Personal Training/Individual coaching - set up and fees structures

Introduction

A club may set up one or more "individual coaching" events (you need a separate one for each sport involved) under which coaches or trainers can arrange and book their sessions. The event itself can be set using New Nextgen event - look for "Individual coaching" (MMM may have these set up already as part of the implementation process).

With the event in place, the club can nominate the coaches by going to the Groups tab Manage club details, selecting the relevant event and click the amber Review button. There you will be able to add one or more coaches. Each coach can then set up their own groups of clients (perhaps different ones for different coaching options) and set various options including pricing.

For coaching and personal training there are two broad models:

• Model 1: The service is provided by the club and the coaches are employed (or at least paid) by the club
• Model 2: The service is facilitated by the club and the coaches earn their fees directly from their clients

MMM supports both models with features that mainly support model 2, some of which can be ignored where model 1 is employed . Normally, coaching fees are accumulated in a group account (the coaches group) and the coach can take these funds into their own account at any time. For model 1, the employed coach would not do this and instead the club can "absorb" the group funds as income from the group account on a periodic basis.

For model 2, there is also the option for the club to prohibit the use of a "group account" which means that all coach fees and transactions are performed using the coaches personal account.

The arrangements available to both the club and the coach as to how they earn fees from the client are varied and numerous and this article sets out to explain these.

There are two main components

1. Fee due to the coach for the use of their services
2. Fees due to the club for the use of their facilities

Coach fees

Coaches set their fees independently (for Model 1, they would do so as instructed by the club). They do so on a group basis. A group typically represents a captive client list that engages in a particular type of training. For example a PT might have a "Cardio" training offering as well as a "Weights" offering. They could be priced differently. Within each group, the coach can set different choices of training duration. The duration of a training or coaching session is normally defaulted to be that of the booked slot. But other durations can be defined and priced differently.

For each offering the coach may set up a discount scheme offering the client the opportunity to buy several sessions up front - sessions that may subsequently be arranged at any time. There are two discounting schemes available, one or both of which can be put in place at the same time:

1. % discount on the standard fee (applied when 1 or more sessions are pre-bought)
2. "Buy X sessions and get 1 free" scheme (encourages a client to buy a number of sessions to get an extra one free)

Assuming a session was not pre-paid as above, the client is automatically charged at the time of the session by transferring funds from their personal account to the coach's group account (or the coach's personal account).

This is the simple model. But there are two possible ways in which the club can influence the fees earned by the coach:

1. By applying a % commission on their fees. This would only make sense with Model 2. With Model 1, the fees earned already belong to the club. This percentage is set by the club in the same screen where they nominate the coaches (see above).
2. By applying a % discount based on products or the membership the client may have with the club. This would only make sense with Model 1. Otherwise, the coach could earn a dramatically different income based on a client's club membership - something over which the coach has no control. The club can set these discounts in a panel under the Courts tab from Manage events.

Club fees

The club can earn fees by three means:

1. By a commission from the coach's fees (as per point 1 immediately above)
2. By setting fixed fees for the use of their facilities (aka court fees)
3. By setting additional fees for guests or visitors

Means 1 has already been described. Means 2 is essentially court fees which, in itself, has huge flexibilities in how these are determined. Taking a Gym as an example, some members may pay more for peak times than non peak times. Or perhaps full members pay nothing to use the Gym. In addition to a member's fees for normal, solo use of the Gym, the club may set reduced fees (or zero fees) for use of the Gym in a Personal Training context (you cannot set inflated fees, as it would make no sense to charge more for what they would otherwise have paid if using the Gym solo - i.e. MMM always charges the least fee to which they are entitled).

Whatever the "facilities" fee is for an individual client (in racquet sports parlance we call it a court fee), this will be due when the client uses the Gym for a personal training session. In fact, this is even the case for the coach (not so for Racquet sports booking where the client pays the full court fee) - they too will be charged their facilities fee (though the club may set this to zero via a special "coach" membership - and would almost definitely do so for Model 1). In the scenario of a gym (with multiple simultaneous users), the facilities fee is pro-rata's for the duration of the session. For racquet ball sports like Squash, this does not happen as the full court slot is unusable by others however long the training session is.

The separation of the facilities fee makes it easy for the coach to quote just one price irrespective of membership status, but also can make it overly transparent (eventually) to the client. This can be mitigated, if necessary, by the coach choosing (on a group basis) to pay the facilities fee on behalf of the client - in which case the client transfers the coaching fee and the facilities fee as one sum to the coach and the coach then pays the club from their group account. Otherwise, the client will see two payments - one to the coach and the other to the club. Either way, the payments are fully automated.

Finally, we have Means 3, the guest or visitor fee. If applicable, this is always paid separately by the client to the club and is clearly identified as a "visitors fee". This is by design as we want to make the financial effect of not being a member to be very obvious to a client. This encourages membership conversion.

The visitors fee is only charged for personal solo bookings, sessions (e.g. coaching) and matches. It is not levied for any kind of group activity. It is never pro-rata'd.

The visitors fee represents a flat charge for any booking for which the user has no pre-designated rights. So it can apply, for example, when an off-peak member uses a peak court. Whilst MMM prevents someone from booking an un-entitled court themselves, another entitled player could still book the court with them.  It's really a charge made when someone has a booking to which they aren't entitled (and so the system has no way to ascertain what their entitled fee actually is). Another scenario is when a member books, say, the gym and declares a guest - the guest is not named in the system and the member will be charged the visitors fee. MMM will always try to charge the visitor directly but if this cannot be done the person or persons with whom the visitor was playing will share the burden of the fee (presumably to be recovered from the visitor off-system).

The visitors fee can be set at three levels:

1. Club wide - this is a sort of catch-all and will be charged in the absence of levels 2 & 3. The club can set this fee in the Booking rules tab under Courts section of Manage clubs
2. By court - a visitors fee can be set on the court schedule. A booking on a particular court will attract this visitors fee rather than the club wide one. This is meant to address the need to have different fees for different sports or spaces, so a Gym user would have a visitors fee that could differ from a Tennis player. The club can set this fee in the Court schedule details popup in the Courts tab of Manage clubs.
3. By event - For example, the club could set a different visitors fee for personal training purposes. The club can set this fee in a panel under the Courts tab from Manage events.