Billing a company for its staff memberships
Whether a gym should invoice a company once for all its employees' memberships or member by member, and how to allocate the company's single payment.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Fitness businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
A corporate wellness deal is good business for a gym: one contract, a group of members who train in the early morning or at lunch, and a finance department that pays on a schedule. The trouble starts with the first invoice. The company's accounts team wants one document they can approve and pay. The gym's front desk wants to know which members are paid up. And every month, somebody joins, somebody leaves, and somebody's name is spelled wrong.
How you invoice decides how much work every one of those months will be. This article weighs the two main approaches in Achekam, then covers the details that keep a corporate client paying on time.
One invoice listing members, or one per member
| One invoice for the company | One invoice per member | |
|---|---|---|
| What the company's finance team sees | A single document to approve and pay | A batch of small invoices to approve |
| Who is billed | The company | The company, once per employee |
| Changes mid-month | A credit note or an extra invoice | Only the affected member's invoice changes |
| Matching the payment | One payment, one invoice | One payment spread across many invoices |
| Seeing who is paid up | From the invoice lines | From each member's invoice |
For many deals, one invoice per month for the company, with a line for each member, is what the company's accounts team will want. Per-member invoices make more sense when the company pays only part of the fee and each employee pays the rest themselves, because each person then has their own balance.
Whichever you choose, put the company's purchase order or reference number on every invoice. A finance department that works with purchase orders may refuse to pay an invoice without one.
Note that a business cannot set up a recurring invoice for a customer in Achekam: repeating invoices exist only as retainers created from a signed engagement letter. So each month's corporate invoice is raised as a new invoice. Keep last month's as your template and update the member list before issuing.
The company's tax number on the documents
A company's finance team will check that your invoice shows their details correctly. Enter the company as the customer, with its registered name and tax number. A customer's tax number prints on documents as a VAT number only when it looks like a South African VAT number, and otherwise as a tax number, so Nigerian and Kenyan companies' numbers print under the general label.
Your own VAT registration number, entered under Settings in the Firm Profile, also prints on documents the server makes, and those documents are titled Tax Invoice only when a VAT number is set. Check both before the first invoice goes, because a wrong number on the first invoice tends to delay payment of every one after it.
When the invoice is issued, it takes the next number in your sequence and posts to debtors, sales and output VAT. It can be downloaded as a PDF on your letterhead and e-mailed to the company's accounts address, and a failed send is reported as not sent.
One payment spread across several invoices
Companies often pay several months, or several per-member invoices, with a single transfer. In Achekam, a payment can be recorded against one invoice or spread across a customer's invoices. A part payment leaves an invoice part-paid, and anything paid over is held on the company's account.
When the transfer arrives, ask the company for its remittance advice: the list of which invoices the payment covers. Allocate according to that list, not by guessing from the amount. If you allocate wrongly, a receipt can be re-allocated later.
Statements of account the company's finance team can check
At least monthly, the company should receive a statement of account. The server produces it as a PDF that can be e-mailed, and the screen tells you whether it was sent. Credit control, which is on for new workspaces, also sends a monthly statement to every customer with a balance and e-mails reminders when invoices are overdue.
Finance teams check those statements against their own records. ACCA's article on supplier statement reconciliations explains why a business keeps a separate record for each supplier and reconciles the supplier's statement to it to find errors. From the company's side, you are the supplier: a clear statement, with invoice numbers and their purchase order references, makes that reconciliation quick and your payment faster.
Watch the receivables ageing, which groups amounts owed into 0-30, 31-60, 61-90, 91-120 and over 120 days. A corporate client slipping into the second column often means an invoice is stuck in their approval process, not that they will not pay.
Adding and removing members mid-month
Agree the rules in the corporate contract before the first month, and keep them simple:
- Joiners. A member who joins mid-month is billed from the next month, or for the part month on the next invoice. Pick one rule.
- Leavers. The company tells you in writing by an agreed date; a member removed after that date is billed for the month.
- Corrections. If an invoice includes someone who should not be on it, issue a credit note from that invoice for the chosen line. A credit note is posted to the ledger, can be e-mailed as a PDF, and any credit left over is held for the company.
Keep the company's written list of joiners and leavers with each month's invoice. When their finance team queries a line six months later, that list answers it.
For the wider picture of collecting membership fees without debit orders, see collecting membership fees without debit orders. When a payment lands in the wrong month, read member overpayments and the wrong month, and for choosing between the till and an invoice for each charge, see membership at the till or on an invoice.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
