Decrease the time you spend following up missed charity donations and process them automatically through billycart at a low monthly fee.

How charities can decrease administration through Billycart

For many charities, ongoing donations are an essential part of charity revenue. For most charities, paying late fees to companies for missed donations and following up donors can be a major business administration expense.

On the other hand, some smaller charities can't utilise ongoing payments from donors because of the large expenses often associated with ongoing payments.

In order to help those in need, charities need donations, but with low resourcing, the processing and following up these donors can become an issue. Then there's the additional issue of many platforms charging the charity for missed payments from donors.

So what are the wins for charities in using Billycart?

In your charity, do you have people who dedicate time to following up missed donations through phone calls, personal emails and texts? If you do, this doesn't need to be the case. Billycart is successfully turning 99% of failed payments into successful ones within the first 72 hours through our cleaver automation.

Payment providers charge late fees, usually with no option to opt out. Depending on who you are currently using, that late fee will either go to the charity or to the customer, when it comes to donations, both of those options are less than ideal. Billycart gives you the power when it comes to late fees, you can choose not to give late fees at all, or you can choose the late fee you set and that money will go directly to you.

Billycart offers clear and easy-to-interpret reporting dashboards. You can easily see your upcoming donations, any failed donations and successful payments. 

Sign up to Billycart today and receive your first two months completely free.

How Charities Can Decrease Administration Through Billycart

Freelancing can be tough, it can be stressful and lonely at times. Use these tools to improve how you freelance, improve your productivity, minimise your administration and get paid on time

Freelancing is on the rise. We are looking for more flexibility and control in our work, and freelancing offers that. COVID gave us a lot of lessons, and for many of us, it was that traditional work might not be the greatest fit for what we want in our lives. However, with freelancing comes challenges, you have the flexibility, but you're greeted with less security. You have the ability to pick your own hours, but it can often lead to you working more than planned. Freelancing requires a lot of work, but the rewards can be huge.

Let's walk through some ways you can simplify your freelancing processes to make freelancing easier for you. 

Bit.ai has been built for teams and individuals to create, collaborate, and organize all knowledge in one place from anywhere in the world. It's perfect for freelancers to collaborate, especially if you don't have the opportunity to be in person with your clients. You can create fast dynamic notes, documents, wikis, knowledge bases, projects, client deliverables, technical docs, training guides and client portals, while integrating across the apps you work with all in one place.

Your documents, presentations and invoices don't need to be boring. Add a bit of spice by using Canva templates- or create your own. Canva is easy to use and is a great alternative for someone without a design background. Canva can be used by anyone in any profession, whether you're in marketing and need social media posts or you're a CEO preparing a high-level presentation to board members.

It can be difficult to say with accuracy to your clients how much time you spent on a project. Using Toggl, you can accurately track your time and work in this tool. If you're someone who often gets distracted, Toggl can be used as a productivity tool to help your focus. Being a freelancer, it can be hard to find motivation day in and day out, especially if you aren't working as part of a team. Toggl can be used on your desktop or as an app on your phone.

Even the best writers make grammatical errors occasionally. Grammarly is a cloud-based typing assistant that reviews spelling, grammar, punctuation, clarity, engagement, and delivery mistakes. It uses artificial intelligence to identify and search for an appropriate replacement for the error it locates. If you're a freelancer, you likely don't have a colleague to cross-check your emails or final drafts. Let Grammarly assist.

Use Calendly to end the back-and-forth meeting suggestions

If you're managing multiple clients, it can be difficult to schedule meeting times that suit you and your clients. You send your client a unique booking link, they choose a time that best suits them, and your meeting is locked in. No more back and forth, no more wasting time coordinating.

Ever waited six weeks for an overdue invoice? Scrambled to pay rent because you didn't get paid on time? Getting paid on time is often a headache for freelancers, but it doesn't have to be with Billycart. Billycart is a payment management platform that creates Smart Payment Agreements™ and equips businesses/contractors/freelancers and their customers or clients with more control, flexibility and transparency over their payment plans. The best part? You can try Billycart for free for the first two months. Join today.

Freelancing can be lonely at times, it can be stressful, but it can be oh-so rewarding. You're working on your terms for clients you feel passionate about and doing it all on your own. Ease some stress or free up your time through these tools and make freelancing easier.

6 Tools That Will Improve Your Freelancing

Subscriptions can amplify the hospitality industry, you just need to think outside the box to get started.

