We frequently release updates to the system and post the details here.
Today's release is a direct follow on from our last. The team management upgrades put additional stress on our calendar and your feedback confirmed this. So we went to work on a massive overhaul of the way events are added and managed.
A completely new experience when planning sessions, class dates and appointments
In addition to the above this release includes 42 other performance improvements, bug fixes, and feature enhancements.
To date Striive has only supported event management using a 24 hour clock. We are aware not everyone likes to work this way, so today we added the option to switch your account between using a 12 hour or 24 hour time format.
This is an account level setting which means everyone (teacher or client) can change their preference and see times the way they prefer.
Today marks the release of some major updates across all areas of the Striive platform. This is by far the single biggest update we've ever done (yes, we've said this before, but this time we really mean it). So what's included...
At the heart of these updates is the introduction of our team management features. Instead of Striive accounts only being for solo or freelance pros, you can now run a team from your account. You will notice that you are now the owner of your business (we call it an 'organisation'). Simply invite more people to join your team and once they've created an account you'll be able to assign packages, session packs, and classes to them to teach. You can move people between sessions and class dates if needed and use our cover feature if people will be absent. Each team member has their own access to Striive where they can see the events assigned to them, mark attendances, and pick events available to them from your cover list. They can also manage their own calendar, adding in holidays and appointments so you know when they are available.
If you run multiple businesses you can create additional organisations inside your Striive account. And it's possible to teach for multiple different businesses using just one login.
You can expect a lot of additional updates to our team features over the coming months.
Building the team features above pushed our previous design to breaking point. We'd been contemplating a design refresh for a while but it rapidly became a necessity. So say hello to the new side nav (for those of you on a computer). We've also improved the navigation system and freshened up all the other screens to match. But we didn't leave the client area out. That's also received a raft of updates to make it easier to use.
Have you ever wondered if anything was going on with your clients from day to day? There was limited visibility of client actions and you'd be forgiven for forgetting if you sent that PAR-Q to a client. Well wonder no more. The new activity feed tracks 28 different actions across the system, so whether it's sending a new client invite, or a client purchasing a new class pass, you'll be able to see things happening in real time from your dashboard.
This week we have released some changes to the way our paid plans work.
We will no longer be limiting access to functionality based upon your plan. This means the previous SESSIONS and CLASSES plans have now been discontinued. All plans now have access to all of our features. This ensures no-one is discouraged from starting their first class, or taking on their first private client just because they are subscribed to the wrong plan. This change also allows us to focus more on improving Striive for everyone at the same time.
Instead of Striive plans being anchored around your method of delivery, we have created new plans based upon the number of active clients in your account. This means we can ensure Striive is good value for all users of any business size.
There were two main reasons why these changes were necessary.
Firstly, the range of businesses signing up to use Striive has changed during 2022. Our original post-lockdown goal of supporting solo freelancers and the self-employed has been accompanied by many larger, more established gyms and studios signing up and adopting our platform. These larger brands have different requirements and meeting their expectations requires a different approach from us.
Continuing to develop the Striive platform in line with the expectations of a broader audience required us to re-evaluate our pricing strategy. Simply put, pricing intended for a solo freelancer does not transfer well to the demands of an independent studio with a larger client base and multiple staff. Adjusting our plans to suit this range of applications ensures we will be a sustainable business in the future.
First up, we now have plans in GBP, USD, and EUR. We are delighted these are now available as they have been requested for some time.
Our entry level plan is called Foundation and will cost £19, $29 or €24 per month for the first 6 months. This allows you to deliver unlimited sessions and classes for up to 50 clients. Foundation aims to allow fledgling businesses to experiment and grow at minimal cost. After six months the standard price of Foundation will rise to £29, $39 or €34 per month. We anticipate the Foundation plan will continue to be the plan of choice for the majority of freelance and self-employed PT's and trainers signing up to Striive, with the monthly cost for this type of user remaining the same as before, or less.
For those of you with a larger client base, adoption of our online payment, membership, and class management features is greater. We have therefore created a number of new plans to support your growth in the most economical way possible. Find out about these new plans on our pricing page here.
Today we've released a few enhancements to classes.
You can now enrol a client onto a class yourself if they are a membership subscriber. Until now subscribed clients could only enrol themselves via your portal. Now you can enrol them yourself whether they are a class pass holder, subscriber, or you are processing a single enrolment. All bases covered!
To simplify our terminology we've stopped using the term 'single enrolment' in favour of 'Pay As You Go'. So now, when creating classes and enrolling clients, look out for this wording change. It simply describes clients paying for one class date at a time.
We've added a new class display setting which lets you choose how far in advance clients can see (and enrol onto) your future classes. We've defaulted the setting to 4 weeks. If that doesn't work for you just pop over to 'Brand & Portal' in the account menu, scroll down to the bottom, and change it.
Today's update makes it easy for you to give clients that extra personal touch. Striive will now tell you when each of your clients has a birthday. This will appear in your calendar feed, in your daily email, and in various other places around the system (including class attendee lists).
