On the Schedule page you will see the list of your scheduled sessions and be able to create new one-off or recurring sessions.

You can use the calendar to navigate to any past or future dates, just click Full calendar to select a date beyond the default two week view. Then use the filters on the left to control how far in advance of the selected date you will view the sessions in the list below.

The controls beneath the calendar in the middle are used to filter whether or not you see any cancelled sessions in the presented list. Cancelled sessions are always hidden from customers.

To access information for an existing session, such as accessing the list of attendees or to edit the settings of a session, navigate to the date of the session then click the Details button by the session you want to access.

If you want to schedule any new sessions in the future, use the Add new session button to add new standalone or recurring sessions to your Schedule.

To start with, you will need to give your session a name, select a category from the list (this will be used to display a stock image if you do not upload your own later in the creation process, as well as allowing customers to filter your schedule by session category) and set the type of the session. You can select which type of session you create under Type classification on the session creation page, with the choice of a Class, Appointment or Workshop. This will allow additional filtering of the schedule in the customer apps.

You can then optionally add a short description of the session in the About section which will be visible to all customers who have access to the session.

Below the About field you can set a host instructor for the session. This will be displayed to customers on your Schedule and on the session Details page. This list contains all of your team members who have been set to Display as a fitness professional on your Team page. The selected team member will be the admin who receives any booking and cancellation notifications for this session, in line with their notification settings.

In the majority of cases, the default selection of Booking and listing would not need to be changed. This allows you to list the session on your schedule and take bookings online through Gymcatch. The Listing only feature would be used to list a session on your Gymcatch schedule but not take bookings, for example if you were taking bookings via another system (you are able to set a URL which the customer will be taken to when they click the Book button on the session details page).

Sessions with a Fixed price will be a specific price per place booked by the customer. Sessions can only ever have one set price, but you can change this to Pay what you want to allow for a variable price setting. If you use the Pay what you want feature you can set a minimum & maximum price as well as a suggested price. When a customer books a variable price session the suggested price will be presented as the default and they can adjust the session price up or down within the minimum and maximum amounts.

Please note that entering a price of 0 will make the session free and bookable by anybody who can see it without the need of any payment methods, such as a payment card or package. If you'd like to create a model where only customers with a specific membership or package can book the session, that's no problem, but you still need to set a price here. We recommend setting a price that reflects a prorated amount.

You can set any combination of Bundles, Passes, Memberships, Credit or debit card via Stripe or Pay on the door as valid Payment options for your session. If you’ve already linked a Stripe account this will set your default payment options to Bundles, Passes, Memberships (if you have enabled that bolt-on feature) and Credit or debit card via Stripe. Pay on the door is not enabled by default, but can be added to allow customers to book online and pay at a later date or outside of Gymcatch.

Package tags connect your sessions with the packages (bundles, passes and/or memberships) that are valid for use as payment when booking places on them. For a package to be valid the tag on the package needs to match the tag on the session. The package tag selector will only be displayed if you have not set at least one package as a valid payment option. Please note that you can only set 1 package tag on a session but can set multiple tags on a package.

To help you ensure that you get the right package with the tag system you can always use the Show eligible packages button to double check that you’re enabling the right packages.

The capacity limit sets the total number of places available for the session. Once the capacity limit is reached, customers will be able to join the automated waitlist to be notified if and when a space becomes available for booking. Waitlists are on a first-come-first-served basis with everyone on the list being notified when a place opens for booking. Any places that become available on a session with waitlisted customers are reserved solely for customers on the waitlist for 30 minutes.

The Max places bookable in a single transaction setting allows you to control the maximum number of places a customer can book in a single transaction. If you want to allow a customer to book for a group using sub-profiles, then set the maximum size of that group here.

Places summary display gives you the option of displaying the number of people booked on and capacity to your customers by selecting Number booked on, whereas the Places available / Last few option displays this as a string of text (Places available when there are more than 5 places available, Last few when there are 5 or less remaining places open for booking or Fully booked when the session is at capacity).

