This will surprise no one, but my least favorite part of coaching is billing athletes. I’ve always made it work by using a deeply inefficient system that constantly sends reminders, sends invoices through multiple platforms, and relies on a spreadsheet of who has paid and who hasn’t to keep everything straight. When I was only coaching one or two athletes, this wasn’t a big deal, but as soon as business increased, I started spending hours every month doing admin I hated.
Billing Your Athletes in TrainingPeaks
When I heard about TrainingPeaks’ new integration with Stripe that helps coaches automate payments from their athletes, I jumped at the chance to join, hoping it would simplify my life and get me out of spreadsheet hell. After using it for a year, it’s easily the best thing I’ve added to my coaching system since… I don’t know, maybe getting into coaching?
Now, athletes add their card on file, not me. When it’s time to bill an athlete, TrainingPeaks Payments does it automatically, not me. If payment fails, the athlete automatically gets an email informing them that they need to update their card, not me. In other words, everything runs inside TrainingPeaks without my input, freeing me up to do what I got into coaching to do – coach more. Or, heck, maybe get a workout in myself?
Another thing that got me in the past was that money collected by other payment processors could sit in limbo for what felt like an eternity. Through Payments, all the funds billed from athletes’ deposits are directly deposited into my bank account of choice within a few business days at an industry-competitive transaction fee.
If you’re still billing your athletes outside TrainingPeaks, you’re making your life harder than it needs to be. Sign up, set it up, and let it work for you so you can do more of what you like doing.
If you could use a bit more setting it and forgetting it in your coaching business, here are a few more TrainingPeaks features you’ll find useful:
- Create and store your own Custom Zones using your preferred training methodology.
- Athlete Groups and Group Calendar Planning seamlessly allow you to plan workouts for similar athletes at once.
- Use the Bulk Copy and Paste functionality to repeat a workout on an athlete’s calendar so you don’t have to add a new one every time.
- Use the Race Reports chart to view all of your athletes’ event results in one place.
