Gym access schedules: limit door hours by membership plan

Off-peak memberships are one of the oldest tricks in the gym business. You sell a cheaper plan that only works in the quiet hours, fill the floor at 11 in the morning, and keep the evening rush for full-price members. Many gyms in Lebanon also run separate hours for women, or a students' plan that only works on weekdays.

The trouble is enforcing it. If the receptionist has to remember which plan each member is on, the cheaper plan quietly becomes the full plan. Access schedules let the door do the remembering: the member's plan decides which hours their face, fingerprint or card works.

This guide explains how schedules work in GymLeb, how to set one up, and the limits worth knowing before you design your plans.

What an access schedule is

An access schedule is a weekly timetable attached to one access machine. For each day of the week you set the hours when entry is allowed, or leave the day closed. For example:

• Morning plan: Monday to Saturday, 06:00 to 14:00. Sunday closed.
• Ladies' hours: every day, 09:00 to 12:00 and 16:00 to 18:00.
• Weekdays only: Monday to Friday, all day.

You then link the schedule to a membership plan. Everyone who buys that plan can only enter during those hours on that machine. Outside the window, the terminal refuses the scan and the access log shows the reason as "Outside their access hours".

Schedules are part of Hikvision access control, so they need the access control add-on and a connected terminal.

Setting up a schedule step by step

1. Open the machine. Go to Access Control, then Machines, and choose Access Schedules on the machine card.
2. Create the schedule. Press Create schedule and give it a name members and staff will understand, like "Morning plan hours".
3. Set the hours. For each day, press Add hours and enter a time range. A day with no hours shows as Closed. Use Copy to all days when most days are the same, then adjust the exceptions.
4. Save while the machine is online. The dashboard sends the schedule to the terminal and waits for it to confirm. If the machine is offline you will be told to try again once it is back, because a schedule the door never received is worse than no schedule.
5. Link it to a plan. Go to Membership Plans, create or edit the plan, and under "Access hours per machine" pick the schedule for each machine. Leave a machine on All time to give that plan unlimited hours there.

From now on, every new sale or renewal of that plan carries the schedule. The member's validity dates and their hours are both on the terminal.

Rules that are useful to know

A few details shape how you design your plans:

• Up to 8 time ranges per day. Enough for split shifts like a morning and an afternoon block.
• A range cannot pass midnight. If you open late, split it: 20:00 to 23:59 on Friday and 00:00 to 02:00 on Saturday.
• Ranges on the same day cannot overlap. The editor tells you if they do.
• Times follow your gym's time zone. Check the machine's clock with Sync time on the machine card before going live.
• Plans are copied at the time of sale. If you change which schedule a plan uses, members who already bought it keep the hours they paid for. If you edit the hours inside a schedule, everyone on that schedule gets the new hours straight away.
• Disable means open, not closed. Disabling a schedule lets its members in at any time until you enable it again. It never locks people out by accident.

Members with more than one plan

Some members hold two subscriptions at once, for example a gym plan and a separate class plan. When that happens their schedules combine: the door opens if any of their plans allows that hour. When one subscription ends and another continues, the member automatically moves to the hours of the plan they still have. A frozen subscription stops giving its hours until it is unfrozen.

A member can hold up to four schedules at the same time on one machine. If a sale or renewal would go over that, GymLeb shows a Too many access schedules message and offers to give that member all-time access on that machine instead, so the sale is never blocked.

Schedules for staff

Staff are often on the same terminal as members. From a staff member's Access tab you can give them a schedule too, for example a cleaner who should only enter during their shift. Staff without a schedule can enter at any time. If you track staff attendance from the terminal, schedules keep after-hours scans from turning into odd attendance records.

Ideas for plans that use schedules

• Off-peak at a lower price. Look at your busiest hours first. With access control, the Attendance report shows busiest times and a peak-hours heatmap, which tells you which hours you actually want to fill.
• Ladies-only sessions. Give a women's plan only the ladies' hours, while the regular plan keeps all-day access. Your gym's public page and the member app can show women's only times too.
• Students and juniors. A weekday, daytime plan keeps younger members out of the evening rush.
• Corporate plans. A company deal that covers lunch hours only is easy to sell and easy to enforce.

When a member says the door refused them

Start with Access Control, then Events. Filter by the member's name or by "Refused" and read the reason. "Outside their access hours" means the schedule worked as designed; "Membership expired or not active" means the problem is the subscription, not the hours. Staff can also get a live popup when someone is refused at the door, so the desk knows before the member walks over to complain.

For anything you cannot explain from the log, contact us with the machine name and the time of the scan. Prices for the access control add-on are on the pricing page, and the glossary explains the terms used here.