Memberships show up in two places in Reports, measuring the same money two different ways. Knowing which is which stops the figures looking like they contradict each other.
- Nominal recurring revenue - shown in the Memberships part of Reports, under Members. This is what your members are worth on paper: every active member multiplied by their plan price, per month. It's a forward-looking run rate, not money already collected.
- Effective revenue - shown on the revenue chart and in the Effective column of the session-type table. This adds a nominal value for each member visit to your cash takings, so a session full of members isn't reported as worth nothing. It's backward-looking: it only counts visits that happened in the range you're viewing.
These are the same money seen from two angles - don't add them together. Nominal is "what we bill"; effective is "what got used". Over a full, closed calendar month they reconcile.
How the two reconcile
Across a whole calendar month, a member's nominal plan price is spread across the visits they make that month. Add up all those attributed visit values and you land back near the nominal figure. Any gap is the residual - the part of the run rate that visits haven't accounted for yet.
The residual exists because the two figures count slightly different groups over slightly different windows:
- Different windows. Nominal counts members active right now. Effective counts visits inside the date range you've selected. A part-month range naturally attributes less than a full month's nominal.
- Members join and leave. Someone who joined this week adds to nominal today but has few visits behind them; someone who left still has visits in the range. So the residual only settles cleanly over a single, closed calendar month, and can even go slightly negative.
- The month isn't over. A member's attributed value keeps rising as they visit more that month, so it isn't final until the month closes.
Reading it in practice
For a clean reconciliation, view a single, completed calendar month (use the "Last month" preset in the date picker). In that view, effective's membership portion plus the residual should sit close to the month's nominal recurring revenue.
For a live sense of the business, the two headline numbers each answer a different question on their own:
- Use nominal recurring revenue for "what am I billing my members each month?"
- Use effective revenue for "were my quiet-looking, member-heavy sessions actually earning their keep?"
Bundles and gift vouchers work the same way in the effective figure: each redeemed session adds a nominal value, so a session paid for entirely with a bundle still shows a worth. Bundles carried over from another system aren't valued, since their original price isn't recorded here.
Common questions
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Why don't nominal and effective revenue match? They measure different things - nominal is your monthly run rate for members active now, effective is the value of visits that actually happened in your selected range. They only line up over a full, closed calendar month, and even then a small residual is normal.
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Can I add nominal recurring revenue to my cash takings? No - that double-counts. Effective revenue already blends cash with member and bundle value. Nominal is a separate, forward-looking run rate.
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Why is my member's cash spend so low? Because a member pays by subscription, not per booking. Their sessions are covered by their plan, so their cash figure is low by design. See customer profile for the per-customer spend breakdown.
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What counts as an active member? A member with a live subscription (or one still inside a period they've cancelled at the end of). Imported members who haven't reactivated with you are counted separately and don't add to nominal recurring revenue.
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Why is a bundle redemption rate above 100%? The bundle was topped up, or it's unlimited. Redemption rate is sessions redeemed divided by sessions issued, and excludes bundles carried over from another system.