Accounting for multi-unit fitness franchisees
Your royalty basis is not your gross. Kite knows what to leave out.
Dues are a sale the day they draft; packages, enrollment fees and gift cards are earned later. Royalty on the sales your agreement defines, with the clause quoted beside every charge.
AI agents do the work overnight. A named accounting lead owns your books.
$350 per location a monthno add-ons
Kite· Meridian Fitness Group · 64 studios07:00Needs your attention · everything else has already been handled
- Open
A $2,318.40 ClassPass payout has not reached the bank
- Chase
Studio 1045 has 3 unreported days
Draft vendor bill
Royalty and brand fund · week 36
$3,356.50
posted · JE-10422
Already in hand
14 overnight
41 bank lines matched
Weekly sales journal drafted for 6 studios
- JE-10422Royalty payable · week 362,578.10
Posted, because a person said so. The agent drafted; the approval is the authorization.
Meridian Fitness Group · 64 studios, on one night in its books.
Operators of these brands run their back office on Kite
- Alloy Fitness
Reads from the systems you already run
Where the money moves
Followed to the deposit, and every fee booked where it lands.
Every night, not at month end. The books are current when you open them, not when somebody closes them.
Running every night, not at month end
Studio 1045 · Meridian Fitness Group.
Refunds still in the basis
§6.2Your agreement excludes refunds, sales tax and gift cards sold. Kite quotes §6.2 beside the royalty and computes it on the sales that definition leaves, so the basis is checked before the charge is confirmed.
The card batch with no deposit
$3,214.60Tuesday’s card settlement for Studio 1045 has not reached the bank. Raised the morning after, not found at month end.
Packages booked as revenue on day one
2285A prepaid package is moved to deferred revenue at close from your studio software’s earned-revenue report, and earned as the sessions are used — not left in revenue from the day the card was charged.
The workflows, in your words
Five workflows. One studio at a time, and all of them together.
01
Money in
Sales by studio from the day’s export, with dues, packages and retail split at close from your studio software’s reports. Every processor settlement and every class-marketplace payout followed to the deposit, with the fee booked as its own cost. A settlement short of the day it belongs to, raised the morning after.
02
Money out
The studio software subscription, equipment leasing and service, supplements and apparel, towel service, music licensing, lead-generation agencies: dropped in the inbox, read, coded against precedent, drafted for approval.
03
Bank
Three tiers of reconciliation. Proof matches by itself. Evidence is suggested and waits. Interpretation is one pass of the model over the remainder, with its confidence shown, posting nothing.
04
Contracts
The franchise agreement and the lease, read into rules with a clause cited for every number. Royalty and brand fund on weekly sales as your agreement defines them — refunds, sales tax and gift cards sold left out where it says so — with the definition quoted beside every charge, settled per week in arrears.
05
Close
Weekly sales journals per studio, with dues booked as the sale they are on the day they draft. Prepaid packages, enrollment fees and gift cards deferred at close and released from your studio software’s earned-revenue report. Depreciation on the equipment schedule. A close package whose clean state reads: nothing open.
Obligations from the contract
- Royalty at a percent of weekly sales as your agreement defines them, less refunds, sales tax and gift cards sold where it says so
- Brand fund and local marketing co-op, each on its own basis
- Percentage rent over a breakpoint, settled in arrears
- CAM, tax and insurance recoveries reconciled to the landlord’s annual statement
- Technology and platform fees per studio per period
Compliance and audits
- Health-club registration
- CPR and AED certification
- Music license
- Business license
- Sales tax permit
- Liability insurance certificate
The franchisor’s brand-standards visit, the insurer’s loss-control inspection and the fire marshal read into scored findings with an owner and a deadline each; a standard failing across studios surfaced as one problem.
The calendar
A calendar month, with royalty settled on the brand’s weekly cycle inside it, so the week the franchisor bills and the week the books recognize are the same week.
Proactive insight
The morning after, not the month after.
A monthly report tells you a location ran hot last month. Kite tells you this morning, naming the studio, the amount and the next action.
Class-marketplace payout
A $2,318 class-marketplace payout has not reached the bank
The statement says it paid on Tuesday; the bank shows nothing yet.
Unreported days
Studio 1045 has 3 unreported days
Royalty waits on a complete week; a closed day is an explicit zero, not a gap.
Restated sales
Studio 2210 restated Tuesday after the royalty was billed
The royalty changes by the difference. Kite raises a delta charge; it never edits a posted bill.
Missing bill
Equipment service has not billed Studio 2210 this month
It has come on the 4th for six months. The month reads better than it was until it is accrued.
Lease expiring
The lease at Studio 3120 expires in 90 days
The renewal-notice window from the lease itself, not a calendar someone forgot to keep.
Permit expiring
The health-club registration at Studio 2210 expires in 21 days
Until it is renewed the location is operating without it.
Repeat finding
AED pads expired — cited again at Studio 1045
Repeats are what a franchisor escalates on; the first fix did not hold.
Sync stopped
The bank feed for Studio 4402 has stopped syncing
Two days without new lines. Matching waits on the reconnect.
What matched overnight is already handled; these are what did not.
Start with a few studiosHow we charge
$350
per location per month. An agentic software platform and a named accounting lead.
- The same rate at four locations and at four hundred. From twenty, the team working your books becomes yours alone at no extra cost.
- Only operating locations count. A store in development or closed costs nothing.
- Pilot a few stores, on your real data, at the same rate.
- No add-ons for payables, a faster close or franchisor reports.
Questions
Questions fitness operators ask first.
Do you connect to Mindbody, ABC Fitness, ClubReady or Zen Planner?
By export today, not by API — a day of sales by studio dropped in and read, the same way a bank statement is. The banks, cards and your ledger connect directly. We say so here because a page that said “integrates with” for an export would be the first lie on it.
How do you treat memberships and packages?
Differently, because they are different. A monthly draft is the franchisor’s royalty basis the day it drafts, and the books take it as revenue then; if your reviewer wants the unserved part of a mid-month draft deferred, your lead books it at close. Annual and prepaid packages, enrollment fees and gift cards are moved to deferred revenue at close from your studio software’s earned-revenue report, so a strong month of selling is not mistaken for a strong month of revenue.
Do you reconcile ClassPass?
Yes, from its payout statements. Each payout is matched to its deposit and booked to marketplace revenue, so a payout that never arrives is raised the morning after.
Who actually works our books?
A named accounting lead, the same person all month. Under twenty locations your lead works with a qualified team shared across a few operators; from twenty, that team works only on your books, so they learn your brands, your entities and your franchisor’s reporting calendar rather than switching between groups. The lead is the same person all month: the bank on Monday, the bills daily, the close the week after period end.
Do we have to move every location at once?
No. Start with two to five stores through one full month-end close, beside your current bookkeeper, at the same price. The pilot has proved itself when that close ties to your bookkeeper’s to the dollar, with every difference explained. Then move the rest.
Start with a few studios.
Four fields. A person replies within one business day.