7 Ways to Reduce the Monthly Cost of Running Your Gym

Most gyms have a handful of large fixed costs (rent, staff, power, equipment) and a long tail of smaller ones that creep up over time. Cutting costs well means looking at both, and making sure you don’t save money in a way that loses members. Here are seven places to look.

1. Find out where the money actually goes

Before you cut anything, list every cost for the last 12 months from your bank statements and accounts. Group them into:

• Fixed: rent, insurance, loan or lease repayments, software subscriptions
• Variable: power, water, cleaning, repairs, payment processing fees, wages
• Discretionary: advertising, merchandise, events

Then look for anything that has grown without you noticing, subscriptions nobody uses, and suppliers you haven’t compared in years. Insurance, cleaning, waste collection and phone/internet contracts are often worth re-quoting.

If you don’t have a clear picture yet, our gym running costs calculator gives you a starting framework for your monthly costs.

In GymMaster you can have reports emailed to you (or your accountant) on a schedule, so the numbers come to you rather than waiting until someone has time to run them. See Schedule Report Sending with Auto-Send.

2. Renegotiate your lease before it’s due

Rent is usually the biggest single cost, and the best time to negotiate it is well before the lease expires, while you still have time to walk away.

• Find out what comparable spaces nearby are leasing for. A commercial property agent can tell you.
• Make the case for yourself as a tenant: how long you’ve been there, that you pay on time, and the foot traffic you bring to the building or neighbouring businesses.
• Don’t only ask for lower rent. A rent-free period, a contribution to fit-out or repairs, a shorter term, a right of renewal, or a cap on annual increases can be worth as much.
• Get legal advice before you sign anything.

3. Cut power and water use

Gyms run long hours with lots of lights, air conditioning and hot showers, so small changes add up.

• Switch to LED lighting, and put lights in low-use areas (changing rooms, storage, studios between classes) on motion sensors.
• Put heating and cooling on a timer that matches your open and busy hours, rather than running it flat out all day.
• Fit low-flow shower heads and check for leaking taps and toilets.
• Ask your power company for your usage data by time of day, then check whether a different plan suits when you actually use power.

Some of these cost money up front. Get a quote and work out how many months of savings it takes to pay it back before deciding.

4. Match staff hours to when members actually come in

Wages are the other big cost. The aim is to have people on the floor when members are there, not to cut service.

Look at your visit data to see your busy and quiet periods. In GymMaster, Report and Till > Standard Report > Retention includes visit reports that show your busiest times (Reporting on Member Visits). Build your roster around those, and cross-train staff so one person can cover reception, sales and a basic floor check during quiet hours.

Many gyms go further and run some hours unstaffed. With 24/7 access control, members let themselves in with a key fob, the app or a QR code, and you decide which memberships get access at which times using door rosters (Settings > Roster & Open Hours). See Open Hours and Door Access Rosters. If you’re worried about members letting friends in during unstaffed hours, tailgating detection flags entries where more people come through than swiped.

The access control ROI calculator lets you put your own wage and hours figures in to see whether unstaffed hours make sense for you.

5. Be smart about equipment

Equipment is expensive to buy and expensive to fix.

• Lease or buy: leasing spreads the cost and makes upgrades easier, but you usually pay more in total. Buying costs more up front but nothing after. Ask your accountant how each option is treated for tax in your situation.
• Refurbished equipment from a reputable reseller, with a warranty, can be good value for items that don’t change much, such as racks, benches and plates.
• Maintenance: regular servicing is cheaper than emergency call-outs and replacing machines early. Keep a simple log of what was serviced and when, and get members to report faults so small problems get fixed before they become big ones.
• Buy for what’s used: if your visit and class numbers show an area is rarely used, don’t replace it like-for-like.

6. Spend less staff time on admin

Every hour your team spends on data entry, chasing payments or answering “can I put my membership on hold?” is an hour you’re paying for. Letting members do routine things themselves is one of the easiest savings.

In GymMaster, members can:

• Join and pay online (Sell Memberships Online)
• Update their own card or bank details (Update Billing Details through the Member Portal)
• Put their membership on hold within rules you set (Online Holds)
• Book and cancel classes from the app or Member Portal

You can also automate routine messages, such as welcome emails, payment reminders and class reminders, using tasks and templates. See Automate Member and Staff Communication.

Failed payments are worth a regular check too. The Debt Collection report under Report & Till lists members with failed payments and members who aren’t being charged at all, for example because they never entered billing details. See How to Use Debt Collection Reporting.

7. Stop paying for marketing that doesn’t bring in members

It’s easy to keep paying for ads, directory listings and sponsorships because you’re not sure which ones work. Find out, then drop the ones that don’t.

GymMaster records how each online sign-up found you, including the referring site and any UTM campaign tags on the link they clicked, and you can report on it. See Marketing Attribution. Tag the links in each ad and email so you can compare channels by members joined, not clicks.

Cheaper channels are often the ones you already have: a referral offer for existing members, guest passes so members can bring a friend, and following up every enquiry promptly.

Review it regularly

Costs drift. Put a reminder in your calendar to go through your expenses every quarter, and re-quote insurance and major contracts at least once a year. If you’d like to see how GymMaster could take some of the admin load off your team, book a demo.