spot peak times and staff accordingly.
Offline-first: Software that keeps working, check-ins and bookings included, through an internet outage, then syncs once the connection returns.

White-label: Software branded entirely as the gym's own, with the vendor's name hidden from members.
Multi-location: One account managing several physical gyms, usually with a shared ledger and per-location staff.
Role-based access: Restricting what a staff login can see or do based on an assigned role, such as front desk versus manager.
Super-admin: The account role with unrestricted access across every location, setting, and staff account.
API access: A programmatic way to connect gym software to other tools, instead of manual exports.
Gamification: Points, badges, or streaks for attendance and milestones, used to make consistency feel rewarding.