How to Write a Gym Business Plan in Australia (With the Numbers Filled In)

Most guides to writing a gym business plan hand you a list of headings. You can name all nine sections and still not know what a Saturday shift costs or how many members you need before the business pays for itself. The headings were never the hard part.

The numbers are, and in Australia they are specific: Award wage rates, superannuation, GST on memberships, and what a lender will and will not finance. Those sit inside the plan’s line items, not beside them.

This article walks the standard structure and fills the financial and staffing sections with current Australian figures. Still at the site, lease and fit-out stage? Start with our guide to opening a gym in Australia, then come back for the numbers.

Key Takeaways

• The sections are the easy part. The numbers are the plan. Nine headings prove nothing to a lender.
• Your roster is priced by an award, not by what feels fair. The Fitness Industry Award 2020 (MA000094) runs from $25.74 at Level 1 to $30.66 at Level 4, effective 1 July 2026.
• Weekend cover is usually cheaper on casuals. A casual’s 30% weekend loading replaces penalty rates, while a permanent costs 150% of base on a Sunday, 250% on a public holiday.
• Superannuation belongs on its own line at the current 12%. It is not a rounding error inside a wages figure.
• A revenue forecast built on advertised prices is about 9% too high. Once you register for GST, one eleventh of every membership dollar was never yours.
• Some of your build finances easily and some will not at all. Equipment can be repossessed, fit-out generally cannot, and that sets your day-one cash.
• The plan is an operating model, not a funding document you file away. Your assumptions only become testable if you capture the data monthly.

Step 1: Decide Who the Plan Is For Before You Write a Word

Every guide tells you to write the executive summary last. Almost none tells you the more useful thing: who you are writing it for.

Four readers, four different first pages. A bank wants serviceability and your own financial position. An equipment financier wants the asset, the quote and the ABN, not the vision.

A landlord wants evidence you can pay rent for the term. You want the assumptions written down so you can test them.

A financier’s checklist shows how far apart those needs sit: an active ABN (commonly six to twelve months old), GST registration, and a quote for the asset. Brokers report documentation tiers running roughly no-doc to $300,000 on credit score and property ownership, low-doc to $250,000 on six months of bank statements, and full-doc above that with financials or tax returns. These are broker-reported bands, not lender policy.

Name your primary reader at the top of your draft. Then write the executive summary last, for that person.

Step 2: Size Your Local Market With Numbers You Can Defend

Floor area is the ceiling on your revenue model, and most market sections never mention it. Australian operator practice puts roughly 4 to 5 square metres per member on the floor at any time. A lower minimum of about 3.3 square metres is also cited, but its source calls it a joint United States and Australian standard.

Local numbers beat national ones. Count the competing sites in your catchment, note their formats and prices, and a lender has something to check. Average Australian gym membership spend sat at about $77 a month as at March 2026, from roughly $68 in Queensland and South Australia to $85 in Western Australia.

Site selection, lease terms and council approval belong to a different stage, covered in the guide to opening a gym in Australia. The market section of your gym business plan only earns its place if it ends in a capacity number.

Step 3: Build the Revenue Model in GST Inclusive Dollars

Once your gym is registered for GST, a revenue forecast built on advertised prices is roughly 9% too high. Not 10%. GST is one eleventh of a GST-inclusive price, so a $110 membership is $100 of revenue and $10 that was never yours.

Advertised consumer prices must generally be GST inclusive under Australian Consumer Law, so the number on your window is already the inclusive one. Divide by 11, do not multiply.

Registration is required once turnover reaches, or is reasonably expected to reach, $75,000 in any twelve-month period, with 21 days to register from that point. Turnover means gross income, not profit. At $200 a month per member, a gym crosses $75,000 at roughly 32 active members, so most register long before they feel established. Voluntary early registration lets you claim GST credits on setup costs.

Memberships are taxable supplies, so from registration you charge GST on every membership and lodge BAS quarterly.

The table models a 475-member gym at illustrative prices inside consumer-aggregator bands (budget 24/7 $15 to $30 a month, premium full-service $80 to $120, boutique studios often quoted weekly at $45 to $75). The member counts are yours to replace.

