Monthly fee or session pack: how to charge

Choosing between a fee and a session pack as a personal trainer is choosing between predictability and flexibility. A recurring fee (monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annual) tells you what you will bring in and keeps the relationship open until someone stops it; a session pack is paid once, gives the client freedom and obliges you to sell again when it runs out. Neither is better in the abstract: it depends on whether your service is ongoing or fixed-term and on how much control you need over your income. Here is what each format gives you, what to watch in each, and how it is recorded in Entrenify.

The payment formats at a glance

The underlying difference is when you talk about money with the client again: with a fee, in each period, without having to sell them anything; with a pack, when they run out of sessions.

Format	How it works	What it gives you	What to watch
Monthly fee	One amount each month for a defined service	Predictable income that is easy to follow	That the client knows what it includes and what happens to what they do not use
Quarterly or half-yearly fee	One amount for a block of months	Fewer payments to manage and a longer commitment	What happens if the client quits halfway through the block
Annual fee	One amount for the whole year	A single payment and a long commitment	Pauses, holidays and changes of service during the year
Session pack	One payment for a fixed number of sessions	Payment in advance for a block and flexibility for the client	The session balance, the time limit for using it and renewal

What a recurring fee gives you

A fee turns your business into something you can forecast. If you know which clients renew each month and for how much, you know what is coming in before it arrives, and you can plan expenses, holidays or an investment without working out sums from memory.

It also changes the relationship. With a fee, the service carries on until someone stops it, so the moment of payment is not a new sale but an administrative step. That lets you talk about training and not about renewing every few weeks.

What it asks in return is a well-defined service: what each period includes, what happens to unused sessions, whether it can be paused and how much notice is needed to leave. And it demands a weekly check of who has paid, because a fee nobody looks at turns into a debt that keeps growing. How to set up that check is covered in charging by subscription as a trainer and avoiding unpaid fees.

Monthly or a block of months

The monthly fee is simple to explain and to follow. Quarterly, half-yearly or annual ones reduce the number of payments and lengthen the commitment, but they concentrate income in a few months and make the conversation more delicate if someone wants to quit halfway. If you offer them, decide beforehand, in writing, what happens in that case.

What a session pack gives you

A pack suits clients who train in spurts, fixed-term services (a preparation programme with an end date, a block of technique sessions) or people who prefer not to be tied to a fee. You charge a whole block in advance and the client decides when to use it.

In return, you lose predictability: you do not know when each pack will run out or whether the client will renew it, and each renewal is a small sale. There is also a task that a fee does not involve: keeping each client's session balance. A pack without a clear balance ends up in an “I thought I had two left” that nobody can check.

If you work with packs, note each session used at the time, warn the client when only a few are left, and put the renewal in your diary before it runs out, not after.

How to choose: five questions

1. Is your service ongoing or does it have an end? Ongoing calls for a fee; fixed-term fits a pack or a one-off payment.
2. Do you sell sessions or follow-up? Online follow-up is not counted in sessions, so it fits a charge per period.
3. Do you need to know what you will bring in each month? If so, a fee gives you that; a pack does not.
4. Do your clients train regularly? If they come in spurts, a pack avoids arguments about sessions paid for and not used.
5. How much admin do you want? A fee requires checking who is paying; a pack also requires keeping everyone's balance.

You do not have to pick one for everyone. You can offer a fee to those who train continuously and a pack to those who come in spurts, as long as each client knows which is theirs. Before you put prices on them, work out how much to charge as a personal trainer: the format changes when you get paid, not what your hour is worth.

What to write down for either

Whether it is a fee or a pack, put in writing, before the first session:

• What it includes and what it does not.
• When it is paid: the fee's due date or the moment the pack is bought.
• If the pack has a time limit for use, what it is.
• What happens to a session that is cancelled: whether it is made up or lost, and how much notice is needed. We expand on this in cancellation policy for personal trainers.
• Pauses, holidays and how to leave the service.
• What happens if the client wants to change format.

The more specific it is, the less is left to each person's interpretation when it comes to getting paid.

How each format is recorded in Entrenify

In Entrenify (in Spanish), what your clients pay is recorded as one fee per client and its payments, by hand:

• Billing period. Each client can have their own fee, with an amount and a billing period: monthly, quarterly, half-yearly, annual or one-off. Each client has one live fee: if they change format, their fee is changed.
• Recurring fees. If you do not state the next payment date, it is calculated automatically, and when you record the payment of the fee, it moves its next payment date forward; a separate payment does not move it.
• One-off payment. It does not count towards recurring income, because it does not repeat, and its next payment date is not calculated automatically. If you want a pack's renewal to show as pending on a given date, enter it by hand on the fee and change it when they renew.
• Who owes. You see the active fees whose next payment date has already passed. When a client leaves the service, you can deactivate their fee without deleting it: it stops counting as a debt and their past payments stay there.
• What your income relies on. The business dashboard breaks your active fees down by billing period, and recurring income takes each active fee to its monthly equivalent.

What it does not do: the fee records what a client pays and how often, not how many sessions they have left, so you keep a pack's balance yourself. Entrenify is also not a payment gateway and does not charge your clients for you, and it does not issue tax invoices.

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