Subscriptions Are Changing The Hospitality Industry

The past couple of years has not been easy for the hospitality industry... That's no secret. But generally, working in hospitality isn't always the easiest industry to make a profit. We've all seen some of our favorite restaurants or cafes close their doors because their profit margins weren't high enough or because the amount of work didn't match their profits. It's tough. At Billycart, we want to find ways to support the hospitality industry and help people in it generate profit in less traditional ways to stand out.

By now, you probably know that Billycart is primarily a recurring payment platform. We allow you to send Smart Payment Agreements to your customers and get paid successfully on a recurring basis. So how does this help in hospitality? Well, in a lot of ways, actually. Recurring payments or subscriptions aren't just limited to Netflix. They can come in many forms.

- Charge a fee for using your cafe as a working space

- Charge a club to use your space each week outside of your opening hours

We've seen great success from big players like Pret in the UK taking on subscriptions. For £25 a month, you can have up to five drinks per day, including barista-made coffees, hot chocolate, teas and frappes. We're pretty sure most people don't manage to hit the five-a-day quota, but overall this gives Pret some solid revenue month on month. If you're a small business owner, you probably can't afford to risk giving up to five drinks daily, but this subscription is still worthwhile even at one drink each day. 

Having recurring guaranteed revenue can help your profit margins and stabilise your business. It's a great space to get creative and think outside the box. As we mentioned before, consider renting some of your space or hosting a class. It doesn't have to be limited to food.

Interested in seeing how recurring revenue or subscription billing can help support your business. Join Billycart today, and don't pay a thing for the first two months.

How Subscriptions Are Changing The Hospitality Industry

Billycart is the best recurring payment platform for small to medium businesses. With low fees, clever automation and tactics to recover failed payments, Billycart has you covered.

The best recurring payment platform, Billycart

So you’ve heard Billycart is transforming how businesses and customers exchange money, but what does that mean exactly?

Billycart is turning recurring bills into recurring delight by giving businesses and customers freedom with their payments.

Billycart allows businesses to set up a Smart Payment Agreement™ with their customers while giving their customers flexibility to pay how it suits them.

You get paid on a Wednesday, but every month, your phone bill comes out of your account on a Tuesday. Half the time, you miss this payment because you don’t have enough in your account. This doesn’t mean you’re bad with your money. It just means the current system isn’t working for you.

Using Billycart, your customer can adjust the day their recurring payment leaves their account at a time and day that suits them. Meaning you’re more likely to be paid on time, and your customer is left with a better experience.

Billycart operates at a fixed monthly fee for you as a business, but you can charge your customers a fee when they miss payments. This fee will go directly to your business. You can edit fees to cover the cost of your subscription to Billycart, edit your fees to be higher, so your customers avoid missed payments, or not charge your customers at all. The choice is yours!

If you’re a Square user, Billycart integrates seamlessly with your account. You’ll be set up with a Billycart account in minutes and be ready to send your customers Smart Payment Agreements™.

Join Billycart today and get the first two months of payments completely free.

Are subscriptions worth adding to your business? The statistics say so and Billycart makes the whole process more simple. Our Smart Payment Agreements™ allow easy set up and transparency for both you and your customers.

How will subscription services improve my business revenue?

Subscription services are on the rise with 78% of International adults in 2021 having at least one subscription service (Wonderment), which is expected to rise year on year. Subscriptions can come in many forms, from gym memberships, subscription boxes, and dog walking... there's a range of subscription and recurring payment options for most businesses, so you might need to get creative.

Subscription and recurring payment businesses have consistently grown 5-8x faster than traditional businesses (What's New In Publishing). Why? Well, we think there are many reasons:

- Improved revenue opportunities
- Improved customer retention
- Customer convenience 
- Offer customers exclusive discounts
- Improved brand loyalty
- Increased touch points for communication
- Increased customer referrals 

Despite these improvements to revenue, 48% of businesses with a recurring revenue model need help to meet accounting and reporting challenges (Fusebill). Managing multiple recurring payment contracts from customers can be extremely time-consuming and stressful, following up on failed payments, communicating upcoming payments and reporting. We could see this problem across many businesses, that's why we created Billycart.

Billycart offers businesses recurring payment software that makes ongoing, recurring and subscription payments a breeze. We do this through:

Smart Payment Agreements™
A Smart Payment Agreement™️ or digital payment request is your invitation to the new, improved way of managing recurring payments. The payment request is what the business sends to the customer. This is sent directly to your customer's mobile via SMS, or email and contains a unique join link. Once the customer clicks this link and follows the prompts to activate, your Smart Payment Agreement™️ is live, and you can begin processing payments.

Grace Periods™
Rather than hitting your customers with instant late fees, Billycart gives customers an opportunity to pay their fees before they're hit with a late fee. No customer wants a late fee, so improve your customer experience by giving them another opportunity to pay their fees late fee free.

