March's P&L arrives, and its top line reads Sales: $52,000. It is a good number, and it answers almost nothing: not whether the intro offers are still selling, not what the partner apps sent, not how far the packs sold ahead of the classes taken, not what one class cost to run. All of that happened in March. The books poured it into one line.
This piece sets up the books so the P&L answers the questions you actually ask, then walks through the monthly close that keeps it true. One invented studio runs through it: Alturra Studios, 240 members at $169 a month, closing its March. Every number is Alturra's, there to be redone with yours.
The books in one minute
- Split the books the way you make decisions. An income account per product and per partner, instructor pay on its own line, rent, fees and marketing apart.
- Close every month the same way, by the fifth working day. Tie the platform's sales to the processor and the bank, and record partner payouts as they land.
- Then read three lines. Payroll share, rent share and net margin, against your own last three months, never somebody else's.
| Account group | The accounts | The question it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Income, by product | memberships · class packs · intro offers · private sessions · workshops · retail | which product carried the month |
| Income, by partner | one per partner: ClassPass, Wellhub, each employer plan | what each partner paid, and whether it paid |
| Refunds and chargebacks | one minus line | how much went back out |
| Cost of sales | merchant fees · retail stock sold | what taking the money costs |
| Payroll | instructor pay · desk and management pay · payroll taxes | what the schedule costs, apart from the door |
| The room | rent · utilities | what the space costs before a class runs |
| Everything else | marketing · software · professional fees · insurance · cleaning | whether overhead grows faster than sales |
What accounts should a fitness studio have?
One income account for each thing you sell, one for each partner that pays you, and costs split wherever a decision needs them. The test for any account is whether it answers a question you would act on: if two lines would never lead to different decisions, merge them; if one line hides two, split it. Here is the chart, with Alturra's March beside it.
| # | Account | What goes in it | Alturra, March |
|---|---|---|---|
| Income | |||
| 4000 | Memberships | recurring dues, every tier | $40,560 |
| 4100 | Class packs | packs and single classes, booked as your accountant decides | $5,200 |
| 4200 | Intro offers | every first-timer offer | $1,800 |
| 4300 | Private sessions | one-on-one and small-group | $2,400 |
| 4400 | Workshops and events | ticketed one-offs and trainings | none in March |
| 4500 | Partner income, one account per partner | ClassPass, Wellhub, each employer plan, recorded as payouts land | $1,290 |
| 4600 | Retail | shelf sales | $750 |
| 4900 | Refunds and chargebacks | a minus line, so no stream shrinks quietly | none in March |
| Total income | $52,000 | ||
| Cost of sales | |||
| 5000 | Merchant fees | processor fees, never netted out of sales | $1,450 |
| 5100 | Retail stock sold | what the shelf cost you | $370 |
| Payroll | |||
| 6000 | Instructor pay | teaching and sub cover | $15,600 |
| 6100 | Desk and management pay | front desk, studio manager | $6,400 |
| 6200 | Payroll taxes and benefits | the employer's share | $900 |
| The room | |||
| 7000 | Rent | the lease and its charges | $7,000 |
| 7100 | Utilities | power, water, internet | $1,100 |
| Everything else | |||
| 8000 | Marketing | ads, promotions, printing | $2,400 |
| 8100 | Software | booking platform and the rest | $900 |
| 8200 | Professional fees | bookkeeping, accounting | $450 |
| 8300 | Insurance | liability, property | $600 |
| 8400 | Cleaning and supplies | cleaning, laundry, supplies, repairs | $1,830 |
| Total expenses | $39,000 | ||
| Net, before the owner's pay | 25.0% of income | $13,000 | |
Three choices are deliberate. Refunds and chargebacks get a minus line, so a bad month for refunds shows as refunds, not as a dip in memberships. Sales are recorded in full and fees as an expense; book the net deposit as sales and the fees vanish. And the last line is before the owner's pay: however you pay yourself, keep it on its own line, never inside instructor or desk pay.
Your accountant may number or name these differently, which is fine as long as the splits survive. This piece is not tax or legal advice, and one decision in it, how unused pack classes are treated (deferred revenue, in an accountant's words), is your accountant's call.
What to do this week:
- Mark every line on last month's P&L that mixes two decisions, such as a single sales or payroll line.
- Ask your bookkeeper to split them from this month on, with one account per partner, and keep the chart dated so each month compares with the last.
How should you split revenue so the P&L means something?
By the decision each stream feeds, not by how the money arrived. Memberships speak to retention, intro offers to next month's members, packs to customers who have not committed, partner income to a channel you do not control.
At Alturra, memberships are $40,560 of the $52,000, 78% of the month, and the line to read most closely: each member who leaves takes $169 off it for every month they would have stayed, which is the math of what one member is worth. Packs need one more decision.
A pack is paid for the day it is sold and taught over the weeks after, so the pack month and the work month are different months. In March Alturra sold 20 ten-class packs at $260, and pack holders took 175 classes.
So is March's pack revenue the $5,200 sold or the $4,550 taught, and when do classes left on an expired pack count? That is the decision flagged above; it turns on how your books are kept and on your pack terms. Alturra's books record packs when sold. Either way, note the balance each month from the classes your booking platform shows left on open packs.
Where do ClassPass and Wellhub payouts go?
Into an income account of their own, one per partner, recorded when the deposit lands. A partner app bills the member and pays the studio separately, so your booking platform holds the visits and none of the money, which is why a partner visit shows as attendance with no revenue. The deposit is the only record of what the channel pays, so give it an account that holds nothing else.
