Owners of small venues usually know how the week went by feel: it was busy, it was quiet, January was good. Feel is fine for the mood and bad at catching trends. A venue can be full every evening and still shrink, because the people who leave are much quieter than the people who arrive.

Five numbers are enough to know where you stand. In Abonatus each of them is on the Today screen, in the reports or in the member list. With a notebook you can count them too; it just takes an evening instead of ten minutes.

1. Members with a valid pass

Not the people on your list, which only ever grows, but the people whose pass lets them in today. That is the real size of your venue.

Abonatus shows it on the Today screen as "with a valid pass, of ..." (the second number is everybody who ever had a card here). Write it down every Monday. The trend matters more than the number: up, flat or down over a month says more than any single week.

2. Who came in and who went out

Two numbers side by side:

  • New members this week. The reports show how many you added in any period.
  • Lapsed: people whose pass ended in the last two months and who bought nothing since. It is a filter on the member list, with its count.

If you add ten new members a month and the number with a valid pass stays flat, the problem is not marketing: as many people are leaving as are arriving. More advertising does not fix a leaking bucket. The fix is renewals, and winning back the ones who stopped coming.

3. Visits per member

Take the visits in the week and divide them by the number of different people who came; both are at the top of the reports. 420 visits by 150 people is 2.8 visits per person.

This is the number that warns you first. People rarely stop all at once: they come three times a week, then twice, then once, and then their pass ends and they don't renew. Visits per member falls weeks before the number of members does. When it drops, open the Not coming filter: valid pass, no visit in 14 days. Those are the people to call this week.

4. Money, and whether every till matches

Two checks:

  • Net takings for the week, with refunds already taken off, compared with the same week a month ago.
  • Each person's till. For everyone who took money: what was recorded in cash against what they actually handed over. Abonatus shows this as "Closing the till" in the reports, per person and per payment method.

A small difference that comes back every week is worth a calm conversation early, before it is a big one. Most of the time it is a sale written down on the wrong day, or change given from the wrong pile.

5. When people come

Arrivals by hour, the first entry of each person each day. It tells you where to put staff, when a new class has a chance of filling, and when the desk is quiet enough to send the messages from number 3.

Most small venues find two peaks and a long, quiet middle of the day. Some find that the class they thought was popular is half empty, and the one before work is full.

And one more: who was turned away, and why

The Today screen shows how many were refused, and the door log says why. The reasons tell you something:

  • Mostly "expired": renewals happen at the door, after the red screen, instead of before. A word in the week before the end helps; Abonatus also emails members three days before their pass ends.
  • "Not a member here": people who came to try. Are they leaving as members? See From a first visit to a member.
  • Old or reused codes: somebody tried a screenshot. Once is curiosity; often is a shared pass.

A ten-minute Monday

Pick a quiet moment on Monday, choose last week's dates in the reports, and write the five numbers in one row of a notebook or a spreadsheet: one row per week. A single week tells you little. Eight rows tell you a story: whether the venue is growing, where it leaks, and whether what you changed last month worked.

The reports are for managers and owners. The front desk sees what came in at the door and only the money they took themselves.