Everything your studio handled today, while you were at the bar teaching.
A single day at a barre studio, and the list of things nobody had to sit down and do.
100% free to use, no hidden fees. Members pay about 5% at checkout.
A ten class pack runs down to its last class.
She has been coming three times a week since February. On the way she has bought pack after pack, which means she has been paying more than your unlimited membership costs, which means one day she will do that arithmetic herself and feel silly about it.
Recess holds packs and memberships in the same place, so you can see who is on which and how fast they are burning through it. An automated sequence catches her at the point the pack runs out and offers her the membership in your studio's voice, from your own domain. Regulars who move onto unlimited stay longer. That is most of the reason to have noticed at all.
A first timer tries to book the advanced class, and cannot.
She found you last week, she has taken one class, and the advanced on Thursday morning is the time that suits her. On her phone it is not bookable. She gets a short line saying what the class asks for, and the three classes this week she can take instead.
The version without that gate is one every barre owner has lived through. She comes, she is a beat behind for fifty minutes, the teacher spends the class fixing her form rather than running the room, and everyone else at the bar gets a lighter class than they paid for. Then somebody has to tell her, kindly, at the bar, with the room listening, that this was not the class for her. She does not come back, and she was not wrong to try.
You set the gate once, on the class. It can require a level or a rank, a completed intro class as a prerequisite, a skill an instructor has signed off, a tag you keep on the client, an age range, or the membership or program she holds. Most studios put one of those on a handful of classes and leave the rest of the schedule open to anyone.
Someone takes her hundredth class.
It happens in the 4:30, mid thigh work, and in most software it happens silently. In Recess a class count milestone is a real thing you define. She gets the badge in your app, her name goes up on the board if you run one, and you can print her a certificate with your studio's artwork on it.
The same machinery runs your challenges. Twelve classes in January, a spring streak, a club for people past two hundred. Barre retention is not really about the workout, it is about being a regular somewhere and having that noticed. This is the part of the software that does the noticing.
The regular who has quietly stopped coming.
Not the loud kind of quitting. She was in four times a week for two years, then twice, then a week off, then another. Nobody called. By the time the quarterly numbers show it, she has been gone for two months and has a new routine.
Recess watches attendance per client rather than in aggregate, so a drop off becomes a name in days. From there the follow up runs itself: an automated win back sequence by text or email, in your voice. And before any of that, failed payment recovery, because a real share of the members you think quit simply had a card expire and were too polite to mention it.
The classes you taught turn into pay.
Barre instructors get paid per class, sometimes with a rate that changes by format, sometimes with a bonus over a head count. That is a spreadsheet in most studios, rebuilt every fortnight from the schedule and a memory of who covered what.
Recess already knows who taught, what they taught and how many people were in the room. Pay rates are set by class type or head count, instructors clock in and out if you want them to, and payroll reporting comes out of the same data that ran the day. The substitute who picked up the 9:30 this morning is on the run at her own rate without you remembering, and nothing is paid until you approve it.
They open it on a Tuesday night, deciding whether to come in.
Every studio on Recess gets its own branded app, carrying your name, your logo and your colors, publishable to the Apple App Store and Google Play under your own listing. Your clients are not asked to download something with another company's brand on it.
They book and pay there, join the waitlist there, sign forms there, and see their own progress there: the class count they are on, the passes they have left, the challenge they are in, the badges they have earned.
It is also where the 5:48 waitlist text lands, and the win back message, and the note that a pack has one class left. That is the difference between an app someone installs once and an app someone opens on a Tuesday night to decide whether to come in.
It answers at nine on a Sunday night, which is when people finally get around to it.
Most enquiries at a barre studio arrive outside the hours anyone is at the desk, and most of them are the same three questions: is there something for a beginner, when does it run, and what does it cost. Every hour one of those sits unanswered is somebody deciding to try the studio down the road.
The Recess lead agent answers in your studio's voice, off your real schedule. It qualifies the person, answers what she actually asked, takes her name and email, and books her into an intro class, without anyone on your staff being involved.
Around it sit lead capture forms, a lead pipeline, audiences and tags, automated sequences and campaigns, so the people who do not book on the first evening are followed up rather than lost.
Everything else, and no plan to choose between.
The rest is table stakes. It is all here, with no plan to choose and nothing behind a paywall, so a studio with one room pays the same as a studio with four, which is to say nothing.
Nothing per month. The arithmetic is short.
No monthly platform fee, no per feature add ons, no setup cost. Recess earns a service fee of approximately 5% paid by the member at checkout, and card and bank processing is covered by Recess out of that rather than billed to you on top. That is the whole model. A studio with one room pays the same as a studio with four, which is nothing, and we only do well when you are actually collecting money.
Reasons not to switch to us.
If one of these is you, we would rather say so now than six weeks into an onboarding.
What barre owners ask us on the first call.
Yes, alongside contracts, bundles, payment plans and drop ins. A client can hold more than one, and Recess applies the right one when she books, including when a waitlist promotion books her automatically. You can see at a glance who is on a pack and burning through it fast enough that a membership would suit them better.
Clients join the waitlist. When a spot opens, Recess promotes the next person, charges the booking against what she holds, and tells her by text or push notification. You do not have to be awake for it, which matters most for early morning classes where cancellations happen an hour before.
Attendance is tracked per client, so a drop from four classes a week to none shows up as a name within days rather than as a line in a quarterly report. You can filter your client list by falling attendance, and automated win back sequences can reach out before you get to it. Failed payment recovery runs underneath all of it, because an expired card is a more common cause of a quiet disappearance than most owners expect.
Yes. You define the milestones that matter in your studio, along with challenges, points, clubs and leaderboards. Members see their progress in your app, and you can print certificates with your own artwork. This progression work is the newest part of Recess and is rolling out now.
Pay rates are set per instructor by class type or by head count, and Recess already knows who taught which class and how many people attended. Instructors can clock in and out if you use shifts. Payroll reporting comes from the same data that ran the schedule, including classes picked up by a substitute.
Recess texts every other instructor who can teach that class, takes the first yes, and updates the schedule and the client bookings before anyone turns up. You get told what happened rather than having to make it happen.
Yes. The migration is automated and our team runs it for you, whatever you are on now: Mindbody, Momence, Walla, Arketa, Glofox and others. Members, history and billing information come across, so your regulars arrive with their pack balances and their attendance behind them.
No. Your studio gets its own branded app with your name, logo and colors, and it can be published to the Apple App Store and Google Play under your own listing. Clients book, pay, join waitlists, sign forms and see their progress there.