Automated Communication
Save time calling customers and letting them know their payment failed (those calls aren't fun anyway). Our clever technology automatically communicates upcoming payments, failed payments and Grace Periods™ through SMS or email. 

Reporting
Billycart offers a dashboard of your incoming, upcoming, successful and failed payments as well as reports on your recurring payments from your customers. With 48% of businesses with a recurring revenue model struggling to meet accounting and reporting challenges (Fusebill), we know how important this is for small businesses.

Seamless Integration
Billycart is an official partner with industry leader Square. If you're a Square user, you can sign up for Billycart in under a minute. If you use another payment processor, you can still benefit from our Billycart technology. However, processing your integration will take 1-2 business days.

Payment discrepancies were resolved in less than 24 hours
Thanks to our Grace Periods™ and automated communication, Billycart successfully turns 99% of failed payments into successful ones within the first 72 hours. That's all without you lifting a finger.

So, is it worth you launching a subscription model business? Or adding a subscription model to your business? The statistics say so, in a recent survey from Invesp, they found:

- 54% of online shoppers said they have subscribed to a subscription box service
- 20% of men surveyed claim to be subscribed to at least 6 eCommerce services
-24% say the most important reason for continuing to subscribe is convenience
- 28% say the most important is personalised experience
- 23% say for them, the most important is value for money
- 69% of US households now subscribe to one or more video streaming services

Customers love subscriptions, and that's backed by Fusebill stating that the average subscription billing vendor is growing 30%–50% annually. Improving business offerings and revenue is paramount due to the rising cost of living and increasing inflation.

If you're interested in adding a subscription model to your business or launching a new business, try Billycart completely free for your first two months. Join now.

Personal trainers don't need to keep waiting for clients to pay them on time. End the phone calls and use Billycart for a low monthly fee, your first three months are free

How personal trainers can minimise admin through subscription payments

The fitness industry is loving Billycart, it's saving you time and keeping your clients happy. 

No one loves doing admin… right? But when you’re a personal trainer and especially if you're working for yourself, it can be challenging to stay on top of your finances, admin and busy training schedule. We want to help you spend less time chasing clients for payments and more time training them. After all, that’s what you do best.

Billycart works to make recurring payments simple, which is a common issue for personal trainers. You have a busy schedule of recurring clients who need to pay you for your services, but the administration of getting these payments can be a common pain point for personal trainers.

Your clients love your services and want to pay you, but if you aren’t making it simple and convenient for them, it can cause frustration. Billycart aims to change that through simple payment agreements that give your clients flexibility and ease, making them even happier with your business. 


1. You decide how much your customers will be charged and for how long based on your offerings and contracts

2. You set your own late fees, and we don’t keep a penny of it like most other payment systems. 

3. Some users allow grace periods. It’s your choice how long these are (or aren’t)

4. You set the recurring payment amount for your customer through your Billycart integration via Square

5. Your customer agrees to the amount. You’ve now entered a payment agreement together

6. It’s official; you’re up and running. Let Billycart do the hard work for you, your money show be flowing, and your customers should be smiling

Join Billycart today and get your first two months completely free.

I'm a Personal Trainer, How Can Billycart Help Me?

Reduce administration time and end late fees with Billycart's recurring donation software. Billycart simply overlays your payment provider and makes recurring donations simple. Our automatic communication and complete flexibility make Billycart the best donation payment software there is. Your donors will never be charged a late fee unless you choose to.

Working for or owning a non-profit has its own unique challenges; a smaller workforce, relying on volunteers and a desperate need for donations. At Billycart, we know recurring donations can be a lifeline for a number of charities. They create a form of reliable revenue that can be challenging to source in the charity space.

Recurring donations can be created in a completely flexible way to suit your donors. You have the ability to edit the frequency the money is donated (weekly, fortnightly, monthly), your donors can have the option of choosing the specific day the money leaves their account and you can choose how long the recurring plan goes for. Building out these offerings will improve your donor satisfaction and help retain long-term donors to improve the revenue in your charity, allowing you to do what matters, helping others.

Recurring donations can often cause a headache, particularly regarding failed payment fees and customer communication. Most recurring payment platforms pass large late fees onto customers, which, when the payment is a donation, will not be received well. Billycart changes this. With the Billycart payment platform, you can choose if you do or don't pass on late payment fees and the flexibility to choose the amount they are. Billycart does not collect late fees. The business does. So if you add a late fee, that amount will go directly to you.

