Personal Trainer Income Collection Tips

So how exactly do you collect the money for your services to make up your personal trainer income? Are you structuring your payments intelligently to guarantee steady cash flow? The structure of your billing system that generates your personal training salary needs to be well planned.

Most individuals who own a personal training business simple sell packages of training sessions. Others, foolishly, just collect the fees after each workout session. Some have their clients pre-pay, while others just bill clients. There are many different ways to bill clients. However, it is important to do so with a few important concepts in mind.

First off, I always recommend getting a firm commitment up front from personal trainer business clients to show that they are serious about the time slot that they have reserved for your services. Paying ahead of time shows a firm commitment not only to you, but also to your program. You should explain to your clients that they are paying for a reserved time slot, or a position in your program.

If fitness training clients give you money ahead of time, they are now more committed than if they are billed after sessions. They now want value in return for the money they pre-paid you. Chances are they will show up for their training sessions ready to work.

Your goal as a fitness trainer is to be profitable with a steady, stable monthly personal trainer income. If you just bill people for more sessions when they complete a package, say of 10, then you might run into cash flow issues waiting to be paid again.

I would like to encourage you to think outside of the box when it comes to billing fitness business clients. The traditional pre-pay, package of sessions isn’t necessarily the best way to structure it. Consider the following more effective personal training billing concept.

Try a 3 month, or 6 month contract where clients pay you each month. Of course, attempt to automatically debit from their accounts each month instead of waiting for checks or cash to come in. Remember, you are a fitness professional, and not a collection agency.

With this particular method you are guaranteed a good monthly income each, and every month for the next 6 months.

Billing monthly for 3 to 6 months will help solve cancellation problems. You can put in client contracts that you will be paid monthly even if they miss sessions. This helps stabilize your monthly personal trainer income.

Once the 6 month contract has expired, you just bill them for another 6 month contract. Of course, they will want to continue with you. Remember, you structure it so a client can only book 2, or 3 sessions per week.

Make sure your personal training business has a good terms of service policy in place prior to accepting money.

I also suggest you get creative on what you consider a training session. Who says fitness training sessions need to be 1 hour long? Why not train people on a 20, or 30 minute bases? I have a friend who trains people on a 15 minute bases. That equals 4 paying sessions in 1 hour. That comes out to $160 for the hour.

My goal in this article is to get you to begin thinking outside of the box when it comes to billing clients. Doing so will help you stabilize your monthly personal trainer income with steady cash flow.

Subscribe to the comments for this post