Gym bookkeeper services in Brisbane.
Boutique studio, 24/7 gym or multi-location fitness business - our Brisbane team specialises in bookkeeping for how fitness actually runs: recurring memberships, mixed trainer workforces and seasonal swings.
Rated 4.9 from 120+ Google reviews · Registered BAS Agents · Xero Platinum Partner
How we help gyms succeed.
We listen to how your business operates before building a bookkeeping system tailored to it - then the details stop stealing time from your members.
Membership billing reconciled
Direct-debit platforms mapped into Xero properly - memberships, failed payments and refunds all land where they should, automatically.
Trainer payroll & contractors
Employees on award-compliant payroll with payday super; genuine contractors tracked correctly - with classification handled carefully, because the ATO watches it.
Retail & supplements
POS sales and stock in their own lanes, so you know whether the retail corner earns its floor space.
Churn-aware reporting
Sign-up spikes and seasonal churn visible in your numbers, so cashflow decisions run ahead of the cycle.
Equipment finance tracked
Leases and loans recorded properly, with the repayments and interest split right for BAS and year end.
BAS by registered agents
Lodged accurately and on time, every cycle - deadlines are our job.
What a clean fitness file looks like.
Almost every fitness file we take over gains the same handful of improvements. None of them take long to put in. All of them sharpen what you actually know about what the business earns.
Billing deposits broken back to members
Ezidebit, Debitsuccess and the rest pay you a net figure - memberships, less dishonours, less refunds, less their fee. Coded straight to sales, it overstates income, buries the fee and makes every dishonour invisible. It belongs in a clearing account that reconciles to the platform's own settlement report.
Prepaid memberships recognised as they are earned
A member who pays twelve months up front has not given you twelve months of income. It is money you owe service against. Recognised properly, a strong-looking January stops flattering the year and your real monthly margin appears.
Class packs drawn down as they are used
Ten-packs and intro offers sit as unearned revenue until they are used or they expire. Most gyms never track the balance, so profit is overstated early and understated later.
Trainers on a footing that holds up
The Fitness Industry Award covers most gym staff, and a trainer who works your hours, in your space, on your terms is usually an employee no matter what the agreement says. Getting this wrong is back-pay, super and penalties - and it is a live ATO focus.
Equipment finance coded to its actual structure
A chattel mortgage claims the GST up front. A lease claims it across the term. Treat one like the other and the BAS is wrong from day one, then stays wrong for the life of the agreement.
Spending you can actually attribute
The founder's card doing personal and business duty is the single biggest time cost in a gym file, and the reason so many owners dread year end. Splitting it takes an afternoon and pays for itself every month after.
What the first month looks like.
No long onboarding project. We get the billing feed reconciling and the payroll compliant first, because that is where the money and the risk sit.
- 01
Look at the file
A free health check of your Xero file and your billing platform. We tell you what is actually wrong before you commit to anything - and if the answer is 'not much', we say that too.
- 02
Fix the billing spine
Clearing accounts set up so the platform settlement reconciles automatically, dishonours and fees visible, memberships and casual visits split into their own revenue lines.
- 03
Straighten payroll
Award interpretation checked, trainers classified properly, super timed to the pay run. Anything historically off gets flagged with a plan, not a lecture.
- 04
Keep it running
Reconciliation on a set rhythm, BAS lodged on agent deadlines, and a monthly report you can actually read. Your bookkeeper is the same person every month.
What this looks like in practice.
A three-site fitness group on recurring memberships plus casual visits and personal training.
Case study · Gyms & fitnessTwo thousand members, and a bank feed nobody could reconcile.Membership billing matched to settlements, and failed payments that stopped being invisible. See what changed
The background
Growing steadily, with a membership platform doing the billing and a bookkeeper doing their best with what came out of it.