Donations must have flexibility. They're an act of goodwill, they go beyond paying for a service or product, and they deserve to be treated as such. Donations deserve specialised service, but as a charity, time is low, and so are resources. Processing recurring payments can be automated. That's why we created Billycart.

Billycart's clever technology automatically recovers failed payments without you having to lift a finger. We offer Grace Periods to help automatically recover payments rather than stinging generous donors with late fees. We know that life happens, and it's normal for payments to fail from time to time. Your donors don't need to be punished for late payment. They need to be encouraged to make the payment a successful one.

We offer Billycart at a low monthly fee with your first two months free, join today.

Recurring donations are a powerful tool charities

Discover the benefits of automated dunning and how it can help you streamline payment recovery, reduce overdue payments and improve the customer experience. Learn more about this cutting-edge collections automation solution.

Streamline Payment Recovery with Automated Dunning: The Future of Collections

For businesses, the process of collecting overdue payments can be a time-consuming and often unpleasant task. But with Billycart, the solution to this problem has finally arrived in the form of automated dunning. Automated dunning is a collections automation process that uses technology to send automated overdue payment reminders to customers, helping businesses quickly and efficiently collect overdue payments.

Billycart's clever technology automates the recovery process without intervention from the business owner, giving you more time to grow your business rather than chasing payments. Billycart automatically communicates with your customers when a payment fails, as well as processing automatic re-tries without human intervention.

Automated dunning refers to the process of automatically reminding customers to pay their overdue bills through emails or other communication channels. The goal of automated dunning is to minimize the amount of overdue payments and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the collections process. Automated dunning processes typically include the ability to set up custom email templates, configure payment reminders, and track customer payment history.

One of the primary benefits of automated dunning is the time and resource savings it provides. The process of sending payment reminders manually can be both time-consuming and error-prone. With automated dunning, businesses can save time and resources compared to manual collections efforts while also improving the customer experience.

In addition, automated dunning allows businesses to send timely, personalized reminders to customers. This can help improve the chances of collecting payments and avoid sending multiple reminders to the same customer. This is because automated dunning processes allow businesses to track customer payment history and configure payment reminders based on the customer's individual payment history.

Automated dunning works by integrating with the business's payment system and automating the process of sending overdue payment reminders to customers. When a payment is overdue, the system automatically sends a reminder email to the customer, asking them to make a payment. The system will send additional reminders at predetermined intervals if the payment is still not received.

In addition to email reminders, automated dunning may also include the ability to send SMS reminders, or to call customers who have not responded to email reminders. This can help to improve the chances of collecting payments and avoid having to send multiple reminders to the same customer.

How does Billycart help businesses use automated dunning?

Billycart is an automated dunning program; even better, it is one of the lowest-cost automated dunning tools on the market. Billycart sends Smart Payment Agreements™ to your customers with the details of their recurring payment to your business. Then, if a payment happens to fail, the automated dunning process kicks in. To learn more about Billycart's technology, take a look at our How It Works Page.

Automated dunning is a powerful tool that can help businesses quickly and efficiently collect overdue payments. With its ability to send personalized, timely reminders to customers, businesses can improve the chances of collecting payments and avoid sending multiple reminders to the same customer. Additionally, automated dunning can help businesses save time and resources compared to manual collections efforts while improving the customer experience. So, if you want to streamline your payments recovery process, consider implementing Billycart to your business today. Sign up here.

Revolutionize Your Payment Recovery with Automated Dunning 

Recurring payments are a great way to increase revenue for your business but they come with complexities. Billycart handles these complexities so you can work on the parts of your business that you love. Billycart operates on a low monthly free suitable for small businesses. 

What are recurring payments and why does your business need them?

Recurring payments, also known as automatic or periodic payments, are a payment arrangement where a specific amount of money is automatically charged to a customer's credit card, debit card, or bank account at regular intervals. These payments can be set up to occur on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, depending on the terms of the agreement.

If you’re a business owner or you make business decisions in your workplace, recurring payments can be an essential part of your business, or they may be something you’d like to add to your business to increase revenue. Recurring payments are great for business, but they do come with complexities, like processing these regular payments, maintaining communication with your customers and keeping them on track to paying you. 

Recurring payments can come in many forms depending on your business. Examples of recurring payments include membership payments (such as gyms, sports teams, clubs), retainer fees from clients (often used by freelancers or agencies), subscription payments (these come in many forms such as gift box subscriptions, news subscriptions, weekly food deliveries) and service fees (weekly cleaning, bi-annual car servicing, nannying). Recurring payments are simply payments that continue over a set period, and in return, the customer receives a service or product.  

