April showers not only brought May flowers to kick off a new month…they also brought a number of new updates to the Upper Hand app. Here’s an inside look at what’s new, and a sneak peak at what’s coming soon!
As our customers know, Upper Hand is far more than just technology. We’re a tight-knit team of seasoned sports and fitness experts on a mission to reinvent the way business is done in our industry. And, while our software packs all of the features fitness studios, sports facilities, and training academies need to efficiently operate their business, we recognized that in order for Upper Hand to stay ahead in this age of digital disruption, we needed to focus in one area of our platform: payments.
For many industries, payments is fairly transactional. Consumers purchase a product or service, which then gets recorded before flowing into a bank account. But in sports and fitness, payments can be more complex. With the explosion of new digital technologies and on-demand services, business owners have been have been forced to rethink two things: 1) the overall product mix they offer to customers, and 2) how they charge customers for those services.
Is this program a one-time payment or can they purchase individual sessions? If so, should we charge more? Can we prorate pricing for signups after the first date? Can we offer discounted pricing for larger packages? Can we offer auto-renewal memberships at the intervals we want? What about payment plans for teams or high-priced camps? Can customers pay down a balance? Refunds? I could continue, but my point is clear – the need for a flexible payment solution that provides rich data and analytics has never been greater.
The UP Financial Suite is a reinvented financial solution that provides more flexibility to sports and fitness businesses and makes managing payments easier. It includes a multitude of new payment features for our customers, gives them deeper insights into their clients and the overall financial health of their business, and allows our team to spin out new features quicker for future innovation.
More Flexibility & Customization
The reinvented UP Financial Suite introduces a handful of new features that makes managing payments more flexible and customizable to your business.
We’ve introduced Fluid Payments, which enables our customers to charge larger sums upfront and allow their clients to pay that over time without enrolling in a payment plan or membership. In addition, Split Payments is a feature that allows clients to use multiple payment methods on a single order.
Many of the new features are accessible when viewing reports, allowing customers to take action without changing the screen. For example, when drilling down on an order in the new Orders Report, customers experience a beautiful side drawer containing all of the details of the transaction, as well as new actions to quickly refund on the item-level, trigger receipts, and more. When viewing the new Balances report, customers can click into a client to pay down that balance, trigger refunds, or waive that balance.
Similar to reports, taking action on auto-renewal memberships is easier with “suspend” and “cancel” actions that are visible when clicking on an active member. We’ve introduced a new “Payment Plan” tab that allows you to manage client’s future payments on programs where applicable.
The best thing about the new features is that they aren’t siloed in a single area of the software; they’re accessible when – and where – customers need them, enhancing the user experience of Upper Hand.
Stronger Insights Today, Better Decisions Tomorrow
As mentioned, the new UP Financial Suite includes new reports that give deeper insights into our customers’ clients and the overall financial health of their business.
All of these reports include new filters, the ability to customize columns, and most importantly – all are optimized for mobile devices and are available in the Upper Hand app.
With the new Orders Report, customers can view purchases by in-person or online and view the staff who sold the client. The Balances Report simplifies how businesses can view clients with outstanding balances and take action, and the new Ledger Report balances the monies coming in and out – every accountant’s dream. To make managing memberships easier, we’ve added new member history drawers that show all past and future transactions for that membership, including the actions previously described.
In addition, our sales and revenue reports got a facelift with new charts and graphs that paint a picture of the overall financial health of the business.
Foundation for Future Innovation
While customers will thoroughly enjoy all of the new features and insights, it’s what’s ahead that excites our team the most. By rebuilding the core foundation of how payments and transactions are handled in our software, we can now build new features we previously couldn’t – and at a much faster speed.
Most sports and fitness businesses are created from a passion to help others, and while payment features may not be the most attractive part of SaaS to read or write about, they are the core foundation of what allows businesses to keep their doors open. By building innovative and forward-thinking solutions like the UP Financial Suite, Upper Hand will continue supporting our customers by making business easier, so they can keep improving the physical and mental wellbeing in their communities.
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