Club Automation Reviews

The staff at Club Automation is second to none!

Pros:

Club Automation has helped us advance in so many ways. Our fitness facility has nearly 10,000 members and this provides a fast, effective way to not only sign-up new members, but create a good environment for current members to utilize. We enjoy many features such as online sign-ups, electronic guest passes, automatic billing, and certain tracking features/reliable reports. This has helped our staff tremendously by helping them to cut their time spent on projects down. It allows them too have more time to spend on other areas of their work duties. Another huge benefit is the fact we can log in from any computer any time, any where without having to install actual software only available on a certain number of computers! I just asked some of my staff to tell me their favorite feature in five seconds. Here were their responses: 1. Capabilities of reports for many different circumstances whether it be corporate partners, payroll deductions, retention etc. 2. Ease of sign-ups for new members. 3. Family check ins. (When one family member scans his/her card, the rest of the family pops up on the screen and all you have to do is check the box next to their names to sign them all in!) Members love being able to log into their account online and update their billing information, sign up for classes, swim lessons etc. and print out payment history for work reimbursement plans. Club Automation has truly helped us take a step into the modern world of fitness software!

Cons:

Club Automation is working on ways to incorporate certain features and making more customizable forms, such as additional required fields like t-shirt sizes and expediting certain updates such as reoccurring transaction features and showing certain details at check-in. Pro Rating billing is not optional with Club Automation, so that was new to us. Certain reports have great sorting features where others do not have the same capabilities. We are looking forward to these improvements being made and have confidence Club Automation will only continue to provide great service and excel in all of these areas just like they do in ALL other aspects of the software program.

Thankful for Club Automation

Pros:

Truly an all in one club management system that is easy for members and staff to use. I love that it automatically bills and withdraws payments and the booking feature for members is very helpful.

Cons:

I wish there was online camp registration where we can choose what information we want to collect, what questions to ask and have parents complete it online while registration for a program (special needs, medications, allergies, ect)

Alternatives Considered: Camp & Class Manager

Reasons for Switching to Club Automation: Club Automation was a full club management system, not just for camps.

Club Automation Review

Comments: I've had a good experience with CA I prefer it over other platforms that i may have used in the past !

Pros:

It's easy to navigate and learn! Easy access to members profiles and easy to work with and explain to others who are just learning the system !

Cons:

Registration process could be a little easier versus having to scroll through everything !

Perhaps the most frustrating software and customer support I've ever used.

Comments: There are several days when I would rather go back to a pencil-and-paper accounting system than use Club Automation.

Pros:

The software has a good concept: that it can be used via the web from anywhere, automatically takes care of many processes that should make running a club easier.

Cons:

The software is -extremely- buggy. This causes a lot of frustration for our members and reflects poorly on the club. Support is sub-par. Wait times when contacting support via the phone can be 30 minutes or more. Submitting tickets by e-mail is pretty useless--it takes weeks to get a response. The system appears to be a tennis court reservation system that kept experiencing feature bloat, and has now gone beyond it's designed capabilities. I have a degree in computer engineering and ran my own software company so I recognize many of the challenges they are going through, but it is an unacceptable customer experience.

Accounting/Business Owner

Comments: I really love the CA system. We started with Club Automation in 2013. I am constantly learning what this system can do. It makes my life so much easier. I can access from work, my phone or at home.

Pros:

I love how easy it is to set up programs in the court sheets for our junior and members. It is so easy to make changes if needed. I work on the court sheets about 80% of my day and it makes my life so easy.

Cons:

1)Would love if our members could go on-line and schedule their own make up classes. 2) Sometimes the blocking of courts does not work. If you are making changes using the block feature it sometimes reverts back to an old-blocked court.

Owners Beware!!!

Comments: It was terrible from the beginning and just continues to get worse every month. The fees they charge a small is terrible. We switched from ABC to CA thinking it was less expensive…. Boy were we wrong!!! Our fees literally doubled!!!
We are pay over 10% of our income in CA fees!!!!!

Pros:

This is the worst company. The Fees are Unbelievably High!!! They charge you $13 every time a members card is declined. They have a terrible Frankenstein product with terrible customer service.

Cons:

The billing department for collecting your dues and through 3 different portals. Good luck trying to figure out delinquent accounts and over due payments. Kiss your profits goodbye

DO NOT USE

Comments: Terrible, so so terrible. Nothing ever works. I have to call customer service every other day to fix an error with the software. Constant billing issues.

Pros:

This one customer service rep was helpful one time

Cons:

Everything. Super buggy software. Constant maintenance that takes days. Honestly my biggest life regret is using Club Automation

Alternatives Considered: Gym Assistant and ABC Ignite

Reasons for Switching to Club Automation: Their sales representative, [sensitive content hidden] (who I can now recognize as a liar and scammer) was very good at his job and convinced us to use Club Automation.

CA was purchased by Daxko and many unresolved problems after the transition.

Pros:

We use online court reservations, resources management and POS. We have been a user since 2013 and have been very happy with the services up until late 2021.

