Gym and health club management are difficult enough. If you’re starting up a gym, or even if you’ve been around a while, you’re dealing with equipment maintenance, class organizing, drawing in new memberships and keep old members happy. Many gym owners rely on software for gym management, but does yours need an update? Here’s a few signs that you should think about updating your gym management system.

• Billing is difficult.

  Ideally, you have many clients, each probably paying a monthly membership fee. Billing systems for gyms should be able to handle organization of client information and easily handle payments. If your billing system loses profiles, loses payments, or bars you from accepting common payment methods like credit cards, it’s time to upgrade. Clients will be more likely to be satisfied with their membership if it’s not a pain in the butt to sign up and pay for it.

• You’re spending most of your time behind a computer.

  If most of your time in your business is spent putting out fires or organizing piles of info in a slow system in your computer, there is a problem. You have more important things to address than constantly reorganizing memberships, right? Make sure your member account management software is actually doing the work that you’re paying for.

• There’s no support when system malfunctions happen.

  Your system crashes, bugs out, or you just have a question about a function — and there is no easy way to get support. The manual might be outdated, or maybe customer service hasn’t been helpful the last three times you called. Here’s your wake-up call: you definitely deserve better service than that. Upgrade! You should have proper training on your new system and be able to get personalized answers about your software. Otherwise, how is it any different from just opening a word doc and writing everything down, hoping it’s organized enough? Having that uncertainty and confusion is just extra baggage when you’re trying to run your business.

While hopefully you don’t have any of these issues, it’s more than understandable to be frustrated if you do. Having your own business is difficult, paying for a service and software should make aspects of it easier. If you’re not finding this to be the case, treat yourself to a software upgrade, friend. Your clients will thank you, too.