One account per partner, not one for all: each has its own statement and schedule, and in a shared account a missing deposit hides behind the one that arrived. An employer wellness plan gets its own account too. Alturra's apps appear as Partner A and Partner B, as in the partner-visit piece, so no invented figure sits beside a real app's name. Their visits came every day. The money landed twice.
So March's $1,290 paid for February's classes, and March's own visits reach the books in April. On cash books that lag is built in: count visits in the month of the class and cash in the month it lands, and set them against each other each quarter. On accrual, your accountant may book the visits as earned in March instead. Either way, each partner keeps its own account.
Why should instructor pay sit apart from other payroll?
Because it is the part of payroll the schedule controls, and every cost-per-class decision needs it on its own. Desk and management pay follow the hours the doors are open. Instructor pay follows the classes: add one and it rises, cut one and it stops.
Cost per class is payroll plus rent over the classes you actually ran. At Alturra in March: $22,900 of payroll and $7,000 of rent over 260 classes, $115. With instructor pay on its own line, the $115 comes apart.
That split changes decisions. Cutting a class saves its $60, not $115, so a class running a little under its cost may still earn its place through the members it holds; what each class can carry works through that sum and three ways to pay instructors. It is also why one month is a poor base: January's classes cost $111 and February's short month $119, while three closed months together read $115, the line every slot has to clear when you read fill by slot.
What does a studio's monthly close look like?
The same ten steps, in the same order, finished by the fifth working day of the next month. A close is not an audit. It is the routine that turns a month of transactions into a P&L you can trust: every dollar in the right account, every account agreeing with its statement, and a line under the month so its numbers stop moving.
Guard against lateness more than error. March closed in May is a record, not a tool, and every number built on it is two months stale. Alturra's owner and bookkeeper split the close across five mornings.
What to do this month:
- Pull the platform's sales. The whole month, after refunds, split the way your income accounts are.
- Pull the processor's payouts. What it paid out in the month, with fees and chargebacks.
- Tie sales to payouts. Sales less fees and chargebacks, adjusted for sales in transit at each month-end, should equal the payouts. Explain any dollar left over.
- Tie payouts to the bank. Every payout should be a deposit.
- Record partner deposits. Each in its own account on the day it landed, checked against the visits its statement covers.
- Give every bank and card line an account. Nothing parked in a catch-all.
- Record payroll by line. Instructor, desk and management, and payroll taxes, from the payroll report rather than the bank total.
- Note the pack balance. Classes sold, taken and still owed, for your accountant.
- Reconcile and close. Every account agrees with its statement, and nothing more is posted to the month without saying so.
- Read three lines. Payroll share, rent share and net margin, beside your last three months.
How do you match booking-platform sales to bank deposits?
In two hops: the platform's sales to the processor's payouts, then the payouts to the bank. Three systems record the same money and each is right about its own part, the same problem as every other place two studio reports disagree. What separates them comes down to four things.
- Fees. The processor keeps its fee and pays out the rest.
- Refunds. Start from sales after refunds; a refund to a card then cancels out.
- Chargebacks. They start at the member's bank, and the processor takes the money back from a payout, whatever the platform shows.
- Timing. Card money reaches the bank after the sale, so the end of each month spills into the next.
A dollar left over after those four is worth a question that week. One leak shows in no column at all: a failed membership payment. The charge never went through, so none of the three totals holds it and the tie balances without it. It needs its own list and a kind note, which is how failed-payment recovery works, and the revenue leak calculator estimates what failed payments and quiet cancellations cost in a year.
What should you read once the month is closed?
Three lines, each as a share of revenue, against your own last three months: payroll, rent and net margin. Dollars rise as a studio grows; shares show whether growth made it better or only bigger. The cost breakdown covers the lines behind them.
| Alturra | January | February | March |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $50,000 | $48,000 | $52,000 |
| Classes run | 250 | 240 | 260 |
| Payroll share | 41.5% | 45.0% | 44.0% |
| Rent share | 14.0% | 14.6% | 13.5% |
| Net margin | 25.0% | 21.7% | 25.0% |
March's margin matches January's, which looks like a steady quarter. It is not. Payroll share is up two and a half points: March ran ten more classes, and an evening desk shift added in February is still on the schedule. The margin held only because March was a bigger month and marketing came down after January's new-year push. The studio now costs more to run, and the next quiet month will show it. Chase any line that moved without a decision.
Once the accounts are split this way, the monthly read can live on a screen instead of in a spreadsheet.
Where this lives
The close stays with you and your bookkeeper. What a spreadsheet will not do is keep the numbers built on the books current as the months roll forward, and that is the part Xyzios, the studio operating system, keeps. It works with Mindbody and is an approved Mariana Tek integration, and your booking platform stays the system of record.
It reads your P&L from QuickBooks Online and your bank feed from Finta, both on the integrations page. Partner revenue from ClassPass and Wellhub shows when the bank feed or a partner income account in your books carries it, one more reason to give each partner its own account. With a bank feed connected, a ClassPass payout not seen by the 16th of the month is flagged. With the books connected, the Programming board shows an estimated cost per class, payroll plus rent over the classes run in the last three closed months, and one estimated break-even headcount per location, so the estimate is only as fresh as your last closed month.
Your bookkeeper can sign in too: the Bookkeeper role sees Finance, with the company P&L and the books setup, and no member names or anyone’s individual pay. Nothing is written back to your books.
Whatever you keep the books in, close this month by the fifth working day of the next and read the three lines. The two-minute studio check shows which of your numbers needs you first.