Cons:

I did not like that our permissions have been changed substantially under the new [SENSITIVE CONTENT] and working on the third trouble ticket to hopefully get resolved. They keep closing the ticket saying resolved, but they must not test as the issues are still there. We cannot change a court reservation in the past. Building up a backlog of reservations adjustments and refunds that customers have been waiting for. Making us look sloppy to our customers.

Pleasingly Professional

Comments: Very professional, very knowledgeable about the health club industry and the needs of operators.

Pros:

Club Automation has lots of resources and options for tracking the cadence of your business. All of this would be useless if it weren't for the implementation team guiding us through the software's full potential. Top-class onboarding. We had a group of four Club Automation professionals guiding us through the process over a 3-month period. Very thorough!

Cons:

I have not found any cons yet. Be aware that this is not a plug-and-play system that is just handed over to anyone willing to pay the price. Be ready for a group of professionals on task and on point to help you stick to your timeline. Clear some schedules and create some mental bandwidth within your organization.

Pretty Happy

Comments: No software does all things for all clubs and overall I am happy with our choice of Club Automation as it does many of the things we need.

Pros:

Initially the customer service felt very personal and the process of switching from our old software was handled very well. I appreciate the regular updates to fix bugs and add features.

Cons:

After switching customer service reps multiple times through our 18 months we’ve lost the feel that our rep really knows and understands us. I was looking forward to the customizable reports but it’s not always intuitive which one you should start with to get the report you need.

Stay away from Club Automation at all costs. Pen and paper is a more reliable solution.

Comments: It took 6 month to on-board (which compared to Shapenet or ABC or Mind body is 3 x's as long) with several team re-shuffles. I spent 1000's of dollars having my team sit through redundant trainings only to run into obvious software break downs while the presenter was demonstrating how to use it. If you are even considering this software please give me a call and let me go into greater detail [SENSITIVE CONTENT]

Pros:

They present a well rounded package with fluid tools and robust reporting. The exact opposite is true; the software is challenging to use, the reporting is confusing and incomplete with misleading data. the customer support is lost half the time and don't answer the phone the other half. Please don't use this software.

Cons:

They lock you in to a 5 year contract so no matter how bad they perform you are on the hook. They have dozens of "known bugs" that you just have to deal with. thier PT and membership contracts are inflexible, they will randomly bill your members the wrong amount for no apparent reason. They will bill historically cancelled members that were dormant in your previous data but for some reason were reactivated by CA. DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE

Alternatives Considered: Paramount Acceptance

Reasons for Choosing Club Automation: Because ABC decided to stop billing our members during Covid without our consent. We continued billing our (very well informed) members who were happy to pay if it meant keeping us in business. ABC decided that they knew better than us and halted billing. We had to jump through several hoops to get it turned back on.

Switched From: ABC Ignite

Reasons for Switching to Club Automation: The presentation was better, I got swindled. Don't trust them

More Pros than Cons

Comments: Overall CA has been a good change at our business. We are still getting used to it here and we definitely have some suggestions on how to make it better, but we really loving the look of it and the user friendly aspect. I would recommend checking it out if you are looking to switch software's.

Pros:

First of all, the look of it caught my eye and the fact that it is very user friendly! Our old system was outdated and was not very easy on the eyes. We also love that there is a CRM system built into the software that connects to the actual Club side. That makes it very appealing to us as a business. It is also great to be able to generate PDFs super easily!

Cons:

This software could use some updates on a few things that we have had a hard time working through. CA would benefit from a texting feature for the CRM, better view of the schedule of each employee for the CRM, notifications when a new online form submission comes through for a new membership, way better ease of changing forms within the system (ex: Emailing Membership Link) , Being able to add a credit that does not just apply to dues, Better ease of sending mass emails to leads who have not yet joined for the CRM, Being able to easily separate and organize non-members / guests from current members. The CRM is not the best, so we would recommend ease of connecting an outside CRM system with CA.

Implementation Disaster

Comments: I have been in hundreds of software, SaaS, and cloud services in corporate America. I can truly say this has been the most stressful and troubling implementation EVER!
six months of poor customer service, unexpected charges, access issues

Pros:

THe only good thing compared to ABC FInancial is it is truly web based. Other than that i would go back to ABC tomorrow

Cons:

The data conversion the implementation the first billing the partners they use for CC processing and door access the ability to get local help for door access their customer support

Club Automation and Bass River Tennis Club - A great partnership

Comments: If a half star was available, I've give 4.5 to quality, ease and functionality. We have looked at a lot of platforms and Club Automation is clearly the best available. No question! Even in the places that I would like to see improvement, the customer service and support more than overcomes. They are fast to respond, work diligently to solve problems and don't just pay lip service to get back with answer. They do it!

Pros:

It's a seamless product. From first check-in to billing and accounting, it's all right there. The customer service is above any vendor I've ever dealt with. The people behind Club Automation are what make the company so great!

