Software for personal trainers: assessments, waivers and package billing

Independent trainers in the US usually work one of three ways: renting floor time at a gym, training clients at home or in a park, or coaching online. Twelve clients at two or three sessions a week means more than 100 sessions a month, and a good share of them move. The admin is the client who said yes to 12 sessions but hasn't paid for November, the Thursday session that became Friday, and the signed waiver the gym asks to see. SoloWOS holds that part; programs and progress tracking stay in your training app.

From the first assessment to a paid package

1. Create a 60-minute "First assessment" meeting type, charged in full at booking (for example $75) and refunded if they cancel at least 24 hours ahead. Paying up front filters out people who are only shopping around.
2. Use the booking questions (up to 10) for logistics only: goal, days that work, gym or in-home, and the address. Health screening happens on paper at the assessment; the PAR-Q+ note below explains why.
3. For in-home clients, add a 30-minute buffer after each session for the drive and a 12-hour minimum notice, so nobody books you for 6 a.m. the same morning.
4. After the assessment, send a proposal with the package as line items: 12 sessions a month, a written program and a progress check every 4 weeks. They accept online with their name, and your liability waiver goes out for e-signature.
5. Create the first month's invoice from the accepted proposal and set it to repeat monthly in Invoicing. Each month it goes out with a card pay link through your own Stripe account and your Zelle or Venmo details as text, and email reminders follow if it's late.
6. For package sessions, create a 60-minute "Package session" meeting type with no charge and turn it off. It disappears from your booking page, but the one-time links you send each client still work: each one books one session and then stops working.
7. Regulars on a fixed schedule (Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m.) go in your connected Google or Outlook calendar as a recurring event. SoloWOS reads those busy times and doesn't offer them to anyone else.

A typical week

• Monday, 6 to 11 a.m.: five regulars who live in your Google Calendar. Your booking page only offers afternoons.
• Monday night: two paid assessments booked from your Instagram link.
• Tuesday: a client traveling for work moves Thursday's session from the link in her confirmation, and the slot opens up for someone else.
• Wednesday: after an assessment you send the 12-session proposal. It's accepted that night and the waiver is signed from a phone.
• Thursday: November programs go out as tracked PDFs, and you see that three of four clients have opened theirs.
• Friday: you log the gym's floor fee and new resistance bands in Expenses and check which package invoices are still open.

All 13 tools, one by one

How a personal trainer uses each tool. Scheduling and Invoicing do most of the work; a few tools barely help, and the lines below say so.

• Link in Bio: your Instagram bio link with the paid assessment, your package prices and an email signup for the next 6-week challenge. Each signup lands in your contacts.
• Short Links: a short link with a QR code on the flyer at the gym's front desk. When your prices change, point the link somewhere new without reprinting.
• Forms: a pre-assessment form for people who aren't ready to book: goal, schedule, gym or home. Conditional questions send in-home prospects to a different meeting type than gym clients.
• Scheduling: the paid assessment, a paid drop-in session and the hidden package session booked only through one-time links. Email reminder 24 hours before and, if you want, 1 hour before.
• Proposals: the monthly package or a 12-week program with each part as a line item. Duplicate the last client's proposal and change the name.
• E-Signatures: your liability waiver and cancellation policy (for example, a session is used up if canceled with less than 12 hours' notice), signed once from a phone with an audit trail.
• Document Tracking: the month's program as a tracked PDF link instead of an attachment, so you see whether it was opened. If you fix a mistake, turn off that link and send a new one.
• Screen Recording: barely helps in person, since it records your screen. With online clients it does: a walkthrough of their program of up to 5 minutes on Solo, with your camera in a bubble, and you see whether they watched it.
• Notes & Boards: a board of the programs you have to write this week, with a due date on each card. Injuries and body measurements don't belong here.
• Time Tracking: barely helps if you charge per session. Use it if you sell online programming, to see how long each program takes to write and whether the price covers it.
• Invoicing: the monthly package invoice that repeats on the same date, with a card pay link, your Zelle or Venmo details and email reminders when it's overdue.
• Expenses: gym floor fees, equipment, mileage to in-home clients and certification renewals, each with a photo of the receipt, so the month's profit is clear before tax time.
• Automations: a client who misses the assessment gets an email with a link to rebook, and a week after a package invoice is paid, a review request goes out.

Waivers, the PAR-Q+ and health information

A waiver signed through E-Signatures comes with a timestamped audit trail. Whether a court enforces it is a separate question that depends on your state and on what the waiver tries to excuse. Two examples from the statutes:

• New York: General Obligations Law § 5-326 makes void any agreement in a membership application or similar writing that exempts the operator of a gym, pool or similar place that charges a fee from liability for its own negligence or its staff's.
• Louisiana: Civil Code article 2004 makes null any clause that, in advance, excludes or limits one party's liability for causing physical injury to the other.
• Other states treat waivers differently. Have a lawyer in your state write or review yours, and keep your liability insurance current.

The PAR-Q+ is the pre-participation screening questionnaire published by the PAR-Q+ Collaboration. Its terms say the form can't be altered or built into electronic surveys without the Collaboration's written consent, so don't retype it as a SoloWOS form. Give clients the official PDF or the online version on eparmedx.com, and keep the completed form with your training records.

Most trainers aren't HIPAA covered entities, but some states regulate health information anyway. Washington's My Health My Data Act covers consumer health data that HIPAA doesn't, and the state Attorney General says it generally applies to any business in Washington that collects it. Keep injuries, medications and measurements out of booking questions, forms and notes in SoloWOS.

Sales tax on training depends on the state. Washington's Department of Revenue, for example, treats personal training at an athletic or fitness facility as a retail sale. Check your state's revenue department before you set prices.

This is general information, not legal advice. Rules vary by state; check yours with a lawyer or your licensing board.

SoloWOS or Trainerize: which fits

They do different jobs. Trainerize and TrueCoach are coaching apps for delivering workouts; SoloWOS is the booking, waiver and billing side. Plenty of trainers will want one of each.

Choose Trainerize or TrueCoach if:

• You deliver programs through an app where clients log workouts and you review them.
• Most of your clients are online and rarely book a session at a set time.

Choose SoloWOS if:

• You train in person and your problems are booking, cancellations, waivers and getting paid each month.
• You'd rather pay one flat price than a price that rises with every client you add.
• Proposals for packages, contracts with a gym or a company, and your expenses should sit in the same account.

Prices and features checked on October 23, 2026 on each company's site.

Start with these three

Scheduling, with the paid assessment and the hidden package session; Invoicing, for the monthly package invoice that repeats on its own; and E-Signatures, so the waiver is signed before the first session. Add Proposals once you sell programs of several weeks.

Free tools that help

• Freelance rate calculator to price a session from what you need to earn each month.
• Customer lifetime value calculator to see what a client who stays eight months is worth.
• Mileage deduction calculator for the drives to in-home clients.
• QR code generator for the gym flyer.
• Self-employment tax calculator for what you set aside from each package.

What SoloWOS won't do for a personal trainer

• No workout builder, exercise library, lift tracking or client app.
• No recurring bookings and no packages that count sessions down: the package is billed with a repeating invoice and each session is booked with its own link.
• No group classes with capacity: each slot takes one booking, so your 7 a.m. boot camp in the park doesn't fit.
• Reminders go by email only, not SMS.
• No automatic card charging: clients pay each invoice from its link. Solo includes 300 bookings and 50 invoices a month.
• SoloWOS doesn't file taxes, issue 1099s or collect sales tax for you. Invoicing sends the invoice with a pay link (card through your Stripe account) and your other payment details; your accountant or tax software handles the rest.