Recurring payments come in many forms, but they all share the same complexities when processing payments. The complexities continue when businesses offer add-on services to the base of their recurring payments- like if a cleaning service offered a deep clean option every six months or you wanted to add a monthly PT session to your gym membership.  

Maintaining a recurring payment can be a challenge for businesses. Without using a dedicated platform, many businesses are left to manually process these fees as well as manually send communications around the payment and, in many cases, picking up the phone to discuss failed payments with clients. This often results in a lot of dedicated time to maintain this revenue stream and unnecessary work.

That’s why Billycart was created. Billycart aims to end the complexity around recurring payments through: 

- Automated communication through SMS and email 

- Fast integration with your payment provider 

Recurring payments don’t have to be difficult, they can be seamless with the right software and support. Billycart handles the complexities so you can work on the other aspects of your business. 

Subscriptions are on the rise, they're a great way to increase your revenue, improve your customer loyalty and assist with retention. Use Billycart to easily process your subscription payments.

5 ways subscription services are transforming businesses

It's no secret that subscription services are growing, from streaming to toilet paper to gym membership. Almost anything can become a subscription... and well, in many cases, it can. Subscription services offer businesses guaranteed revenue. They're a great way to offer your business stability and scalability. 

Subscriptions offer a range of bonuses for customers. They offer convenience and often discounts to customers. Subscriptions are often 'on demand', and in a world where we can get what we want from our fingertips, that's exactly what customers are looking for.

Owning a small business can be financially stressful. Guaranteeing income in some capacity will give you stability and the potential opportunity to scale your business. 

With subscriptions often comes loyalty. Customer loyalty will come naturally if you offer a high-quality service or product in your subscription and your customer has been subscribed for some time. Adding things like referral codes and gifts at key milestones, like one year of being subscribed, will likely increase customer loyalty.

You already know your customers love your product or service, which is why they're your customers. It's worth considering what these customers might need or want from your business. Consider cross-selling additional items or services, increasing their subscription or moving them to a more premium offering. Subscription customers are loyal customers- test the waters.

Having subscription-based customers means lower overheads, particularly in your marketing from a retention standpoint. If your customers have been locked into a time-based contract, you don't need to re-market your product to any customers that have already made a purchase.

Subscription services are here to stay. They're a powerful tool for businesses, small or large. Billycart helps businesses easily accept subscription fees in a way that's convenient to customers as well as businesses. Customers are allowed to adjust the day of the week the money is taken from their account, which minimises the chances of missed payments. Billycart also allows businesses to easily see financial reporting, keep their own late fees, set their own grace periods and easily communicate with their customers. 

Try Billycart today and see how we're turning recurring bills into recurring delight.

5 Ways Subscription Services Are Transforming Businesses

Use Billycart to add a recurring revenue arm to your cafe such as coffee subscriptions, room rental, bean ordering. Recurring revenue will increase your bottom line and using Billycart to process them won't break the bank! Join today for three months free.

For café owners, there can be a range of stress when it comes to running your business. You have to juggle competing with competitors, navigating rising costs, paying staff, ordering the correct amount of stock, creating delicious recipes and keeping your customers happy. Running a café is challenging!  

So, how could a café use a subscription service or recurring revenue model to improve revenue? Let’s walk through some potential options. 

Subscription coffee accounts 
This is a growing trend, and it truly isn’t just for large franchises. We’re seeing large businesses like Pret A Manger in the UK offering a hot drink subscription. This is an amazing business decision to take inspiration from. Although you may not be able to offer as many drinks as this business, you can still offer a range of perks. Perhaps you could give customers the opportunity to pay monthly for a coffee daily. You offer something like a 10% discount per daily cup. This kind of subscription will increase your customer loyalty and, if done right, will increase your bottom line. 

Subscription coffee beans 
Let customers set up a subscription service with you to purchase coffee beans for their home or their office. Like the coffee subscription above, offer a small discount to make it worthwhile, and if you can deliver it to increase the convenience for them, you’re sure to be on to a winner. 

Business accounts 
Some people are lucky enough to work for businesses that offer free coffee or in some cases, discounted by the business. You could set up a recurring payment agreement with the business you are working with to make it simple for them to continue paying you on time and easy to pay for them. 

Room rental 
Many workplaces offer completely remote working, and although this luxury can be great, some people still want to leave their houses or have face-to-face meetings without being disturbed. Suppose you have a room or even the opportunity to rent a table for the day without the pressure of them needing to buy multiple coffees and food. In that case, this could be a great opportunity to make extra income without much outlay. All you need is a good Wi-Fi connection to get started.  

Subscription services don’t just have to be limited to Netflix or your gym membership. They can be applied in many ways to a plethora of businesses... You might have to get creative. 

