Fitness pack accounts added to your chart

What switching on the Fitness pack adds to a gym's chart of accounts and catalogue, why a clashing account code stops it, and what to check first.

By Achekam · 11 October 2026 · 4 min read · For Fitness businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya

Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.

Switching on an industry pack sounds like a screen setting. For a gym's books it is a little more than that: the Fitness pack adds ledger accounts to your chart and items to your catalogue, and it will refuse to switch on if one of the account codes it needs is already doing a different job in your books.

None of that is risky if you know it is coming. This article explains what the pack adds, why an account-code clash stops the activation, and the short check worth doing with your accountant before the administrator presses the button.

Who can switch it on

Only the business's own administrator can switch on the Industry CRM, change its industry or grant its authorities. An accounting firm working in your books can use the Industry CRM there once it is on, but it cannot turn it on for you.

When the administrator switches it on, the business picks one of twenty industries. For a gym, studio or spa, that is the Fitness, wellness & spas pack.

The revenue accounts the pack adds

Switching on an industry pack adds that industry's revenue accounts to your chart of accounts. For the Fitness pack these are:

The point of separate accounts is reporting. With the pack's second wave, an invoice line names the revenue account and the product it sells, so revenue is posted per account, and cost of sales goes in the same journal. Membership income and personal-training income then appear as their own lines in your management accounts instead of being lumped together.

The starter items it adds to your catalogue

The pack also adds its starter items to your catalogue. The Fitness pack's list covers joining fees, monthly and annual memberships, personal training, session packages and spa treatments, each set to post to Membership fees (4500) or Classes and personal training (4550).

None of them carries a price. No starter catalogue item in any industry pack has a price: the business sets its own. Expect to see the items appear with empty prices, and plan to fill them in before anyone invoices from them. The detail is in setting your own prices in the Fitness pack.

When an account code clashes

Here is the safeguard. If an account code the pack needs is already used in your chart for another type of account, the activation is refused, and the refusal names the account.

A worked example in words: years ago, a bookkeeper created account 4500 for "Equipment rental expense" because the number was free. That is an expense account sitting on a code the Fitness pack expects to be a revenue account. When the administrator tries to switch on the pack, it stops and names 4500. Nothing is half-done; the pack simply does not activate until the clash is sorted out.

This protects your history. Quietly reusing a code that already carries expense postings as a revenue account would muddle every report that reads it.

Checking your chart before you switch on

Do this with your accountant, ideally at a month-end when the books are tidy.

1. Open the chart of accounts and look for 4500 and 4550.
2. If neither exists, there is nothing to resolve.
3. If one exists as a revenue account for something similar, discuss with your accountant how its history should sit beside the pack's account.
4. If one exists as another type of account, the activation will be refused. Decide with your accountant how to free the code before trying again.
5. Print a trial balance before activation. The trial balance shows each account for a period or at a date and says whether debits equal credits, so you have a clean record of where things stood.
6. Warn the people who invoice. Tell reception and the bookkeeper that new items will appear without prices, and agree who sets those prices and by when, so nobody raises an invoice from an empty line in the meantime.

Accounts in your chart can be added, renamed or switched off, so the accountant has room to tidy things up. Agree what changes before anyone makes them.

For a refresher on what that pre-activation report shows, Investopedia explains the trial balance as the listing of ledger balances used to check that total debits equal total credits.

Switching industry later keeps every record

A business has one pack per workspace. If you later switch to another industry, say because the spa side has grown into the main business, every record is kept, and a record keeps the pack it was made under. Memberships created under the Fitness pack stay Fitness records.

That is reassuring, but it is no reason to switch casually. The accounts the Fitness pack added will still be in your chart and still carry the postings made to them, so involve your accountant in that decision too.

Before and after, in short

• Before: check 4500 and 4550 with your accountant, and print a trial balance.
• During: the administrator switches on the Fitness pack; if it refuses, read the account it names.
• After: two new revenue accounts, a catalogue of unpriced starter items, and invoice lines that name the account they post to.

How membership income flows through those accounts once the pack is running is covered in membership revenue in the ledger.

A few minutes with your chart of accounts before activation saves a refused switch-on, and a much longer conversation about muddled history afterwards.

General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.