Teaching at one studio is simple: you know your rate, you know your schedule, you roughly know your paycheck. Add a second studio — then a third — and it gets messy fast. Different rates, different pay structures, different pay days, different portals. Suddenly you're not totally sure what you earned last month, or whether every class actually got paid.
Here's a system that keeps one clear picture of your income across all of them.
Why multi-studio pay is hard
Each studio tends to do things its own way:
- Different rates and structures — flat per class here, per head there, revenue share or hourly somewhere else.
- Different pay schedules — weekly at one, biweekly at another, "whenever payroll runs" at a third.
- Different visibility — some send a pay stub, some just deposit a number, some make you check a portal.
The result: no single place shows what you should have earned versus what you did. That gap is where missed and short payments hide.
Step 1: Write down each studio's rate once
Start by capturing, for each studio, exactly how you're paid: the rate, the structure (per class, per head, hourly, revenue share), and the pay schedule. This is the reference you'll check everything against. Do it once and you stop doing mental math every week.
Step 2: Log what you taught, every week
Right after you teach, note the class and which studio it was for. Waiting until payday means relying on memory; logging weekly takes seconds and keeps the record accurate. From your rates, you can now calculate what each studio owes you for the period.
Step 3: Reconcile against what landed
When a studio pays you, compare the deposit to what you calculated. This reconciliation step is the one most instructors skip — and it's the one that catches a class that got dropped from payroll or a rate that was applied wrong. A few minutes here can recover real money.
Step 4: Tag deductible expenses as you go
While you're tracking income, capture the expenses tied to it — especially mileage between studios, which is one of the largest deductions instructors miss. (More in Tax Deductions Every Fitness Instructor Should Know.) Doing it in the moment beats reconstructing a year in April.
Spreadsheet vs. a purpose-built tool
You can absolutely run this in a spreadsheet — many instructors do. The trade-off is upkeep: formulas break, you rebuild it each tax year, and it can't tell you whether a deposit matched what you were owed or estimate your quarterly taxes.
That's the gap ClassTally was built to close. You set up each studio's rate once, confirm classes as you teach them, and it shows expected pay next to actual deposits, tracks deductible expenses, and estimates your quarterly taxes — across every studio, in one place. See pricing or start free.