If you would like to test how a subscription option in your business might work for you, try Billycart for free for your first two months. Sign up today. 

If you own a beauty or wellness business, you should consider how subscription modelling could transform your business and increase your revenue margins.

Subscriptions are going to change the beauty industry, here's some tips to get involved

The beauty industry is bursting with recurring payment options, from blow dry clubs to fortnightly nail appointments. But following up on the payments from clients can be a headache. Phone calls, emails, late fees, and disgruntled customers. 

Say you own a hair salon and see a gap in the market to begin offering your clients a monthly subscription to a blow dry club at your salon. For $50 a month, they now have access to weekly blow drys and exclusive salon discounts. 

But how will you take this $50 monthly fee?...

You could manually process the $50 each month yourself, but with 40 clients taking up this offer, that is already timely. It will become more timely when the $50 doesn’t go through for eight of your clients who joined the club. This now means eight phone calls to find out when you can try again to process the payment.

At Billycart, we live and breathe recurring payments. The Billycart platform takes away manual processing, the follow-up and works in the best interest of your business and your customer's needs. You are in control of your payments when you use Billycart. You choose the late fees (and you get to keep them if you charge them!), you choose the grace period, you choose the amount, and you can give your customers the flexibility to pick their payment date to ensure you get paid on time.

Step one: Your customer has signed up for your blow-dry club. You then set up a Billycart Smart Payment Agreement™ through the platform by entering in the amount, the frequency and their details.

Step two: Your customer receives an email and accesses the portal. You’ve set their payment to come out on Tuesdays, but they get paid Wednesday mornings. They adjust the payment day, so they know they can pay you without being charged the $10 late fee you set.

Step three: Let the recurring bills turn into recurring delight for both you and your customer. This payment will continue recurring without you having to lift a finger (unless you would like to make any adjustments).

Give Billycart a try and see what it can do for your business. Try Billycart for free for two months, join today.

How Subscriptions Can Amplify The Beauty Industry

Being a personal trainer, drag queen and a hair stylist means there isn't much time for administration. Cody uses Billycart to quickly and easily process his clients fees.

How the Gay Strength Coach manages his recurring payments

How Cody from The Gay Strength Coach used Billycart as a Personal Trainer

Personal trainer, drag queen, hairstylist. 

It’s safe to say that Cody is a busy man, so it’s not surprising that he needs a quick and simple way to process his payments for his businesses. We recently chatted with Cody to understand how he manages his successful businesses across three different industries.

So first of all Cody, how would you describe your jobs? 

Hmmm, the best way to describe my jobs is that they are basically all my passions jammed into 7 days. I love working with people, and I get a unique combination of getting to help them get stronger and more confident in the gym, helping them with self-care in the salon, and keeping them entertained and happy when I’m working in drag. 

Tell us what a typical day looks like for you? 

My days vary! But usually, mid-week you’ll find me coaching clients early in the morning, then doing my own training, then heading to the salon to either help out or work on wigs. Sometimes I’ll have to finish at the gym, then go home to pack my bags, get into full hair and makeup to get to a gig for drag! On the weekends I’m generally spending the days at a drag brunch event and evenings at either gigs or being a social butterfly! Every day is always fast-paced, and there’s never much time to stop, but I love what I do. 

What was your journey to becoming a PT, who also does drag, and who is now training to be a hairstylist? 

It was a progression, all with the main goal of always doing what makes me happy. I started PT because I love training and helping people. After years of working as a PT, I had forgotten how happy being creative makes me feel. I always wanted to be a singer or dancer; unfortunately, I am not great at either. But then I discovered drag.

I absolutely loved it, but never thought it was something I could do. Eventually, I found myself practising makeup after my PT job. I got better at it and then got offered a job to prance around pretending I can sing to other people's songs! From there, I started working on wigs and fell in love with the process of being creative and making beautiful hair. 

That’s what introduced me to hair styling. I was teaching a good friend who owns a salon how to pick up some styling basics on wigs, and he offered me a job to pick up some skills with human hair! And here we are, I’m now a PT, drag queen and hairstylist. It’s chaos. But I always do whatever I love.

What are your biggest challenges in managing your time across three different businesses?

Well, the biggest challenge must be fitting everything in and making sure I do a great job at each job. So I’ve had to become an expert at time management and let me tell you, my ICal and Siri reminders have become my best friends. 

You use Billycart to help manage your time, how does it help your business?

Billycart makes my life and business a lot more simple. It handles the time-consuming, frustrating hurdles that come with having lots of clients and collecting money. I shoot off a payment plan, leave it, and they do the rest for me. Trust and believe, I would be very stressed without it! 