You can set when booking opens and closes for sessions, which can be useful if you want to manage how far in advance customers can book or give late comers the ability to book on during or after the session has started/finished. The default setting is for bookings to open immediately once the session(s) have been created. You can amend this to a Set time to configure a relative amount of time before the session start time at which point session bookings will open. For example, if you set the time to 7 days before the session start time, you could create 3 months of sessions and bookings will only open for each session exactly 7 days in advance of the scheduled start time for that session. If you choose a set time to open bookings this will be displayed to customers on the session details page so your customers know when to come back to book.

Bookings will close by default at the start time of the session but you can amend this to the End time of the session or a Set time before or after the session starts similar to the booking opens control described above.

The visibility field sets who can see the session:

You can also set whether there are any gender restrictions as well as the difficulty level. These are purely informational settings to display to your customer and do not restrict any customer bookings.

Your cancellation policy is displayed to customers before booking, either on the session details page on the web or as the first page displayed to customers when booking in the mobile apps. If you haven’t enabled the Auto-refunds bolt-on then you will just see the None or Manual fields here where you can add text to state a policy, but the Gymcatch system won’t automate any credit backs.

Information within the Instructions for customers field presents to customers in the session details page after booking (and in their calendars if they've turned on calendar sync in their mobile app). It's a great way to remind customers about certain details, like to bring equipment or for more custom directions to the location.

You can enable the Auto-refund bolt-on within your Plan & bolt-ons page to automate credit backs, but you can still process cash refunds if you wish, this is done through the Stripe dashboard, rather than through the Gymcatch portal.

You can follow the steps in our Auto-Refund article to set your auto-refund policy.

When scheduling your session, you need to select whether the session is a Single session or a Recurring session.

By default, the form selects a Single session (i.e. a one-off, standalone session) and you'd select a date and time to progress.

If you have a session that repeats on the same day and time each week for a set period of time, you would select a Recurring session. Use the calendars to select the start and end date for the period over which your sessions will run. For fortnightly sessions these would need to either be individually added or a weekly recurring series created and every other week manually deleted out.

Each series must have a defined end date, which can be up to 1 year into the future. When you are approaching the end of the series and want to extend it, you can quickly and easily create a new series as a copy using the Copy an existing session button in the top right corner of the session create page where all settings apart from days and times are copied.

As it’s super quick to update the schedule using past sessions as a template, and because we know timetables evolve, we recommend adding up to 3 months at a time to start with.

Once you’ve selected a start and end date for this series of sessions, you can now select a day(s) and time(s) which your session will repeat. You can use the arrows to change the hour in single increments or you can click on the number to open the full selection menu.

If you are running the same session on the same day, you can use the Add time slot feature to add multiple slots. This can be particularly helpful in a scenario whereby creating slots for appointments across a day.

You can add a physical location to denote the session as in-person. Start entering your location in the Search Google Maps field and Google will provide a list of suggestions. Select the correct one and the address will be auto-populated in the to address fields

You can also add a short name or nickname for your venue within the Short location description field. This will be displayed on your Schedule overview to your customers for easy reference as they scroll through your sessions.

If you’re wanting to create a livestream session, then you would tick Make available online and you can follow the steps within our Livestream / online sessions article.

If you want to add your own image to the session listing, you can use the Add a session photo button to upload an image of your choice. Ideally your image should be 960x540 pixels and must be no more than 750kb in size.

You may have noticed that some fields start with a red line on the left-hand side and others start with a green line.

This is how Gymcatch lets you know that the input is either invalid (red - needs completing or amending) or valid (green - can be left as is or amended).

If there are any remaining issues in the settings then these will be highlighted at the bottom of this page. You can click on any of the errors to be taken directly to the related setting.

Once you are happy with all of the settings, just click the Create button to create the session(s).

Once created the sessions will appear in your Schedule and to update one or any number of them simply click Details on the selected session > Edit this session. You’ll also notice that there is now a helpful Copy an existing session button at the top of the session create page that you can use to create similar sessions in the future where all settings apart from days and times are copied.

For a reminder of any of these settings, you can always find this information using our grey tooltips next to the field (hover it with your cursor or tap to display).

You may also be interested in:

How do I update or cancel a class / session?

Can I uncancel or reinstate a class?

Add customers and attendee management