Member
A member is someone holding an active recurring agreement that entitles them to attend.
Formulamembers = active recurring agreements − the accounts your written rules exclude
The judgment calls are at the edges, and there are five: comped memberships (count for capacity, exclude from revenue), staff accounts (exclude from everything but capacity), paid-in-full (a member every month of the term), class packs (customers, not members) and freezes (churn after a set threshold). There is no correct answer — only the one you wrote down and apply the same way in January and in June.
Read more: What counts as a member? →
Active member
An active member is a member whose recurring agreement is current today — not canceled, terminated or lapsed — under the studio’s written rules for freezes, comps and staff.
Formulaactive members (as of a date) = members whose agreement is current on that date
A count without a date is not a count; “active” is always as of a day. The freeze threshold decides most disagreements between two active-member numbers, because a frozen member is neither paying nor canceled until the rule says which.
Read more: The five edge cases →
Churn rate (monthly)
Monthly churn rate is the share of members who canceled during a month, measured against the members you started the month with.
Formulachurn % = members who canceled in the month ÷ members at the start of the month × 100
Divide by the members who could actually cancel that month, or a paid-in-full base will flatter the rate. It compounds — the KPI note works it through: at 5% a month only about 54% of today’s members are still with you in a year, at 3% roughly 70%, and, as that note words it from what we see across the studios we run and work with, a healthy studio sits around 5% monthly while the best run near 3%.
Read more: The twelve KPIs →
Involuntary churn
Involuntary churn is a membership lost to a failed payment — an expired card, a bank decline — rather than to a decision to leave.
Formulainvoluntary churn % = members lost to failed payments ÷ members at the start of the month × 100
Count it in its own column. Mixed into churn it flatters your billing and slanders your product at the same time, and it hides the cheapest saves in the building: the member intended to stay and got dropped by the plumbing. Your booking platform retries the card; the follow-up note is the part that usually never happens.
Read more: Why members leave →
The fade
The fade is the stretch of weeks in which a member’s visits thin against their own pattern before any cancellation is filed.
Formulafade signal = gap since last visit ÷ that member’s usual gap — a doubling means the fade has started
Compare each member to themselves, never to the studio average: once a week is normal for one person and a warning for another. The decision to leave happens on the calendar weeks before it happens by email, which is why the fade is winnable and the cancellation rarely is.
Read more: The four fades →
MRR (monthly recurring revenue)
MRR is the sum of your active auto-renewing memberships at their real monthly price, after discounts.
FormulaMRR = Σ (active auto-renewing memberships × their monthly price after discounts)
Packs, drop-ins, gift cards and retail are out; comps are out. A paid-in-full membership is never MRR — the member is a member every month of the term, but booking the cash as one month’s recurring revenue creates a spike that makes every following month read as a decline.
Read more: Money KPIs →
Intro offer
An intro offer is a studio’s first-purchase product for someone who has never been a member: a single class, a class bundle or a short unlimited window, usually time-limited and priced below membership.
Formulaintro starts in a month = the people whose intro offer began in that month (the cohort)
The intro note’s reading of published guidance: a small fee filters out people who were never going to buy, and multi-class intros convert better than a single discounted class because the second visit is where habit starts. Keep the price close to membership, or you train the buyer on a number they will never see again.
Read more: Intro offer conversion →
Intro-to-member conversion rate
Intro-to-member conversion rate is the share of people whose intro offer started in a given month who hold a paid membership 60 to 90 days later.
Formulaintro conversion % = intro starts in month M who hold a paid membership at M + 90 days ÷ intro starts in month M × 100
Four decisions change the answer: the denominator (intros sold or intros attended), the window (30 or 90 days), what counts (membership only or any repeat purchase) and the cohort (by intro start or by join month). That is why published figures run from under 10% to over 70%, with roughly 20–25% commonly cited as solid, as the intro note words it — so compare yourself to your own last quarter first.
Read more: The four decisions →
Lead
A lead is a new person who gave you a way to reach them and has never booked.
Formulanew leads in a month = new contactable people created in the month who have no booking, by source and by home location
Never blend the sources: paid, organic and walk-in leads behave so differently that one combined number is nearly meaningless. The lead’s clock starts at creation, not at the first reply — which is what makes speed to lead a number at all.
Read more: Funnel KPIs →
Lead-to-member conversion
Lead-to-member conversion is the share of leads created in a month who hold a paid membership within the studio’s conversion window.
Formulalead conversion % = leads created in month M who hold a paid membership within the window ÷ leads created in month M × 100
It is a different number from intro conversion, with a different denominator — a lead who never booked is in this one and not in that one — and the two should never share a goal. The window is a decision: thirty days reads fast and understates; ninety is slower and truer for boutique buying decisions.
Read more: Same studio, two rates →
Fill rate
Fill rate is attendance divided by capacity, for one class in one time slot.
Formulafill % = attendance ÷ capacity × 100 — by class and time slot, never only the studio-wide average
The average is the least useful number in the building: a studio “at 70%” is usually a packed evening subsidising a mid-morning that has never worked. Break it out by slot, by format and by instructor — the fill note reports that most boutique operators aim for 70–80% average fill, then argues you should judge each slot against its own break-even instead.
Read more: Fill by slot →
Break-even class
A break-even class is the headcount at which one class covers its instructor cost plus its share of the fixed costs for that hour.
Formulabreak-even headcount = (instructor cost + allocated fixed cost for the hour) ÷ average revenue per visit
The fill note’s worked example: a $60 instructor, $40 of allocated fixed cost and an $18 average visit make a class that needs about six people to earn its place. A class below its own break-even is being paid for by the classes that fill — move it first, merge it second, cut it last.
Read more: Move, merge or cut →
Cost per member acquired
Cost per member acquired is marketing spend divided by the members who actually joined from it.
Formulacost per member = marketing spend in the period ÷ new members attributed to that spend
Members who joined, not leads who filled in a form. Compute it per channel, because channels undercount conversions differently and a blended figure is a fiction. It is the number that lets a free trial and a paid intro be compared honestly: more sign-ups at a lower conversion rate can still be the cheaper member.
Read more: The four that run the month →
Recovered revenue
Recovered revenue is the running total of dollars that would otherwise have walked — failed payments collected, fading members saved — each traced to the approved action that saved it and counted only after a dated check against the booking platform.
Formularecovered revenue = Σ confirmed ledger lines, each ≤ the charge or the monthly dues that was at stake
It is the scoreboard for every follow-up number above, and the honest test of whether “knowing your numbers” changed any of them. In Xyzios it is counted late and only if the member is still paying, with every line open to audit and the misses kept on the record.
Read more: How the ledger counts a dollar →
