How to take payments as a personal trainer in Australia

Getting paid is the part of personal training nobody warns you about. You're great at programming and coaching, then you finish a session and have to remember who still owes you, whether the bank transfer landed, and what you said about a refund three weeks ago. For a lot of Australian PTs, payments are a pile of half-remembered IOUs, a folder of bank-transfer screenshots, and the occasional invoice typed up in a hurry at 9pm.

It doesn't have to be that way. This is a practical guide to taking payments as a personal trainer in Australia — what your options are, how GST and tax invoices fit in, and how to set up packages, recurring billing, deposits, and no-show fees so the money side mostly runs itself.

Your payment options, ranked

There are really three ways PTs get paid, and they sit on a spectrum from 'most admin' to 'least admin':

• Cash and bank transfer — zero fees, maximum admin. You're the one chasing, reconciling, and remembering. Fine for one or two clients; a nightmare at thirty.
• Manual invoicing — you send an invoice, they pay when they get to it. More professional, but you're still chasing payment and tracking who's settled.
• Card payment at booking — the client pays (or saves a card) the moment they book. Lowest admin, fastest cash flow, and it's how most clients now expect to pay.

Most growing PTs end up wanting the third option as the default, with invoicing available for the clients who prefer it. The good news is you don't have to choose — a proper booking platform does both.

Taking card payments with Stripe

BookAndGo uses Stripe Connect to take card payments. You connect your own Stripe account once, and from then on clients can pay by card at the time of booking — deposit, full session fee, or a package. The money goes to your account, not a middleman's, and you keep control of refunds and payouts.

The platform fee is a flat 0.5% on top of Stripe's standard card processing — deliberately small, because the point is to get you paid, not to skim your income. Refunds and partial refunds are handled from the same place, so if you need to give money back you do it in a couple of clicks rather than a bank transfer and a note in your phone.

GST, tax invoices, and receipts

If you're registered for GST, every payment needs a compliant tax invoice — and clients (especially anyone claiming the session as a business or rehab expense) will ask for one. Doing this by hand is exactly the kind of admin that eats your evenings.

BookAndGo generates GST tax invoices automatically. They carry your ABN, sequential invoice numbers (INV-0001, INV-0002, and so on), the 10% GST line, and your business details — the format the ATO expects. When a client pays, a receipt goes out by email without you touching it. If you're not registered for GST, the invoices simply don't show a GST line, so you're never misrepresenting your tax status.

At BAS time, you've got a clean, numbered run of tax invoices instead of a shoebox — your bookkeeper or accountant will thank you, and so will future-you.

Selling session packages

Packages are the single best change most PTs can make to their cash flow. Instead of collecting $80 after every session, you sell a 10-pack for $750 upfront. The client commits, you get paid before the work starts, and the per-session admin disappears.

In BookAndGo you create a package service — say '10 Personal Training Sessions' — set the one-off price, and let the client pay via Stripe at purchase. From there the platform tracks the balance: it decrements one session each time you complete an appointment, shows how many are left, and nudges the client to rebook or repurchase before they run out. No tally sheet, no 'how many have I got left?' texts.

Recurring billing for ongoing clients

Some clients aren't package people — they just want to train every week, indefinitely, and pay as they go. For them, recurring sessions keep the booking side automatic: set them up in the same slot weekly or fortnightly, and each session is a real appointment that can take payment or invoice like any other. Pair recurring sessions with packages and you've covered both the 'pay upfront' and the 'pay as I go' crowd without any manual scheduling.

Deposits and no-show fees

No-shows and last-minute cancels are a direct hit to your income — that slot is gone and you can't sell it. Two tools fix most of it.

• Deposits — take a partial payment at booking so the client has skin in the game. They're far less likely to ghost a session they've already part-paid for.
• Card-on-file no-show protection — the client securely saves a card via Stripe when they book. If they no-show or cancel inside your notice window, you can charge a fee automatically, with no awkward conversation.

Both are optional and configurable — you set the notice window and the fee, and you decide whether to switch them on at all. Most PTs find that just having a clear, automated policy cuts no-shows sharply, because clients know it's real.

The short version

Getting paid as an Australian PT comes down to three moves: take card payments at booking so you're not chasing, automate your GST tax invoices and receipts so BAS isn't a panic, and use packages plus deposits or no-show fees so your cash flow is steady and your empty slots cost less. Set those up once and the money side of your business mostly runs itself — leaving you to do the part you actually trained for.