41 terms, in Arabic and English

The gym management glossary

The terms that turn up in your gym's reports, its invoices and every software demo — defined plainly, with what each one means in a real gym rather than in an accounting textbook.

Members & memberships

Active memberعضو نشط: A member whose subscription is live — not expired and not frozen. It is the denominator in nearly every rate you calculate, which is why two gyms that define it differently cannot compare numbers: some count recently expired members as active, which makes the gym look larger than it is.In the platform: Member Management Read more: Seven Numbers Every Gym Owner Should Know Each Month
Churn rateمعدل التسرّب: The share of members who stopped renewing during a period, divided by the active members at its start. A rate of 5% a month means replacing roughly half your member base every year before the gym grows by one.In the platform: Reports & Analytics Read more: Why Gym Members Stop Renewing — and How to Stop the Leak
Retention rateمعدل الاحتفاظ: The other side of churn: the share of members who renewed. It is normally measured at the renewal point rather than monthly, because an annual membership only makes the stay-or-leave decision once a year.In the platform: Reports & Analytics Read more: Why Gym Members Stop Renewing — and How to Stop the Leak
Lapsed memberعضو منقطع: A member whose subscription is live but who has stopped showing up. It is the single most useful early warning signal: absence precedes non-renewal by weeks, so acting on the absence is far cheaper than trying to win them back after expiry.In the platform: Smart QR Attendance Read more: Why Gym Members Stop Renewing — and How to Stop the Leak
Membership freezeتجميد الاشتراك: A temporary pause that extends the expiry date by the number of days frozen. A clear freeze policy keeps the travelling or injured member instead of pushing them into cancelling outright.In the platform: Memberships & Plans Read more: Membership Freezes, Upgrades and Auto-Renewal Done Right
Auto-renewalالتجديد التلقائي: Renewing a membership automatically at expiry with no action from the member. It measurably raises renewal rates, but it needs a notice sent well before the charge — a silent renewal is the fastest route to a bank dispute and a bad review.In the platform: Memberships & Plans Read more: Membership Freezes, Upgrades and Auto-Renewal Done Right
Prorationالاحتساب التناسبي: Charging the price difference in proportion to the days remaining when a member upgrades or downgrades mid-term. Without it you are left with two bad options: bill a full month, or hand over the upgrade for free.In the platform: Memberships & Plans Read more: Membership Freezes, Upgrades and Auto-Renewal Done Right
Session creditsرصيد الجلسات: The prepaid sessions a member has left on a personal-training or class pack. It has to be deducted at the point of delivery and against a named trainer, because a disputed balance is the most frequent argument this revenue line produces.In the platform: Memberships & Plans Read more: Personal Training Packages: Pricing and Session Tracking
Lead (enquiry)عميل محتمل (استفسار): Anyone who showed interest and has not joined yet: a walk-in, a phone call, a WhatsApp message. An enquiry recorded without its source does not exist statistically, and no marketing channel can be judged without it.In the platform: Lead Management Read more: Gym Lead Follow-Up: From Walk-In to Member
Conversion rateنسبة التحويل: The share of enquiries that became members. It is calculated per channel, because a blended average hides the channel producing a hundred enquiries and no sign-ups next to the one producing ten of which half join.In the platform: Lead Management Read more: A Gym Marketing Plan That Fits on One Page
Joining feeرسوم الانضمام: A one-off amount charged at first sign-up, nominally for the membership card and initial assessment. Its real value is not the revenue but that it makes cancelling and rejoining later expensive, which reduces seasonal in-and-out churn.In the platform: Memberships & Plans Read more: Gym Membership Pricing: Building Packages That Earn Without Confusing
Member referralإحالة الأعضاء: An existing member bringing in a new sign-up, credited to them as the source. It typically converts better and retains longer than a paid lead, because trust already transferred from a person the new member knows — which is why the reward should be tied to the new member staying, not just to the signature.In the platform: Lead Management Read more: Gym Referral Programs: Turning Members Into a Sales Channel

