Does your studio software offer these 9 features?

8 min readMay 16, 2022

It can be tough to be a small business owner or manager. There are usually one hundred different things you need to take care of on a day-to-day basis. It can be tough to deal with the needs of your members, the admin and your staff. This is why having the right studio management software is so critical. You don’t want to have to be fighting with an out of touch and unintuitive system when you’re planning your next class. There are a few software options claiming to be the latest and greatest thing; but, if they don’t have the following 9 features, you can quickly take them off the list.

1. Plan your class schedules

You want features built into the software that will make running your studio a breeze, no matter what your area of focus is. One of the most essential of these is the ability to create and modify classes, as well as tracking attendance. This is convenient on both sides as you can plan and create class schedules and clients can browse and choose which ones they want to attend at their leisure.

2. Setting appointments

Most people keep their lives running smoothly through the use of online calendars and schedules. Your studio software should have the ability to conveniently sync all appointments with something like a Google (or other) calendar automatically. This will ensure you won’t have to waste time manually tracking and adding in appointments. You shouldn’t have to worry about missing an appointment ever again.

3. Letting clients make payments online

When each payment must be personally processed it can take a large amount of time, which you don’t have. Any decent studio software should have the ability to process payments for you whether they are for courses, subscriptions or individual sessions.

4. Understand your members

In an era of personalisation, you need rich data and insight into your customers. Your studio software platform should be collecting personal data (after it has been granted permission) so that you can build a detailed profile around them. This can help you understand how people are responding to your studio and better deliver a customised experience.

5. Providing a space to log in

With a login, your members will be able to select and pay for classes as well as be able to see stats that provide insight on their health and fitness journey. This is a huge advantage for any studio. Before, the only opportunity for interaction was the actual class, but now students can engage at any time at their leisure.

6. Communicate effectively with staff

Being able to communicate with and manage the schedules of your staff and teachers with studio software can make management much easier overall. You can simplify messages and communications by having just one place that they come to for updates.

7. Getting in touch through email

Almost every business needs to use email. From communicating to suppliers to running marketing campaigns, email is still the most reliable method for getting in touch with someone. Some studio software options have begun to offer integrated email client functionality, making it even easier to have a centralised location to manage your business. When you want to promote a special rate or new class, you can easily fire out an email to your members.

8. Easy user dashboard

As we mentioned earlier, you want members to be able to log in and easily see their profile and activities. Part of this should be a quick view dashboard that sums up activities — both long and short term — for them. It’s little elements like these that can really elevate the overall status of your studio.

9. In-depth reporting

With everything that studio software can do and offer, you also need to be able to quickly get insight into the status of your business. Any good studio software should have easy exports and reports that enable you to get into the nuts and bolts of how your business is doing.

If you’re thinking of taking the leap by supercharging your business with studio software, Xplor Studio is a good place to start.