Monthly membership invoices once subscriptions arrive
What the Industry CRM's subscriptions change for a gym's monthly membership invoices, what stays manual, and how to move members across safely.
By Achekam · · 5 min read · For Fitness businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
On the first working day of every month, someone at the gym sits down and raises the membership invoices. Member after member, the same amount, the same description, the same e-mail. It is the most repetitive job in the back office, and the one most likely to go wrong when that person is on leave.
Subscriptions in the Industry CRM's third wave are the add-on's answer to that repetition. This article explains where they fit, what they do not change about how members pay, and how to move members from a manual monthly run without anyone being invoiced twice or not at all.
Repeating invoices outside the Industry CRM
Start with what the core books offer. Without the Industry CRM, a business cannot set up a recurring invoice for a customer. Repeating invoices exist only as retainers created from a signed engagement letter, which is a tool built for accounting firms billing their clients, not for a gym billing members.
That is why gyms have run a monthly invoicing day by hand: create a draft per member, check it, issue it (which gives it the next number and posts it to the ledger as debtors, sales and output VAT), then e-mail it as a PDF on the gym's letterhead with a pay link. A business that does not take the Industry CRM add-on still works this way.
Subscriptions in the third wave
The Industry CRM's third wave brings bookings, subscriptions and renewals, together with deferred revenue. In the Fitness pack, customers are Members, and the pack keeps Memberships with their freezes, Session packages counted down session by session, and Trials. A membership is a repeating arrangement by nature, which is exactly the kind of arrangement subscriptions and renewals are there to hold.
How much of the monthly run a subscription takes over in your own workspace is worth confirming with a small test before you stop the manual run for everyone. The section below on switching over sets out how.
Invoiced, never collected by debit order
Subscriptions change how invoices come about. They do not change how money arrives.
- The Fitness pack runs no debit orders: memberships are invoiced.
- Achekam never charges a member automatically. There are no saved cards and no debit orders.
- Members still pay each invoice themselves: through a pay link, by transfer, or at the desk.
So the parts of your routine that deal with collecting money stay. A pay link opens a public page with your gym's name and branding; it lasts 14 days by default, and there is no link for a draft or voided invoice. Credit control, which is on for new workspaces, still e-mails overdue reminders once a day and a monthly statement to members with a balance, never charges anyone, and records whether each e-mail went out.
Customer reminders from the Industry CRM itself come by e-mail and in-app only, with no SMS or WhatsApp. Each one stays off until a workspace administrator switches it on, is sent at most once, and is limited by a daily cap. Decide which ones your club wants before switching any on.
The manual run, for members not yet moved
Until every member is on a subscription, some invoices will still be raised by hand. Keep the manual run tight:
- List the members who are not on a subscription.
- Create their drafts, and check names, amounts and e-mail addresses.
- Issue them and e-mail each one with its pay link.
- Check for failed sends: a failed e-mail is reported as not sent, so correct the address and send again.
- Leave the chasing to credit control and the monthly statement.
The full routine for collecting member by member is in collecting membership fees without debit orders.
What to check before switching over
The risk in any switch-over is the same: a member invoiced twice for one month, or a month nobody invoiced. A careful move avoids both.
- Start small. Move a handful of members first, ideally ones on a plain monthly membership with no freeze or special rate. Take them out of the manual run for the switch-over month.
- Watch the first month. Confirm each of those members ends the month with exactly one membership invoice, for the right amount, sent with a pay link.
- Check every membership record. The amount and terms on each membership must match what the member actually pays. A subscription built on an out-of-date record repeats the mistake every month.
- Handle freezes deliberately. A member on a freeze should not start receiving invoices because they were moved across; see how the Fitness pack records membership freezes.
- Keep one list. Until the move is complete, keep a simple list of who is on a subscription and who is still manual, and give it to whoever does the monthly run.
- Tell members. If the look or timing of their invoice changes, a short message saves a pile of queries at the desk.
A worked example in words: a club moves ten plain monthly members first. In the switch-over month, the person who runs invoicing leaves those ten out of the manual run. At month-end, each of the ten has one membership invoice and the rest of the members have their manual ones. The club then moves the next group, and finally the members with freezes and special rates, once the routine is proven.
When some members still pay by debit order
Some clubs keep a debit-order arrangement with their bank or a collection provider for a group of members, outside Achekam. Those members' payments are then recorded as they arrive. South African clubs can read the Payments Association of South Africa's guide to debit orders, which explains the three types of South African debit order, how each is authorised, and what to do about unauthorised debits.
Subscriptions take the monotony out of the monthly run, but they leave the money in members' hands. Move members across in small groups, keep one list of who is where, and let credit control keep chasing the ones who forget.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
