How To Integrate eSign in Sports

How to industry e sign sports integrate

hey folks jim thomas here fitness management and consulting i appreciate you being here at the channel today and for those of you that have not yet done so you know please hit that subscribe button i appreciate it and if you find the information i provide beneficial you know please hit that like button as well now our topic for you today it's 14 ways that your gym billing company might be costing you money and so what i want to do for you is you folks that are new and you're you're looking at billing companies i want to give you some questions that you can ask some things that you want to know because number one i know a lot of folks when we first get into this we really don't know what to ask we just kind of take it at face value and some of you right now that have been with your billing company long term maybe you've not reviewed this to see where you're at because this is one area where you can get either higher efficiency higher effectiveness or some significant cost savings on this now i recently posted a blog it's on our website uh you can see it at fmconsulting.net you can also find it on our linkedin channel and then you can also find it on our medium page as well m-e-d-i-u-m.com so you can find the blog posted there uh 14 ways your gym billing company is losing you money so let's go through this questions that you can ask okay questions you should be asking if you're looking to get a new billing company or if you're doing a review of the one you currently have so number one your gym billing company requires you to use their merchant account okay so here's what we want to know you know gym billing companies they're not financial institutions you know they're middlemen that will mark up and resell financial services at a profit you know and in many cases requiring you to move your billing services to their immersion account you know can cost you an additional two to three percent in monthly charges so you know gym billing companies require you to use their merchant account first thing you want to talk about you know first question you want to ask number two your gym billing company your vendor okay you know they do not provide next day funding for ach transactions okay and so you know it's critical to keep the cash flow coming to your gym we know that okay and gym billing companies that do not process your ach transactions in one day they may cause some lapses in your cash flow so prompt ach processing is going to be important so you can manage your billing and your flow of receivables so let's make that number two when you're checking out billing companies number three your gym billing company does not provide an integrated email and texting function with their software they don't provide an integrated email and texting function with their software so does your gym billing company do that you know having software you know with integrated email that includes self-managed custom templates you know it's going to be critical you know if you do email marketing to your existing member base which of course you should right okay if your vendor does not provide this service you're going to incur additional costs you know by bringing on companies like you know say constant contact you know mailchimp and others okay and in addition to that you know having your existing member database accessible to your integrated sms templates is going to eliminate uh the time consuming of exporting exporting you know all your member database and uploading it to the sms company that your vendor uses for texting okay so and also as a final note here just remember that if your vendor has integrated an outside texting service there may be extra rates applied every time that you do a text to your member database so make sure you check out for that okay number four your billing software your gym billing software does not include an integrated eft payment processing gateway okay so if your vendor outsources their ach and credit processing they will pass those costs on to you many times with a markup so make sure you ask that question number five your vendor does not provide automatic processing of declines back into the system along with an automated way of rebuilding declines okay so if you have to search for your declines after every billing you know you're wasting your time and your employees time okay you know times money right we know that and so your vendor should automatically process all declines and rebuild them as part of their service make sure you're asking that question number six your billing company your vendor does not provide deferred revenue reporting for accounting purposes uh deferred revenue it's money that you receive in advance of having earned it okay in other words you know deferred revenues are not yet revenues and therefore cannot yet be reported you know on your income statement as a result the unearned amount must be deferred you know to the company's balance sheet where it be where will be reported okay as a liability if you have to spend time doing this reporting instead of your vendor it's just another added expense for you so make sure you check into that number seven your billing company does not provide a clear explanation of charges i know i hear this one quite a bit i've actually had folks that have contacted me and wanted me to do research on the billing company so i could explain it to them okay so number seven you know the billing company does not provide a clear explanation of charges all right and uh so my our comments here is you know there's nothing more aggravating here than discovering kind of blended hidden you know rates of service in your vendor's bill okay and if your vendor does not provide this uh this kind of clarity there's no no way to really know exactly you know what you're paying for what so you want a clear you know explanation of charges have it broken down each time number eight your vendors software does not allow for extensive data mining of your member database okay and of course in the fitness industry you know it's critical uh to be able to quickly contact all members in your database current former and perspective you know so you can inform them of sales of specials of events of new products you know please come back offers you know for example okay so you want to use integrated you know crm to upsell upsell them so if your vendor does not integrate this into the function into their software it may take you hours you know to search the database for the group you want to reach export the result and then contact the members you know through one of the email or texting services and i see this one fairly common uh with clubs you know the first question i'll ask a lot of times is hey have we have we categorized you know our current members our former members our non-members they said well no it's all in there together and they have to go in there and break all this down so you know that's a key element for marketing because you know again you know we need to make sure that we're constantly promoting and constantly marketing and the great thing about you know data mining all this this is these are all leads you already have bought and paid for there's no additional cost on that uh number nine your vendor's system your billing company system does not include a mobile phone app okay and if you don't have an app i mean you're just you're falling behind right you know more and more gyms they want members to use their phones to schedule training to buy services uh to research history even to check into the gym and uh a built-in app that allows your members to quickly acquire and download to their phone can save your club club hundreds of thousands of dollars and and can be a great revenue source as well so if you don't have that app you know certainly you want to get one uh number 10 your gym billing company's software does not allow for online training and scheduling okay so being able to allow online booking and scheduling is going to be crucial you know frees up your resources by letting the trainers and members schedule classes themselves okay plus standalone scheduling systems can cost you know hundreds of extra dollars a month a real detriment you know to your bottom line number eleven your gym billing company your vendor software does not reflect the number of training sessions used after purchase okay your software does not reflect the number of training sessions used after purchase if the vendor system does not adam automatically perform this function of managing the allocation and use of purchase sessions again you know you're going to have to spend your money using your staff to manually keep track of what was purchased and when it was used number 12 your vendor does not provide a crm website that integrates with your software you know fitness clubs that can be found on all social media outlets you know they're way ahead of the game it's a must-have and all smart clubs will use social media you know facebook twitter linkedin instagram and others you know to link a user-friendly website where the latest offers and specials you know can be purchased so if your vendor does not offer this service and link it directly to your software database you're losing revenue uh that could potentially push your earnings you know to a whole new level and then number 14 and finally on our list your vendor does not include online contracts as a feature of their software and we still find some of this okay and so for years of course you know uh you've been having your new clients your new members you know fill out paper contracts at the front desk you're going to sign them up contracts that then you have to file away and permanently you know keep somewhere in your office you know software that stores all these contracts digitally and allows your members and prospects to sign up you know using a kiosk a tablet or a phone allows you to store all your paperwork in the cloud saving you space and allowing for instant retrieval of contracts paperless contracts stored on a secure cloud server also keep your club pci compliant so these are just some of the ways that your vendor can cost you money okay that maybe we don't know the questions to ask you know we don't know what to look for so when you're looking for a gym billing software company or you're starting to wonder if you have the right one for your company look at these 14 questions contact your current billing company ask them these 14 questions if you're brand new and you're looking these are the questions that you want to ask don't simply go through a demo and think well okay i'll take it okay know the question stats so these are your top 14 go through that it can save you a lot of money a lot of headache and it can also make sure that you get the right company because i know sometimes they'll find companies and gyms that they get a billing company it really doesn't fit what they're trying to do and you find yourself having to go through that conversion process even in the best of circumstances you know conversion is going to be a little bit bumpy so folks uh my name is jim thomas my company is fitness management and consulting if you find the information that i provide beneficial please hit that like button below and we'll look forward to seeing y'all in that next video