Money & metrics

MRR (monthly recurring revenue)الإيراد الشهري المتكرر: The revenue you can expect each month from live subscriptions, with annual memberships spread across twelve months. It is not the cash collected this month, and confusing the two is why the first quarter looks excellent and the third inexplicably weak.In the platform: Reports & Analytics Read more: Seven Numbers Every Gym Owner Should Know Each Month
ARPM (average revenue per member)متوسط الإيراد لكل عضو: Total revenue divided by active members. Watching it rise without member growth means upselling — personal training, lockers, retail — has started working, which is the cheapest form of growth because it acquires nobody new.In the platform: Reports & Analytics Read more: Seven Numbers Every Gym Owner Should Know Each Month
LTV (lifetime value)القيمة الدائمة للعضو: What a member spends across their whole time with you: average monthly revenue × average months before leaving. It is the ceiling your cost of acquiring a member must stay under, or you are growing towards a loss.In the platform: Reports & Analytics Read more: A Gym Marketing Plan That Fits on One Page
CAC (customer acquisition cost)تكلفة اكتساب العضو: Marketing spend divided by the members it produced. Calculated per channel, and always through to the signed member rather than to the enquiry — the channel that is cheap per enquiry is often the most expensive per member.In the platform: Lead Management Read more: A Gym Marketing Plan That Fits on One Page
Deferred revenueالإيراد المؤجَّل: Money collected for a service not yet delivered — the remaining months of a prepaid annual membership. It is a liability rather than profit, and reading it as profit is the standard way to spend money that belongs to service still owed.In the platform: Payments & Invoicing Read more: A Gym Business Plan Built on Numbers, Not Hopes
Receivables ageingأعمار الذمم المدينة: Grouping member balances by how late they are: under 30 days, 30–60, over 90. Each bucket gets a different action, because a balance one week late and one four months late are not the same problem.In the platform: Payments & Invoicing Read more: Collecting Overdue Gym Payments Without Losing Members
Break-even pointنقطة التعادل: The number of active members whose revenue exactly covers your fixed costs, and the month you expect to reach it. Two numbers, not one: the first sets your price, the second sets how much working capital you need to get there.In the platform: Reports & Analytics Read more: A Gym Business Plan Built on Numbers, Not Hopes
Payment reconciliationمطابقة التحصيل: Matching what the system recorded against what actually reached the cash drawer, the bank account and the payment gateway at the end of the day. In cash-heavy markets especially, the gap between those numbers is where money quietly disappears without anyone intending it.In the platform: Payments & Invoicing Read more: Gym POS and Inventory: Sell Retail Without a Separate Till
Cohort retentionاحتفاظ الفوج: Retention measured for one group of members who joined in the same window — a month, a season — tracked on its own rather than blended into the yearly average. A seasonal wave like January sign-ups can retain far worse than the rest of the year while the blended number still looks healthy.In the platform: Reports & Analytics Read more: The New-Year Gym Rush: Keeping Sign-Ups Past February

Daily operations

Check-inتسجيل الحضور: Recording a member's entry, usually by scanning a personal QR code. Its value is not security but data: without a check-in log you cannot know your peak hours, and you cannot spot the drifting member before they decide not to renew.In the platform: Smart QR Attendance Read more: Gym Check-In: QR Code, Fingerprint, or Card?
Peak occupancyذروة الإشغال: The highest number of members inside the gym at one time during the day. It is what sets your real member ceiling and your staff rota — not the floor area and not the total subscriber count.In the platform: Smart QR Attendance Read more: A Gym Business Plan Built on Numbers, Not Hopes
Class capacityسعة الحصة: The maximum attendees in one group class. Setting it inside the booking system prevents the overfilled session that produces a poor experience and a bad review faster than it produces revenue.In the platform: Class Scheduling Read more: Gym Class Schedules: Capacity, Waitlists, and No-Shows
Waitlistقائمة الانتظار: The members who wanted a class that was full. Its value is turning unmet demand into a visible number: five waitlisted for the same class three times running is a decision to open a second session.In the platform: Class Scheduling Read more: Gym Class Schedules: Capacity, Waitlists, and No-Shows
No-showعدم الحضور: A member who booked a slot or class, did not attend and did not cancel. It consumes a seat or trainer time that cannot be resold, which is why the cancellation policy has to be written and shown at booking rather than at the breach.In the platform: Class Scheduling Read more: Personal Training Packages: Pricing and Session Tracking
Role-based permissionsالصلاحيات حسب الدور: Giving each employee only what their job needs: reception checks members in and takes payment, a trainer sees their own timetable and members, and neither sees financial reports. A shared login on the front-desk machine cancels all of it and makes any audit trail meaningless.In the platform: Staff & Permissions Read more: Running a Ladies-Only Gym: Privacy, Staff, Schedule
POS (point of sale)نقطة البيع: The screen for selling products — water, supplements, apparel — connected to stock levels and to the member profile. Linking it to the membership is what allows purchases to go on the member's account rather than a separate cash collection at every visit.In the platform: POS & Inventory Read more: Gym POS and Inventory: Sell Retail Without a Separate Till
Shrinkageالفاقد في المخزون: The gap between recorded stock and what is actually on the shelf: expiry, breakage, or items taken without being rung up. It appears in no sales report — only in a stock count, which is why periodic counts exist.In the platform: POS & Inventory Read more: Gym POS and Inventory: Sell Retail Without a Separate Till
First response timeزمن أول استجابة: The time between a member raising a complaint and the first human reply. It matters more than full resolution time: a member who knows someone is working on their problem is far more patient than one waiting on a reply that never comes.In the platform: Support Ticketing Read more: Member Support Tickets: Stop Losing Complaints in Chat