Advertised revenue in that model is $40,700 a month against $37,000 net. The $3,700 gap is GST, 9.1% of the top line.

Rebuild your gym business plan’s revenue forecast off the net column before it goes anywhere near a break-even calculation. Every number downstream inherits this one.

Step 4: Separate What a Lender Will Finance From What You Must Fund in Cash

You have budgeted a 20% deposit on the whole project. Most of the project will not accept a deposit, because most of it cannot be repossessed.

Equipment is a tangible asset a financier can recover and resell, so it finances readily. Fit-out, professional fees and working capital leave nothing behind, and an Australian equipment financier says most lenders decline fit-out finance. The most expensive part of turning an empty tenancy into a gym is the part you fund yourself.

Equipment finance in Australia typically asks for a 20 to 30% deposit, and the mix inside the bundle matters. In one broker example a lender wanted 25% on a full package because 40% of it was harder-to-resell functional and free-weight gear. Splitting it into $70,000 of strength gear at 0% deposit and $50,000 of cardio and functional gear at 15% dropped the blended deposit to $7,500.

The table below is built for roughly 300 square metres. The middle column tells you where each band came from, because that matters more than the band itself. Replace every row with your own quotes, and see what it really costs to open a gym in Australia for the line item detail.

One warning about that first row. Published per-square-metre benchmarks do not decompose cleanly, because different suppliers fold different things into them. Some include equipment, some do not. Treat the all-in figure as a sanity check on your total, never as a sum of the rows beneath it, and never quote it to a lender as though it were a quote.

That is also why four rows above say “your quote” rather than a number. A band nobody can source is worse than an honest blank, and a lender will ask you which one you have.

Same asset, two positions. Buying $200,000 of equipment outright costs $200,000 on day one and nothing after. A chattel mortgage on the same amount costs roughly $46,000 in interest over five years, by one broker’s worked example, but keeps the $200,000 as working capital. The second is dearer and far easier to survive.

Step 5: Cost the Roster Off the Fitness Industry Award, Not Off a Guess

A permanent employee working a Sunday costs 150% of their base rate. A casual working the same Sunday costs base plus 30%. On a public holiday the gap widens to 250% against that same 130%.

Weekend cover is materially cheaper on casuals, and that is not a loophole. It is how the Award is built.

The Fitness Industry Award 2020 (MA000094) sets the base rates in the table below, effective 1 July 2026, from $25.74 at Level 1 to $30.66 at Level 4. These are Award minimums, not market rates.

The mechanic sits in clause 12.1. Casual loading is 25% Monday to Friday and 30% on Saturday, Sunday and public holidays, and it replaces penalty rates rather than adding to them. Permanents are on penalty rates instead: 125% of base on a Saturday, 150% on a Sunday, 250% on a public holiday. Casual loadings are not paid on overtime.

Minimum engagement changes the roster’s shape more than the rate does. A casual must generally be paid for at least three hours, but instructors, trainers and trainees can be engaged for as little as one hour, and a four-hour minimum applies to everyone on a public holiday. Roster an instructor for one 45-minute class and you pay one hour; put a casual on the front desk for the same class and you pay three.

Run one Sunday shift through it. Eight hours of Level 3 cover costs $335.64 permanent and $290.89 casual, about $45 a shift and roughly $2,300 a year. The same eight hours on a public holiday costs $559.40 against $290.89.

Saturday runs the other way: a permanent at 125% is slightly cheaper than a casual at 130%. The answer is a mixed roster, not an all-casual one. Superannuation sits on top of every figure in the table.

Award rates change each July. Check the current pay guide on the Fair Work Ombudsman site before you lock your gym business plan.

Step 6: Decide How You Engage Your Trainers Before You Model Their Cost

The ABN does not settle it. A trainer can hold one, invoice you monthly, and still be an employee in the eyes of the ATO, because the test looks at substance rather than paperwork.

Points toward employee: your gym sets the hours, controls pricing, directs how sessions are delivered, and presents the trainer as gym staff. Points toward contractor: the trainer sets their own terms, invoices clients directly, carries genuine business risk and controls how the work is done.

