Zen Planner

What I liked most about this software was the amount of things that it can do to not only help manage the numbers but keep the clients engaged and happy. I am also always amazed by the competence of the customer support team who I have called several times with questions I thought would be complicated but were not to them! I really appreciate this software and I really think my customers do again. I would recommend to anybody in the martial arts industry!

I couldn't think of anything in particular that I didn't like but if I had to say something it would be that I wish it would be more engaging with my actual website. The thing is that it probably can, I just don't know how to yet.

ZP lets us schedule and bill clients in one place. It spits out reasonably useful accounting summaries and can handle some email automations.

This software is the worst part of my job. Do not be fooled by their slick sales staff: this cannot perform most of the functions advertised. It can, but only in a perfect world where you gym runs exactly as ZP imagines it. In this imaginary perfect world, you'd need a team of administrators working full-time to keep your database up-to-date and functioning.

Our gym runs about 250 sessions per week. That's either classes or PT. They're all different. ZP's workout builder does not work for this. We were spending ~3 hours per day inputting workouts. It could not scale. So now we do not track workouts in the software.

We see 100 leads per week and run free trials to get them into the gym. ZP's various 'prospect' systems cannot handle this. They are not manipulatable enough to handle the different types of trials we'd like to offer. Doing so, again, would take a team of administrators. We now use a separate sales software for everyone on trial.

ZP goes down most days for 1-2 hours. 5-6 days per week. Just no software to run the gym. No attendance tracked, no bills processed, no member questions answered.

ZP's calendar never works on the first try. Literally. When I click on a staff member's calender I wait 15sec for the software to reload the full gym calendar with no changes. Then I click the staff member a second time, wait another 15sec, and only then am I rewarded with his/her calendar. With 28 staff this is not working.

Billing and scheduling is made easy through ZP which is my only function right now.

This is not a email system that is all encompassing so it makes it hard to set up a nurture program. Having it integrated with Mailchimp in a cleaner way would be great. It's not easy to manage.

We like that we can track student count/growth, attendance, belt ranking, finances, and appointments all in one place.

The calendar is not easy to use and often leads to errors if you don't follow certain steps.