Memberships • Renewals
Gym memberships and renewals: types, freezes and manual renewal
The membership is a fitness gym's product; everything else is a service that supports it. Real revenue, though, comes not only from the first sale but from the renewal. Below you'll find the membership types you can set up, how a membership is renewed by hand in 4gym and how to use a freeze as an alternative to cancelling.
How a membership works (short answer)
- You pick the member's offer (duration, price, entries, time window) and create the membership with a start date.
- The membership gets an end date, calculated from the offer's duration, and the entries left if the offer limits them.
- On every entry the front desk records a check-in, and 4gym checks the membership status, location, time window and entries left.
- You record the payment separately, in the manual ledger; it does not create or extend a membership by itself.
- At expiry you click “Renew”: 4gym creates a new membership from the same offer, and the old one stays in the history.
Membership types
Membership types you can set up as offers in 4gym
| Type | How it works | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | A 30-day offer, renewed by hand at each expiry | New and seasonal members |
| Annual | A 365-day offer, with a lower equivalent monthly price set by the club | Regular members |
| Ten-entry package | An offer with 10 entries: each check-in uses one, within the membership's duration | Members who come irregularly |
| Off-peak membership | Access only within the allowed window (for example 08:00–16:00); outside it the check-in is refused | Balancing traffic in the gym |
| Quarterly | A 90-day offer, with unlimited or limited entries, as the club chooses | Members who want a shorter commitment than a year |
Prices and payments: what you record in 4gym
- The price is set per offer, in the club’s currency (for example GBP or EUR); the membership keeps the price and the rules from the day it was created.
- A payment is recorded by hand: cash, card, bank transfer or another method, with amount, currency, date and reference.
- “Card” only means the payment was collected outside 4gym (on the club's own card terminal): 4gym does not charge the card and does not issue invoices or fiscal receipts.
- A wrongly entered payment is voided with a reason and stays in the history; it is not deleted.
How to renew and how to keep members
- Renewal takes one click: on the expiring membership, press “Renew”. The new membership starts by default the day after expiry (or today, if it has already expired).
- A membership can be renewed only once; the next renewal starts from the new membership, not the old one.
- A freeze covers a holiday or an injury, as an alternative to cancelling; on resume, the end date moves by the frozen days.
- Call members who have not come in for three weeks, before expiry — you make the call, 4gym does not send messages.
- For classes, the front desk books the member in; if the class is full the member goes on the waiting list and is promoted automatically when a place frees up.
Common mistakes
- Waiting for the expiry day to talk about renewal, when the member has already left.
- Not offering a freeze, so the member cancels instead of suspending the membership.
- Selling only monthly memberships and having no predictable revenue in the summer.
- Assuming a payment extends the membership: in 4gym, recording a payment does not create or extend a membership on its own — you renew separately.
How 4gym helps
- Membership offers with duration, price, currency, entries and an allowed time window, copied onto every membership created.
- Freeze and resume, with the end date extended automatically by the frozen days.
- Manual renewal: one click creates a new membership from the same offer, with the history kept.
- A manual, non-fiscal payment ledger with voiding that requires a reason, and the month's revenue by currency in the Overview.
- What it does not do: it does not renew or charge automatically, does not store cards and does not send expiry messages.