The part that catches people out: a trainer can be a genuine contractor for income tax purposes and still be an employee under the extended definition used for superannuation guarantee. Two tests, two answers, one roster.

Getting it wrong is not a forward-looking correction. Since the 2022 High Court decisions and ATO ruling TR 2023/4, a wrong call backdates superannuation across the entire engagement, with no fixed statutory time limit on ATO recovery. Superannuation guarantee is currently 12% of ordinary time earnings, effective from 1 July 2025.

General information, not tax or legal advice. Model both structures side by side in your gym business plan and get the call confirmed by an accountant before you open.

Whichever way it lands, it becomes a wage line and a super line. That is where the P&L starts.

Step 7: Turn the Roster Into a Monthly P and L With Every Wage Adjacent Line In It

A widely circulated United States sample gym plan reports revenue of about US1.3million,directcostsofUS84,000 and a gross margin of 94%, then puts US$862,800 of wages below the line as an operating expense. Benchmark against that 94% and you are measuring against a number that excludes your largest cost.

In a gym, gross margin is close to decorative. Wages are the business.

Three Australian lines belong on their own rows rather than buried inside a single wages figure:

• Superannuation guarantee, currently 12% of ordinary time earnings.
• Payroll tax, where thresholds and rates vary by state and territory.
• Workers compensation insurance, where premiums vary by state and by your gym’s classification.

We will not invent a payroll tax rate or a workers compensation premium: a made-up number is worse than a clearly named gap.

Equipment is the fourth line people miss, and it is not a one-off capex event. Commercial cardio typically lasts three to five years under heavy use. Divide replacement cost by expected lifespan and carry the result as a fixed operating expense. Do the same for HVAC, flooring and sound systems.

The model below runs the 475 members from Step 3. The assumption column is worth arguing with.

Membership businesses do have real operating leverage: adding members adds no rent and barely any equipment. But that leverage appears only below the wage line, which is why gross margin tells you almost nothing in a gym and net profit after on-costs tells you everything.

Step 8: Calculate Break Even in Members, Not in Dollars

You can have this number in two minutes, because every input is already on this page.

The formula: total monthly fixed costs divided by net contribution per member per month equals the members you need to break even. Fixed costs come from Step 7, net contribution from Step 3, which means it is already GST-adjusted.

377 members. That is 98 short of the 475 the model assumes at month 12, and the gap is the margin your gym business plan is really claiming.

Now move the inputs. Rent up $1,000 a month pushes break-even from 377 to 391 members. Lift every price by 10% and it falls to about 342. The table’s flat $10 rise only moves contribution by $9.09, which is Step 3 turning up again in a different place.

Break-even in members is the figure for your executive summary. A bank, a landlord and you all understand it without translation, which is more than can be said for a gross margin percentage. Skip the sensitivity row until your fixed costs are real quotes.

Step 9: Map the Forecast to the Australian Calendar and Budget Marketing Against It

Almost every gym forecast runs month 1 to month 24, which quietly assumes a northern-hemisphere year. In Australia the ramp runs the other way.

September to October is the most consistently reported sign-up peak, driven by pre-summer motivation. December to January is a holiday trough, and winter, June through August, softens attendance and lifts freeze requests. Put month names on your forecast rows, not numbers.

Sources disagree on the secondary peaks. Some call January and July genuinely busy in Australia and New Zealand; others argue January arrives with its energy already spent. Treat September to October as reliable and January as unsettled.

Budget marketing off revenue, and say which base you used. One widely repeated rule of thumb puts a gym’s marketing budget at 20% of profits, unsourced and an odd base when most benchmarks use revenue. A pre-opening gym runs higher than steady state, and what governs the number is cost per acquisition against member lifetime value.

Open in December on a January-shaped marketing budget and you spend your launch money into the quietest six weeks of the Australian year.

Step 10: Forecast Collected Revenue, Not Advertised Revenue

The members you signed and the money that arrived are two different numbers.

