For gyms and leisure
Software for gyms and leisure operators
A cable frays on a Tuesday. Somebody tapes a sign to the machine, somebody else posts in the group chat, and by Friday nobody can say whether the engineer came, what he did, or who decided it was safe to use again.
What it looks like running
Ironmere is a demonstration we built for an invented gym group with three clubs. The owner's screen shows how many machines are on the floor, the days lost to repairs, the quotes waiting on a decision and the checks that were missed. The phone screen is what a manager carries round the club, and it keeps working in a room with no signal.
How these businesses run
A gym sells access to its kit. Every machine that is out of use is something members are paying for and cannot have, and they notice before the owner does.
Faults are spotted by whoever is on the floor: a coach, a cleaner, a member at the desk. Repairs are done by contractors who visit one club this week and another next. The person who finds the problem and the person who fixes it rarely meet.
Underneath that sit the daily checks for opening, cleaning, safety and closing. Staff on rotating shifts do them on paper, and a paper sheet can be ticked all at once at the end of the day.
Where it usually goes wrong
- A broken machine is reported three different ways and written down in none of them
- Nobody knows how long a machine has been out of use, so nobody knows what it is costing
- A contractor's quote sits in an inbox until somebody remembers to approve it
- The engineer says it is fixed and it goes straight back on the floor with nobody checking
- The cleaning sheet is fully ticked at half past five, including the jobs nobody did
- The plant room in the basement has no signal, so the app you tried down there was useless
Sound like your business?
Tell us which of these costs you the most time and we will tell you what we would build, roughly what it would cost and how long it would take.
What we can build for this
What we can build for this kind of business, built around the way the work actually runs.
- Fault reports from the gym floor, made by scanning a code on the machine
- Work orders that follow each fault to a contractor, with the quote attached
- Spending limits, so a quote over a set figure waits for the right person
- A sign off step: a repaired machine stays out of use until a named manager puts it back
- Days out of use counted per machine and per club, from the records rather than a guess
- Shift checklists split by the hour, so nothing can be ticked late or early
- A handover at the end of each shift with both names on it and anything missed carried over
- Phone screens that work with no signal and catch up when it returns
- One view across every club for the owner
How a project would work
We would start with one machine, followed from the moment somebody notices it is broken to the moment it is back in use. That path runs through a coach, a manager, a contractor and a manager again, and it is where the money goes.
Staff will only use something quicker than a sign and some tape, so the phone side is built first and tested in the worst room in the building.
Ready to see what it would take?
Watch the short briefing first, or book a review and talk it through with us.
See it working
A short film of one of our own demonstrations, recorded from the running software. Every company in it is invented, and the link opens the real thing.
Ironmere Plant · Gyms and leisure
A fault reported off the gym floor becomes a work order, a quote nobody can spend without approving, and a running figure for what the downtime costs.
Shift · Gyms, salons and nurseries
The block closes when the hour does, so nothing can be back-filled at five o'clock to make the day look tidy.
What that usually means building
Questions we get asked
- Can staff report a broken machine without sitting at a computer?
- Yes. Each machine gets a printed code. Scanning it with a phone camera opens that machine's record, and the fault is reported from there with a photo. In our Ironmere demonstration the phone's own camera app opens the right record.
- Will it work in a basement with no phone signal?
- It can be built to. The phone keeps the machines and checks it needs, carries on without a connection, and sends what was recorded once the signal returns. Our Ironmere demonstration is tested with the network switched off.
- Can it cover daily cleaning and safety checks as well as repairs?
- Yes. Checks are grouped by the hour they belong to, signed with a name, and handed over at the end of the shift with anything missed carried forward. Our Shift demonstration shows this for gyms, salons, nurseries and care homes.
- We already have membership software. Does this replace it?
- No. Membership software looks after members and payments. This is the operations side: the kit, the contractors and the checks. It is built to run beside what you already use for members.
Tell us how your business actually runs
We build around the way the work already happens rather than fitting a business to software that was written for somebody else. Describe the part that costs you the most time and we will tell you what we would build and roughly what it would cost.