Cody is one of many personal trainers using Billycart to save time on administration and ensure he gets paid on time while keeping his clients happy. Join Billycart today and get your first two months free.

marketing tips for fitness professionals, improve your client's experience while improving your revenue. Marketing is a powerful tool for fitness professionals. Cut through the noise, gain more clients and make more revenue. 

Marketing tips for anyone in the fitness industry

We're a society becoming more health conscious and more educated on the importance of moving our bodies and eating well. Signing up to a gym, doing fitness classes or working with a personal trainer is becoming increasingly popular and an important part of life for many people. But with the increase in the popularity of fitness comes the increase in people working in the industry too, which can make it hard to cut through and reach more clients. 

So what can you do to cut through the noise?

Finding your niche is a buzzword at the moment, but it can really help to differentiate yourself from other fitness industry professionals. You might focus on a specific type of training, specialise in a certain age bracket, target a certain gender, or even on servicing a specific suburb. Your niche doesn't have to be "23-year-old women who want to grow their arm muscles" but specifying what you're really good at and what you enjoy doing can help you find suitable clients while also letting you do what you love. You might have a passion for competitions and love preparing athletic clients for these challenges, or you might be passionate about helping those new to working out to transform their lives. Specialising skills to suit your clients and offering specific options can help a client choose you over another fitness professional.

Advertising your fitness programs or your gym doesn't just have to be done online. There is a range of other tools you can use offline to reach new clients. You might consider creating flyers, putting out an ad in the local magazine or newspaper, adding posters to local notice boards, and don't forget about your own network- ask friends if they know anyone who might be interested. You could even offer them a cash reward for referring someone to give them more motivation to help you out.

Social media has done amazing things for so many fitness folk in the industry. Don't worry, you don't need the latest iPhone or expensive equipment. If your content is educational, fun, and entertaining, your audience will come organically. You don't even have to be someone who likes to be in front of the camera. You could use a tool like Canva to create informative and educational content, create quote tiles of clients talking about your services, or ask clients to send progress pictures.

If you love to get in front of the camera, Tiktok has been an amazing tool for many small businesses trying to reach new clients. Jump on trending sounds, share top tips for working out or educate people on the best form for specific workouts. Tiktok has huge potential if you're ready to jump in front of the camera and interact with your audience.

Create partnerships with other professionals

Health and wellness isn't limited to getting a gym membership. Fitness links perfectly with diet, mental health, recovery and a number of other areas. You can network with other professionals in similar industries and see how your offerings can support their clients.

- Working with a dietician to offer discounts for each other's clients

- Asking a local sportswear company if they would offer discounts to your clients

- Working with a yoga studio to offer discounts to classes and your programs

- Working with a physio or massage therapist to offer fitness and massage packages 

There's a range of ways you can draw attention to your business but remember. It's always important to pair good marketing with great customer service to keep the customers your marketing draws in. This can happen in many obvious ways, but there are hidden customer service tactics you can offer outside of a friendly smile and be polite. Think of things outside the box like quick and easy onboarding, session reminder texts, and high-quality equipment, and of course, it's worth considering a great payment platform like Billycart. Nasty hidden fees, surprise late fees, and complicated sign-up processes will often impact customer satisfaction. Keep your bills coming in and your customers happy with Billycart. 

Sign up today for your first two months completely free.

There's a number of important dates you need to acknowledge on your social media calendar to show your audience who you are as a business and what you stand for.

Key dates to acknowledge on your social media calendar

We all know social media is king for businesses. Social media has given small businesses so many opportunities in the past few years, from Instagram being the new shop front to viral Tiktok videos producing thousands of orders, there's not denying the importance of social media. There are a number of key dates in the calendar that are worth noting and celebrating with your audience, some of them might promote sales, others are to show your social consciousness. We aren't recommending that you turn your social feed into an entire list of days to celebrate, but it is important to acknowledge some key dates, particularly those that align with your business. 

If you're often client facing, perhaps even your birthday

If your business is specifically working out of your city or town, any significant dates in your area

Small Business Saturday Last Saturday of November

Days to celebrate to show your social conscious

International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOBIT) 17th May

Celebrating key dates are a great way to beef up your social calendar, show that your company cares about certain social issues or to increase sales around certain dates. We recommend looking up key dates that align with your business, search for key dates that relate to your industry and post about them. It might not just mean one post on the day either, these dates can form social media campaigns for a week or a month leading up to them. The choice is yours! But our top tip, don't over do it. There truly is a day for everything and your entire calendar could quickly become a day of celebration for everything and anything.

