№ 12 — WELLNESS
The class fills itself. The subscriptions collect themselves. You teach.
A gym, a studio, a spa, a physio clinic — the work is the session in front of you, not the admin behind it. Yet most of the day quietly leaks into it: a class double-booked, a membership that lapsed two months ago and nobody noticed, a waitlist held in someone's head, an instructor's commission worked out on the back of a rota. Navigare Wellness puts the timetable, the bookings, the waitlist and the money in one place — memberships collected by Direct Debit through GoCardless so the subscription chases itself, and a signed waiver on file against every member who walks in.
THE PROBLEM
The teaching is the easy part. The admin is where the day goes.
The studio that runs well from the front desk is often the one losing money quietly out the back. Classes fill and overflow with no record of who is waiting; subscriptions that should renew themselves are reconciled by hand; and the people who actually deliver the sessions are paid off a calculation that nobody can reproduce. None of it is dramatic — it is just a slow tax on every week, paid in time you would rather spend on the floor.
i
Classes are overbooked, or half-empty
A timetable kept in a spreadsheet or a wall planner has no idea how many spaces are left. Popular slots get double-booked and turn people away at the door; quiet ones run under capacity because nobody could see them filling. Either way, the room is the wrong size for the booking.
ii
Memberships are chased by hand
A subscription is only worth what you actually collect. When renewals depend on someone remembering to take payment, members lapse silently, cards expire, and a month's fee quietly disappears — and the only way to catch it is to go through the list one name at a time.
iii
The waitlist lives in someone's head
A class is full, three people ask to be told if a space opens, and that promise is now a sticky note or a memory. When a cancellation comes in, nobody is offered it in order — the place goes to whoever happened to message at the right moment, and the rest are quietly forgotten.
iv
Instructor pay is worked out by hand
Some instructors are on commission, some on a flat fee, and at the end of the month someone reconciles attendance against the rota with a calculator. It is slow, it is easy to get wrong, and a dispute over a single class is impossible to settle when the working is not written down.
v
Class packs are tracked on trust
A ten-class pack is sold, and from then on the count lives in a notebook or a member's good faith. Sessions get used twice, or never expire, and the value you sold up front leaks away one un-recorded visit at a time.
vi
Waivers are on paper, somewhere
Health screening and waivers are signed on a clipboard and filed in a drawer — until the day you need one quickly and cannot find it. A paper waiver that takes ten minutes to locate is not much use at the moment it actually matters.
HOW NAVIGARE SOLVES IT
One system for the timetable and the money behind it.
Built on Odoo Community with our wellness vertical on top: a class timetable with bookings and a real waitlist, memberships collected by Direct Debit through GoCardless, class packs that count themselves down, instructor contracts on commission or flat fee, and a signed waiver held against each member — in one place, in pounds, with UK data residency. The point is that the day-to-day stops depending on memory: the class knows its capacity, the subscription collects itself, and the waitlist runs in order.
The principle: the parts of a studio that leak money are the parts done by hand. So Navigare Wellness automates the two that leak most — filling classes and collecting subscriptions — and keeps everything else (packs, instructor pay, waivers, member notes) in the same record rather than scattered across a diary, a payment app and a drawer. The sections below describe it as it actually behaves, not as a wish-list.
EVERYTHING ELSE THE STUDIO NEEDS
The timetable, the people, the paperwork — in the same system.
Collecting the money is half of it; running the floor is the other half. Navigare Wellness keeps the timetable, the waitlist, the instructors and the waivers alongside the memberships — one system, one record, in pounds.
Class timetable & bookings
A timetable that knows each class's capacity, takes bookings against it, and stops a slot once it is full — so the room is the right size for the people in it, every time.
Waitlist that runs in order
When a class is full, members join a waitlist instead of a sticky note. The list is kept in order, so a cancellation has somewhere to go and the next person up is the one who gets it.
Class packs
Sell blocks of sessions as packs that count themselves down against the member as they are used — no more tracking a ten-class card on trust in a notebook.
Instructor contracts
Instructors are held on contracts that are either commission-based or flat fee, so what each one is owed follows the same rule every month instead of a manual calculation off the rota.
Signed waiver on file
A signed waiver — health screening included — is uploaded and held as a document against the member, so it is on file the moment you need it rather than somewhere in a drawer.
Progress notes
Keep progress notes against each member alongside their bookings and waiver — the picture of who they are and how they are getting on, in one place, not scattered across heads and notebooks.