Cons:

The Communications Center is still a place that could be better. At least in the way we wish to use it. It is so close to being a total game changer in our business, but it is getting better. There have been some enhancements over the years and it's improving all the time.

Our Conversion to CA

Comments: We have decided to convert all 9 of our clubs because we like the software.

Pros:

How user friendly it is. In our old software you had multiple steps for on function which made it very inefficient. Also, when we have contract changes, we can do it ourselves. Our old software required us to submit changes to them and it took months to get the changes made in the software. If we have recommended changes to CA they really listen to us and send to their back office team for consideration. They are very reactive to our industry. Our team finds most processes have saved them time.

Cons:

It would be very helpful if other types of forms such as address changes, terminations, change of payment forms could be automated. Currently we have paper forms that are filled out and we have to upload. If CA had a way for these forms to be part of the system so the information can be within the system and signed online by the member.

Beware

Pros:

Nothing. There have been no pros to using this software. We previously used ABC, which was by far a better solution.

Cons:

Club Automation is denying our gym to transfer service away from their software company based on a contract we signed that was falsely presented. We were told we would have online gym sign up, management of our member charges and accurate information storage and billing. They have not followed through with any of this. In addition, they are unable to provide support for us when needed via the helpline, seemingly due to lack of staffing. Our gym has lost many members due to billing issues with Club Automation. Members have been charged inaccurate prices and the company replies that they have no idea why it’s happening. Members are also not charged at all. We’ve had to audit the entire member list multiple times and inaccurate billing continues. Additionally, we have lost hundreds of hours of our (gym owner) lives and our staff time trying to resolve software glitch issues with our member information storage, management, payroll and billing. We have respectfully requested to transfer our member management and billing software to another company that can provide us with what we need, and Club Automation is refusing this reasonable request. Buyer beware.

Excellent software program!

Comments: We have been using CA since January 2013. It has grown with our needs. As any software, there are some things it does not do yet, such as P/L's but otherwise it is a great system. We are able to keep track of everything when it comes to my pros and to our clients! Customer Service is above and beyond and makes dealing with any issues that do happen to come up - easy to deal with!

Pros:

The ease of keeping track of client's accounts and the ease of payroll.

Cons:

There is still no report for p/l's for each class - I have to do that manually which takes quite a bit of time.

Still learning how to best use

Comments: We recently transitioned to Club Automation after using an outdated system for years. Overall the transition has been positive, but not without a fair share of step backs. We are learning as we go!

Pros:

Love that you can do everything in one place: sign up for a group exercise class, register for programs, sell merchandise, book tennis lessons, etc.

Cons:

We use Club Automation in conjunction with HubSpot. With the way things are set up, there is a slight delay in connecting accounts between the two softwares. This can be a bit confusing.

Club Automation

Pros:

I love the ease of use and the capability that we have to go paper free. We are able to track everything in the system from camp registration, programs, membership, personal training, etc. I love the visibility that we have to track and stay on top of all scheduling for our trainers and massage therapy staff.

Cons:

The only thing negative drawback about the software is that when you have multiple facilities on the software, you are only able to have one logo for all facilities and one address / name for all facilities, which makes it difficult for invoicing and contracts.

Pretty user interface but doesn't produce correct accounting or payroll information.

Pros:

Very easy to use for front-line employees. Never had an issue with the server or any cloud-based functionality.

Cons:

If one actually looks into the reporting and numbers produced, tons of irregularities are found. Starting to question all the data produced and if anyone on their staff has an accounting background. Seems ever update triggers a chain reaction that produces incorrect payroll or reporting.

First class cloud-based software for the health and tennis industry

Comments: We've been using Club Automation for 15 months and have been happy with the service and product from Day One. Their cloud-based software is both easy to use and has sophisticated functionality that helps us run our multi-purpose health & tennis club effortlessly. Michael R. and his customer service team are second to none and are always there to assist us with any questions or needs that we have. The fact that the founder of Club Automation is a club owner really shows as they speak our language and really understand the day-to-day operational challenges of health and tennis facilities. We look forward to continuing to work with Club Automation in the future and excited to see what new features they have in the works.

Club Automation

Comments: Club Automation has been a terrific partner with our facility. Their customer support is second to none, which is what led to our change from a previous software supplier, and their product is easy to use and member-friendly.

Pros:

The functionality and ability to retrieve any information that you need.

Cons:

This is probably the result of working with another software system for years prior to switching to Club Automation, but some of their reports should be easier to extract.

Ease of Use for the End User

Comments: Overall it helps to plan for classes by knowing who and how many are registered.

Pros:

As a group fitness instructor, I can see who has registered for class, and check them in as attended afterward.

Cons:

It takes too many clicks to get to the class roster.

Monroe athletic club

Pros:

Functionality and abundance of features.

Cons:

Reporting and customer service response time.

Best software

Pros:

One of the best tennis softwares I have used (and I’ve used a few). The court sheets are very clear and the reports are great.

Cons:

They are very expensive and the customer service is not great..