Two leaks sit between the revenue line and the bank account. The first is churn, and the figures conflict: one source has annual churn at 22.4%, another repeats a commonly cited 30 to 50% annual loss, and neither states a clear geographic scope. Model it as roughly 20 to 50% a year, net it against gross sign-ups, and write down which end you used.

The second is failed payments. BECS remains the dominant Australian direct-debit rail for memberships. A dishonoured debit typically triggers a bank fee of $10 to $15, and gyms commonly add $15 to $35 on top. Those fee ranges are industry estimates, not regulator figures.

PayTo, on the New Payments Platform, is positioned as the replacement, with a BECS phase-out targeted for 2030.

The cash-flow consequence of a failed debit is covered in why payment automation is essential for gym cash flow. Add a collection-rate assumption to your forecast, and state the churn range you used.

Step 11: Check the Contract Terms Your Revenue Model Is Assuming

Twelve months of guaranteed revenue per member is not just a commercial assumption. It is a legal one, and the law under it changed.

On 9 November 2023 unfair terms in standard-form consumer and small-business contracts became illegal to include rather than merely unenforceable, and each term is a separate contravention. Maximum civil penalties are large: for companies, the greatest of $50 million, three times the benefit obtained, or 30% of adjusted turnover during the breach; for individuals, up to $2.5 million. Those are ceilings for serious, large-scale conduct, not a suburban gym’s exposure; for a small operator the point is simply to keep those terms out of the agreement.

Two categories are most at risk:

• One-sided cancellation clauses, where the gym can suspend or cancel access without equal member rights.
• Automatic rollover of a fixed term without adequate notice or a reasonable cancellation window.

The ACCC’s enforcement priorities name harmful cancellation practices, automatic renewals and early termination fees, with gym memberships called out.

General information, not legal advice. Build the revenue model on retention rather than contractual capture, which ties back to Step 10’s churn range.

Step 12: Turn the Finished Plan Into an Operating Model You Actually Review

Five numbers, checked monthly, keep the plan alive:

• Net members, joins minus cancellations, against the ramp in Step 9.
• Net revenue per member, against Table 1 in Step 3.
• Wage cost as a percentage of net revenue, against Table 4 in Step 7.
• Failed payment rate, against the collection assumption in Step 10.
• Cash on hand, against the buffer you sized in Step 4.

Each is an assumption you wrote down, and one you cannot measure is a guess you keep making. You can only measure these if member and payment data is captured as it happens rather than reconstructed at quarter end.

That is the practical case for running member management, billing and reporting through one system: the plan’s assumptions become a monthly reading instead of a monthly excavation. ClubFit Software is built around exactly that.

Put the five numbers on one page and diarise the review for the same date each month. That is the difference between a plan you wrote for a bank and a plan that runs your gym.

FAQ

Do I need to register for GST before my gym opens?

Not automatically. Registration becomes mandatory once turnover reaches, or is reasonably expected to reach, $75,000 in any twelve-month period, and you have 21 days from that point to register. Turnover means gross income, not profit. You can register voluntarily and earlier to claim GST credits on setup costs.

Is a personal trainer with an ABN automatically a contractor?

No. The ATO applies a substance test rather than reading the paperwork: who sets the hours, who controls pricing, who directs how sessions are delivered, and how the trainer is presented to members. A trainer can be a genuine contractor for income tax and still be an employee under the extended definition used for superannuation guarantee.

How many members do I need to break even?

Divide your total monthly fixed costs by your net contribution per member per month. Net means after GST, so use the figure from your revenue table rather than the advertised price. Step 8 works the calculation through end to end. There is no useful industry average, because fixed costs vary by site, format and lease.

Will a lender finance my gym fit-out?

Generally no. Equipment finances because it is a tangible asset a lender can repossess and resell. Fit-out, professional fees and working capital leave nothing recoverable behind, so most lenders decline them. That is why a realistic plan shows far more day-one cash than first-time owners expect, as Step 4 sets out.

When is the best time of year to open a gym in Australia?

September to October is the most consistently reported sign-up peak, driven by pre-summer motivation rather than the northern-hemisphere January pattern. December to January is the holiday trough. Sources disagree on whether January and July are genuine secondary peaks, so treat the spring window as the reliable one.