Key Dates To Nod To This Year On Social Media

Email marketing is essential and isn't as simple as sending a blast email. Your email marketing needs a strong strategy, straightforward copywriting and personalisation. Let us walk you through some tips on how to increase your revenue through a strong email marketing strategy.

How Email Marketing Can Improve Your Revenue

As business owners or managers, communication with our customers is rightly emphasised, but how do you ensure it is done effectively?

Simply sending a blast email to all of your customers isn't often the best option. To the customer, it may feel impersonal, and it's unlikely that all of the information in a blast email is relevant to your specific customer. So how can you personalise your emails while managing your business, running your social media accounts, keeping up with your accounting and managing your staff? Let's look at some time-saving options.

Customer Journeys 
A customer journey is much like the name implies; it's the communication journey you would like your customer to go through before or after their purchase. Of course, this will depend on your business offerings, but it's likely to look something like this:

Customer signs up for your newsletter → customer is sent welcome email → one week passes → customer is sent a discount code → customer makes a purchase 

Customer journeys can be complex; this can depend on the software you have for your business or the level of touch points you need. Some software may offer other forms of communication that compliment your email marketing, such as pop-ups, banners, chatbots, SMS and email, while others may only have email capabilities.

Automate your communications
Automating how you communicate with your customers can be highly time effective as your customer base grows. Automating your communications can link directly to a customer journey, like sending a review email five days after your product has been delivered or automatically sending a confirmation email once a service or product has been ordered. While automating communications can be initially time-consuming, the payoff can be huge. Automated communications are a great way to up-sell to a customer or encourage a repeat purchase from a customer without much work after the initial set-up.

Communicating effectively
To craft a successful email marketing campaign, you must communicate effectively with your customers... Easier said than done. There are obvious needs for effective communication, such as clarity, easy-to-understand language, explicit imagery, strong sentence structure and excellent grammar, but there's more to communicating effectively. To have a strong email marketing campaign, it's essential to have the basics listed, but beyond that, you need a strong understanding of your customers and what they want to hear. Who is your customer? Have you created a customer persona? Have you created a business persona? If you're shaking your head at this list, you could interview or survey your customers to better understand who they are and talk to them in a way that they connect with. 

Make sure your website quality is as high as your emails
So you've just spent all this time improving your email marketing, but if your website isn't matching this standard, you are likely to lose potential customers. Well, what makes a good website? Ahh, this could be a long paragraph if we went into the ins and outs of what you must do to have a high-quality website, but there are a few simple steps you could take that won't take us to 50,000 words. Put simply; you need a fast-loading site, clear communication and creative copywriting, strong imagery of your product or service, customer reviews to back your claims and an easy checkout experience that offers multiple ways for your customers to pay you quickly. 

Great so how does all of this improve my revenue?
Great communication = attention = more likely to listen = improve site traffic = increase in orders.

Okay, it's not 100% accurate, but it is correct. More engaged customers will help get traffic to your site, which will most likely increase your chances of making a sale. This theory relies on having a high-quality website, clear product or service descriptions and an easy checkout experience, but it is a strong theory nonetheless. 

There is a range of email marketing systems you can use and some offer a range of communication tools that complement your email communication, some are free of charge for you to begin testing what works for your business. Whatever you use, remember to put your customer at the front of your mind, don't over-communicate and concentrate on communicating in a way that would please your customer base. Happy emailing!

Tiktok has been transforming sales for small businesses across the globe, it's no longer just a dancing app, it's a tool to improve your small business audeince.

Tiktok is the ultimate social media tool for small businesses

Tiktok is no longer a pandemic lockdown trend, or simply a dancing app, it’s here to stay and it’s a great way to promote your business. But how do you use TikTok effectively?

Particular sounds ‘trend’ on Tiktok, they might be music or a voice over. Using these sounds are a really great way to land on someone's ‘for you page’. Make sure you’re using the sounds for their trend though, if you simply layer a song over a video that doesn't match the trend, it doesn't look like you authentically use the app, that's something TikTok users really care about.

Think carefully about when your users are most likely to be online scrolling TikTok. It probably isn’t during 9-5 business hours. They’re likely scrolling through TikTok later in the evening between 6pm - 8pm.

Hashtags help people find your business! But don’t flood people with too many, find your niche and focus in. Say you’re a PT, but all of your clients are female and focus on weight training, you could use #femalePT #femaleweightcoach #femaletrainingtips. These hashtags are specific, focused and you’ve only used three. Your hashtag strategy might take some practice, mix up your hashtags on your videos and take note on what videos reach the most people depending on what hashtag you use.

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