In addition we also tell you when you and a client have an anniversary, making it easy to celebrate your relationship and reflect on their progress to date.
Until today every class you create needed to have a specified capacity. This was proving a little annoying for those of you doing classes in bigger venues or on Zoom where you didn't necessarily want to impose a limit. Now, capacity is an optional setting when creating or editing a class. You can also change this setting for individual class dates if you wish.
Today we have released a huge general update, with every part of the system having had an improvement made, whether it's an a new layout, menu navigation, or technical optimisation.
The biggest single change has been the introduction of social sign up and a completely new onboarding experience. Google and Facebook are supported for now. It is likely that more will follow in the future.
Today's update gives you more control over your working hours, locations, and how clients can request sessions.
You can now set different working hours for different days of the week. This includes configuring multiple work periods per day if you need to, accommodating things like lunch breaks and split shifts.
In addition, you can set the locations you will be available at during each work period. This means you will only receive session requests for days and times when you are at the correct location.
Todays update will be noticeable across the system and also addresses a few specific usability challenges you've reported.
As ever, we've squeezed in a few bug fixes and general improvements behind the scenes too.
Previously, Striive would let clients enrol onto individual classes if they did not hold a valid class pass or membership (you might call this pay-as-you-go). However it became clear that for some of you this wasn't ideal. Instead, requiring clients to commit to buying a package was preferred as it demonstrated commitment and created a more reliable income.
We have now added a control to each class, letting you decide if you want to allow single enrolments. If you do, you can specify the cost. If not, clients will be instructed to purchase a valid class pass or membership to enrol.
Some of you told us that having to send invites to every new client was getting a bit tedious. So now you can add a link to your website or social accounts and people can sign up with you whenever they want without needing you involved at all! Find the new option in your portal settings.
Don't worry, all new sign-ups still go through review so you have the option to reject anyone you don't want to work with.
Striive now sends you a handy roundup of your activity during the previous month, including the number of new and active clients you had, total sales and money received/spent, and a count of the number of sessions, classes and consultations you delivered.
Often when you have multiple packages, a lot of their information is the same. Things like the usage terms, expiry rules, or included classes. Therefore, to make it easier when creating new packages we added a duplicate option. Now, if you have taken the time to perfectly craft one package, you can use it as the starting point for the next.
Alongside a whole raft of performance improvements, we've also added class descriptions. So now you're free to explain to clients what they can expect from your classes when they enrol.
You've been used to sending SMS notifications to clients for a long time now, but as from today you can get them too! Just for the important stuff initially; when a new client signs up, and when a client cancels a session, you'll now get an alert directly to your phone so you don't miss it.
Todays release works on a section that hasn't seen change in a while. Clients!
We've completely redesigned the client list, showing you much more information about each client's engagement level and access. Then, once you decide to view a client, you'll notice more of the important information you need is now in one place. No need to keep clicking between multiple tabs, all the details of their current session packs, memberships, or class passes are there to view at a glance.
You'll also see a new invites list. This stores all the active invites you have sent out to clients and their status, including new client invites, PAR-Q and Agreement requests, as well as invites to access your portal.
Following on from our changes in the memberships area, we've now rolled the same updates across session packs, class passes and payments too. These screens are now far more useful, giving you a better understanding of what's going on with your clients and making it easier to find the information you need.
At the same time as the design update, we've also made an important structural change. The packages section has now vanished from the main menu with your packages now taking their rightful place inside their respective areas. So to add or edit a class pass package, go to the class passes section. To add or edit a session pack package, go to the session packs section. Simple!
For a while we've been preparing a major change to how we display listed information in the system. Today is the first stage of this being realised with our brand new list design being implemented into the memberships section. The new design provides much more information in one place as well as giving you better filtering options.
A guaranteed crowd pleaser. You can now see all your Striive events on your favourite calendar app using our new iCal integration. Just go to account settings and copy your unique iCal URL to subscribe most calendar apps, including Google and iOS Calendars.
Fighting our previous release for the title of 'biggest ever system update'. Today marks the addition of our first round of membership management features. This means you can now use Striive to run almost any business model (or combinations thereof).
A membership is a new way of selling your services in Striive. Clients can sign up to a recurring payment plan, where they will pay you a set amount every week, month or year to access your services. You can use this system to bill for anything you like, even services you don't provide through Striive. Just use us as the collection system. A membership can also include access to your classes if you want.
Naturally our memberships system plays nice with our existing delivery options, so if you want to you can facilitate pay as you go class enrolments, sell class passes and offer monthly memberships all within one Striive account. And with everything neatly linked into the client portal your clients have full access to subscribe/unsubscribe from your membership schemes at will.
Alongside this sizeable system update, we've also thrown in a few smaller improvements for you to enjoy:
This is the biggest single update we've ever done (a characteristic matched by the length of this post) and it brings two big additions to the system. We know some of you have been waiting a long time for these.
