Disclosure: these two studios are related companies of FSM Developments. We built these automations for our own businesses first, and we run them every week.

At a glance

  • Business: two franchise fitness studios in Auckland, Mt Eden and Warkworth
  • Set-up: two separate companies, each with its own Xero, KPI workbook and pay cycle
  • Tools already in use: Glofox (members and bookings), Ezypay (direct debits), Deputy (timesheets), Xero and Xero Payroll, Excel, Facebook and Instagram
  • What we automated: six jobs across finance, reporting and marketing
  • Time back: about 8 hours a week across both studios, and Sundays back

The problem

Running two studios means doing every admin job twice. Each studio is its own company, so each has its own Xero file, its own KPI workbook and its own month-end.

Every week someone had to:

  • pull about ten reports out of Glofox for each studio;
  • copy the numbers into the KPI workbook;
  • split the Ezypay settlement into income lines;
  • post it to Xero.

Every month there were leave accruals to calculate from Xero Payroll for two pay cycles (one weekly, one fortnightly). A related company pays some of each studio's costs on a shared credit card, and those all had to be recharged into the right company's Xero, with invoices attached.

The marketing reporting was the first thing to slip. The monthly social media report "ran long and lapsed for five months".

None of it was hard. It was just slow, repetitive and easy to get slightly wrong. It also had to happen on a Sunday. The weekly numbers need to be ready for Monday, and Sunday is the only day the studios are closed, so the one day off went to spreadsheets. All up, it was about eight hours of admin a week.

What we built

1. Weekly KPIs from Glofox (weekly)

  • What it does: downloads the week's Glofox reports for each studio (members, new memberships and trials, lost members, visits, leads and transactions), adds staff hours from Deputy, and writes the week's KPIs into each studio's workbook. It also produces the week's retention call list, showing which members the team should ring, so Monday starts with the calls ready to make.
  • Checks: it takes a backup before it writes anything. You log in to Glofox yourself; the AI never handles passwords.

2. Ezypay settlements into the KPI workbook and Xero (weekly)

  • What it does: reads each studio's Ezypay settlement and splits it into income lines. It updates the cashflow forecast, then posts the settlement to Xero with its payment and records the franchise-fee payments against their bills.
  • Checks: you choose the settlement date. Any charge type it hasn't seen before is flagged for you to map, and it refuses to post a studio twice.

3. Month-end leave accruals from Xero Payroll (monthly)

  • What it does: reads every employee's leave balance from Xero Payroll, values it and compares it with last month. It then proposes the accrual bill or credit note, plus the timing adjustment for a pay run that falls across month-end.
  • Checks: it shows the summary first and posts nothing until you say OK. Every posting carries a unique reference, so a re-run can't double up.

4. Intercompany credit-card recharges (as needed)

  • What it does: turns the shared card's statement into a plan showing which company each line belongs to, with the GL code, GST and whether an invoice is needed. Once you've reviewed it, it posts the bills in each studio's Xero with the invoice attached and pays them from the intercompany account.
  • Checks: it handles AUD bills and skips anything already posted.

5. Social media reports and a content calendar (weekly and monthly)

  • What it does: turns the Meta Business Suite exports into a short Word report per studio, keeps a rolling four-week content calendar, checks social leads against the KPI sheet and suggests the next fortnight's posts. Once a month it rolls the weeks into a trend review and a check on local competitors.
  • Checks: a person still does the posting.

6. On-brand documents, every time (on demand)

  • What it does: the franchise's brand rules are written down once, covering colours, fonts, logo placement, layout and tone. Every report, slide deck or spreadsheet the automations produce comes out on-brand, with a final self-check before it's finished.

How it's built

  • An AI assistant (Anthropic's Claude) does the reading, judgement and writing. Small scripts do the arithmetic and talk to Xero.
  • Everything lands in tools the studios already used: Xero, Excel and Word. There's no new software to learn and no new subscription.
  • Wherever money moves, a person checks it first: a plan to review, or a summary to approve. Unique references mean nothing posts twice.

What still needs a person

We'd rather be straight about this:

  • The retention calls are still made by a person. The automation only decides who's on the list.
  • Posting to social media is still done by a person.
  • Approvals are a person's job: someone approves the accruals and reviews the intercompany plan before anything posts.

The result

Job Before Now
Weekly KPIs and retention call list about 2 hours about 5 minutes
Month-end leave accruals about 1 hour about 5 minutes
Social media report about 4 hours about 15 minutes
Total, both studios about 8 hours a week saved
  • Sunday is a day off again. The numbers are ready on Monday without anyone giving up their day off.
  • Better decisions, sooner. The right information is in front of the owner every Monday instead of whenever someone finds the time, so decisions about classes, staffing, marketing and follow-ups are made on current numbers.
  • The social report actually happens. The one that lapsed for five months now runs every week, without anyone having to remember it.

Could this work for your business?

If you run more than one company, use Xero, or spend your week copying numbers out of one system into another, there's probably a version of this for you. It doesn't have to be a gym. The same pieces work for:

  • clinics and salons on booking software;
  • trades firms running jobs in one system and invoices in Xero;
  • anyone recharging costs between related companies.

Book a free 30-minute automation audit →: we'll tell you which of your jobs are worth automating, and which aren't.

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