The challenge
The bank showed net settlements. The membership platform billed thousands of small amounts on different days, then paid them across in batches with merchant fees and refunds already deducted - so the deposit never matched anything, and revenue was being recorded from the deposit rather than from the billing. That meant fees were invisible, refunds were invisible, and failed payments were entirely invisible: a member whose card declined simply stopped appearing, and nobody chased them because nothing said they had gone. Personal trainers were a mix of employees and contractors on inconsistent paperwork. And with three sites reported as one, there was no way to tell which location was actually carrying the group.
The approach
The transactions had to be recorded as what they actually are before any report built on them meant anything. That means a clearing account per channel and a reconciliation that runs against the settlement, not against the bank line.
How the work ran
Month 1
A clearing account per revenue stream
Memberships, casual visits and personal training each got their own clearing account. Gross billings, merchant fees, refunds and chargebacks now land as separate lines and each settlement reconciles against them. The first clean month showed merchant fees running above what the owner had assumed.
Months 2–3
Make failed payments visible
Declines and dishonours became a reported list with an owner and a follow-up rhythm, instead of a silent gap in the deposit. Recovering even a modest share of a recurring book is worth more than most marketing, because the member has already decided to join.
Months 4–6
Report by site, and tidy the trainers
Revenue, wages and site costs split by location so the three could be compared. Trainer engagements were documented consistently and, where the arrangement looked like employment rather than contracting, referred for specialist advice rather than settled in the payroll run.
What changed
- Revenue recognition
- from net settlementsfrom gross billings
- Merchant fees and refunds
- invisibleseparate lines
- Failed payments
- unnoticeda chased list with an owner
- Reporting
- three sites as oneper site
- Trainer engagements
- inconsistent paperworkdocumented, reviewed
Every recurring-revenue business has the same first problem: the bank tells you what arrived, not what you earned. Until those two are separated, member growth and revenue growth are different numbers that nobody can reconcile.
A worked example, built from the pattern these engagements follow in gyms & fitness. The business is composite and unnamed; the mechanics, the sequence and the order of work are the ones we use. Talk to us about your own numbers.
Frequently asked questions.
Can you reconcile our membership billing platform?
Yes - direct-debit billing platforms feed Xero through clearing accounts set up properly, so memberships, failed payments and refunds all reconcile automatically instead of arriving as one mystery deposit.
Our trainers are a mix of employees and contractors. Can you handle that?
Yes, and carefully - worker classification is a live ATO focus area. Employed trainers run through award-compliant payroll with payday super; genuine contractors are tracked properly for reporting.
How do you handle our supplement and merch sales?
Retail POS sales flow into their own revenue lines with stock tracked, so you can see whether the retail corner actually makes money.
We see big seasonal swings. Can the books help?
That is exactly what they are for. January sign-up spikes, winter churn - your reporting shows the cycle clearly, so cash decisions get made ahead of the dip instead of during it.
We bill through Ezidebit / Debitsuccess / Mindbody. Do you work with it?
Yes. The platform matters less than the settlement report behind it - every one of them pays a net figure and publishes a breakdown. We reconcile the deposit against that breakdown so memberships, dishonours, refunds and platform fees each land in the right place instead of arriving as one number.
A member paid twelve months up front. Is that income now?
Not all of it. You have taken the cash but you still owe the service, so it is carried as unearned revenue and released month by month. It matters more than it sounds: without it, a good January makes the whole year look better than it is, and the following months look worse.
We freeze memberships over winter. How does that show up?
As a drop in billed revenue with the member still on the books, which is exactly what you want to see. Freezes, cancellations and dishonours all read differently in your numbers, so you can tell a seasonal pause from genuine churn rather than guessing in August.
Can you show profit for each location?
Yes - tracking categories in Xero split revenue and costs by site, so you can see which location carries the group and which one is being carried. Same for a class program or a PT arm run inside the business.
What does gym bookkeeping cost?
A fixed fee based on your billing volume, payroll mix and locations, agreed up front. Use the fee estimator for an indicative range.
Ready to simplify your gym's bookkeeping?
Call 07 3899 8311 or book a free consultation - and get back to your members.