Tax & compliance

VAT (value added tax)ضريبة القيمة المضافة: A tax added to membership and retail prices and remitted to the tax authority. The rate differs across the region, and the common mistake is advertising a price and later discovering it was tax-inclusive — so the tax comes out of your margin.In the platform: 14+ Countries & Currencies Read more: UAE VAT for Gyms: Registration, Invoices, and Filing
E-invoicingالفوترة الإلكترونية: Issuing invoices in a structured electronic format submitted to or cleared by the tax authority's platform, rather than paper or a PDF. Mandatory to varying degrees in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries in the region.In the platform: Payments & Invoicing Read more: ZATCA E-Invoicing for Gyms in Saudi Arabia: What You Actually Need
Simplified tax invoiceفاتورة ضريبية مبسّطة: The invoice issued to an end consumer, which covers most gym sales. Its mandatory fields differ from a full tax invoice issued to another business, and issuing the wrong type is a breach even when the amount is correct.In the platform: Payments & Invoicing Read more: ZATCA E-Invoicing for Gyms in Saudi Arabia: What You Actually Need
Credit noteإشعار دائن: A document reversing an earlier invoice in whole or in part, used for refunds and reductions. Deleting the original invoice instead is not a simplification but a break in invoice sequence, and one of the first things a tax audit surfaces.In the platform: Payments & Invoicing Read more: UAE VAT for Gyms: Registration, Invoices, and Filing
PDPL (personal data protection law)نظام حماية البيانات الشخصية: Saudi Arabia's framework for personal data protection. In practice it means your member data — identity, health, biometrics — carries defined obligations on collection, storage and disclosure, and that the member holds rights over the data you keep.In the platform: Member Management Read more: Saudi PDPL Compliance for Gyms: A Practical Checklist
Biometric dataالبيانات البيومترية: Data derived from a person's body, such as a fingerprint or face. It is classified as sensitive under the region's data protection regimes and cannot be changed if it leaks — reason enough on its own to prefer a QR code over a fingerprint reader.In the platform: Smart QR Attendance Read more: Gym Check-In: QR Code, Fingerprint, or Card?
Liability waiverإخلاء المسؤولية: A signed statement that a member accepts the ordinary risks of exercise, reducing the gym's exposure to a claim over an injury during normal, supervised activity. It does not excuse actual negligence — broken equipment left in service or a class run without adequate supervision — and it is a separate document from the health declaration.In the platform: Member Management Read more: Gym Liability Waivers and Health Forms: What to Collect

Technology

Multi-tenancyتعدد المستأجرين: An architecture where one platform serves many gyms with each gym's data fully isolated from the others. It is why a cloud subscription costs less than a locally installed system, and the isolation is what to ask about before subscribing.In the platform: 14+ Countries & Currencies Read more: Multi-Branch Gym Management: One System for Every Branch
PWA (progressive web app)تطبيق الويب التقدّمي: A website installable on a phone as an app, with an icon and a full screen, without going through an app store. For a small gym that means an app for your members with no store fees and no review wait on every update.In the platform: PWA Mobile App Read more: Gym Member Apps: What Belongs on a Member’s Phone
RTL (right-to-left)الاتجاه من اليمين لليسار: The direction Arabic is written in, and it is more than translation: the entire layout mirrors — menus, tables, arrows and charts. A system that is "translated" without real RTL support produces broken screens your staff discover rather than you.In the platform: Member Management Read more: How to Choose Gym Management Software in 2026: 12 Questions to Ask First
Data export / portabilityتصدير البيانات: Your ability to take your full data — members, subscriptions, payments — in a usable format at any time. Ask about it before subscribing rather than at the exit: a system that makes leaving hard is relying on that to keep you.In the platform: Reports & Analytics Read more: From Excel to a Real System: Migrating Your Gym Data Without Chaos

These numbers already exist in your gym

Churn, revenue per member, receivables ageing, peak occupancy — all of them are derived from data you already collect daily. The system calculates them for you. 30 days free, no card.

Start free How the system works