The new packages section lets you create different service combinations that can then be 'assigned to' or 'purchased by' your clients. There are two main package types:
Packages can be assigned to clients by you, or they can buy them themselves. To use the latter option you'll need to have Striive Payments set up, which opens up the following opportunities:
As you might expect, purchased packages will automatically appear inside your Striive account, assigned to the correct client, with the payment logged and included in your sales reports.
The second type of class is now here! We call them Private Classes which essentially means you organise them and control who attends.
Create a new class, specify all the details you'd expect (capacity, price, etc.) and your clients will be able to enrol, either paying the one-off rate, or by using their eligible class passes.
We also squeezed in a few smaller improvements which might take you a bit longer to notice:
With all the new functionality added over the last few months, the client portal was starting to look a bit untidy. We like to take a long term view here at Striive towers, so the decision was made to give the poor thing a complete overhaul.
As well as improving existing functionality, new elements have been introduced to complement our new package and class features:
We're thrilled to announce the first release of our integrated online payment platform. We've called it Striive Payments and it uses Stripe (a major payment processor) to make receiving booking payments an absolute joy!
To get started you'll need to create yourself a Stripe account which becomes connected to your Striive account. This takes about 5 minutes. Just go to your account settings and beside your accepted payment methods you'll find the option to setup online payments.
Once setup, Striive payments gives all your clients the opportunity to make an online payment whenever they receive a booking confirmation or statement. They can also make payments against their outstanding balance from within your client portal (if enabled).
Whenever an online payment is received, it is automatically tracked against the correct booking and the payment appears within your Striive account. You'll never need to manually reconcile a payment again and your client debt reports are always 100% up-to-date!
Today we released a major system update, however you'd be forgiven if you hadn't noticed. This is because most change occurred behind the scenes as part of a new feature build we are working on.
That said there are a few things to note:
Clients can now see your availability and make session requests from your portal. We only give them windows of opportunity based upon gaps in your schedule. No information about what you are doing is made available. Be sure to set your working days and working hours in settings to limit when they can request.
They can also cancel sessions from your client portal. Set your cancellation policy in your account settings and we'll enforce it for you. You'll get a notification so you know it's happened.
An employer is a person or business that pays you to teach a class for them. This might be different to the classes location (especially in the case of virtual classes). Create an entry in the new Employers section and link them to their respective classes.
When you confirm class fees, they'll also be linked to that employer for invoicing later on (sneaky feature preview there).
When you reschedule or cancel a class date, you can now send a notification to the employer letting them know. We've also added a handy 'send schedule' button which sends your employer a list of all the class dates you have planned on your schedule.
This is our biggest update in a while. The world has changed a lot in the last few months so we've made adjustments of our own across the system to help you serve clients both now and into the future.
You can now work seamlessly across multiple location types (physical and virtual):
This is the second client portal update, bringing your clients the ability to:
This is the first update focussed on the new client portal, bringing clients the ability to:
Following on from stage one below, we have now released our completely updated client sign-up, PAR-Q and service agreement system. So what does that mean?
We've also added a signature strip to the new agreement signing system
Hurrah! A long-awaited feature that's become even more necessary since lockdown began. We've launched the first stage of our remote client sign-up system. This first release lets you:
The next release is coming very soon and will add PAR-Q and agreement steps to make this system fully featured and ready to make remote training a much more seamless experience in these crazy times!
We've also squashed a bug that was stopping you from changing your account email address. So if that is something you've been trying to do recently, please try again and we're sorry. Very sorry!
We're currently building our new client portal feature. This will allow your clients to manage their training information remotely and in their own time.
Our first release lets you activate your portal, adjust how it looks, and choose whether to include your upcoming class listing for people to see. Watch this space for future releases bringing more features designed to help you save time and keep your business organised!
Do you report your PT time to a gym manager in order to pay rent? If so then this update should save you time.
Simply select the date range you want (or choose from one of our presets) and InGym will give you a breakdown of your activity across all your training locations. Use this report in a couple of ways:
This is a feature we were working on before the Coronavirus lockdown started. We've decided to release it anyway as it may help if you are checking your existing rent bills, or dealing with session cancellations due to gyms being closed.
This is the release of our first classes feature. It's been designed for those of you who get paid teach at a gym or sports club.
It's the first stage of our class support, helping you plan dates into your schedule and track income as you teach. We call these Studio classes, which means any class where you're paid a fee to teach, and you're not in charge of client enrolment or payment.
This is a feature we were working on before the Coronavirus lockdown started. We've decided to release it anyway, as it forms the foundation of some bigger updates we have planned for the future.
Today we released some improvements to the process of cancelling upcoming events. It's been refined to be easier to use, and also works much better on mobile (which is where you need it most!)
Our new referral system allows you to earn free Growth and Pro months by telling your friends and colleagues about InGym.
Personalised referral links are now available in every InGym account and there's no limit to the number of free months you can earn. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use.
