Budgeting/Finance Articles

Reinvigoration Strategies By Kay L. Cross, MEd Face Your Finances Create a winning budget to gain control of your money-- and life. During one of my presentations at the IDEA Personal Trainer Summit...

The Start-Up By Justin Price, MA Accounting and Hiring Practices How to set up your books, choose an ownership structure and select staff for your new facility. a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can create summaries by setting up ledgers (records in which accounts are recorded) and posting information to them. A completed ledger is really nothing more than a summary of revenues, expenditures ...

equipment Brokering the Best Deal HOW TO NEGOTIATE A PRICE THAT GIVES YOU THE BIGGEST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK. By Amy Boone H aving learned how to determine your club's fitness equipment needs (see the January issue of IDEA Fitness Manager), you are now in a position to negotiate a deal with the manufacturer that will best suit the needs of your staff and club members. Many fitness facilities use on...

money Pricing Mind-Body Programs TO HELP A MIND-BODY PROFIT CENTER SOAR, TAKE TIME TO RESEARCH YOUR PRICING THOROUGHLY. By Marci Clark costs, which will sustain your program. Consider the following categories as part of your cost of doing business and include them in your pricing. FRONT-END COSTS 1. Staff Education. Structure your budget to cover either some or all of the cost of instructor trai...

Weathering an Economic Slowdown in the Fitness Industry What facilities and staff can do to succeed in today's cloudy economic climate. Nobody likes to talk about an economic slowdown. People at all levels of the health and fitness business worry enough about their companies in good times; hardly anyone wants to think about potential bad times. It is scary to think of consumers pulling back on sp...

W Revenues and Expenses How you budget and monitor results greatly impacts net revenue. riting the operating budget is an annual chore. Chore? Your accurate budget is a blueprint for an effective operation. Monitoring expenses and revenues allows you to immediately make corrections to ensure that at the end of the year you have a profitable department or business. The revenues and expenses repor...

How much equipment can fit into how much space at what cost? a reality, though, can be quite a challenge. How much space is needed? What kind of equipment will it take? Can the overall objectives be achieved within the designated budget? Many questions must be answered to successfully outfit and open a facility. This article presents a basic overview of how to gauge space and equipment needs for...

In the last column, we reviewed how to research and plan programming and product needs for your facility. Now it’s time to take this information and focus on how to make your C.A.S.E. to convince the general manager (GM) and others to support your request.

Managers who pay attention to details and have accurate, structured documentation in place can avoid a common managerial pitfall. In my experience, neglecting this aspect of business is the Achilles’ heel of many personal training managers.