An AI agent for gym owners: the admin it can take on, and what stays with you

The admin jobs that suit an agent

An agent here means an assistant that works in your own accounts, takes instructions in plain words and can run a job on a schedule. For a gym, the useful jobs all start from something that already exists: an email someone sent you, a timetable you keep, a sheet of members you maintain.

Answering enquiries

Someone emails to ask what a monthly membership costs, when the beginners’ class runs and whether there is parking. The agent reads the new email in your Gmail, looks the answers up in the price and timetable sheet you keep for it, and saves a draft reply in your Drafts. Tell it to flag anything missing from your sheet rather than guess, then read the draft against the sheet and send it yourself.

Keeping the class and booking list

You can have the agent maintain a Google Sheet with one row per class booking, or add classes and personal-training sessions to Google Calendar when you tell it to. “Add Maya, Thursday 18:00 PT session” becomes a calendar event and a row in the sheet. It can also check your calendar for a free slot when someone asks for a session time.

Reminders members asked for

If a member asked to be reminded about their Saturday class, or a client wants a nudge the evening before their session, the agent can email that reminder from your Gmail on the schedule you set. These are for people who asked for them, one message each, in your wording. They are not announcements or promotions to everyone on a list.

Freeze and cancellation emails

A member writes to freeze for two months or to cancel. The agent reads the email, checks your policy text if you have given it one, and drafts a polite reply for you to approve. It does not change the membership or stop a payment, because it has no access to your membership system. You do that, as you do now.

A morning summary

At a time you choose, it sends a short message to the chat app you use: today’s classes and sessions from your calendar, and which emails are still waiting for a reply. Scheduled jobs are a standard part of Hermes. If you run Hermes yourself, the machine running it has to stay on; on ReadyHermes the job runs on the hosted assistant while your laptop is shut.

Who is behind on payments

If you keep a sheet of members with a payment status or a date paid up to, you can ask: “Who is more than two weeks behind?” The agent reads the sheet and lists them, and can draft a gentle reminder to each of those existing members for you to read first. Whether to chase, and how, is your call.

What a day with it looks like

The names and times below are invented to show the shape of it. Imagine Priya, who owns a small yoga and Pilates studio and answers everything herself. She connected Gmail, Google Calendar and one Google Sheet, and linked Telegram so the agent can message her. Her standing instruction reads:

Every weekday at 7:30, check my Gmail for emails from the last day
that I haven't answered. For each, save a draft reply in my Gmail
Drafts and send nothing. Use my "Prices and Classes" sheet for
facts. If a fact isn't there, say so, don't guess. Then message me
today's classes from my calendar and who is waiting for a reply.

On Tuesday her Telegram chat showed something like this:

• Today: a 09:30 mat class, a 12:15 lunchtime class and an 18:30 beginners’ course session.
• Drafted: a reply to someone asking for the price of ten-class packs, taken from her sheet.
• Drafted, fact missing: a question about a children’s class. The sheet has no entry, so the draft says she will confirm, and the summary asks her for the details.
• Not drafted, flagged: an email from a member mentioning an injury and asking if they can still attend. Priya told the agent that anything about health comes to her untouched.
• Waiting on you: a freeze request, with a draft reply attached for her to approve.

Priya read the drafts over breakfast, sent two unchanged, edited one, and wrote the injury reply herself.

“Send nothing” is an instruction, not a lock. Once Gmail is connected, the agent is able to send email if asked. Keep that line in every email job and look in your Sent folder now and then.

What about Mindbody, Glofox and other gym software?

Many gyms run their members and bookings in dedicated management software such as Mindbody or Glofox. The ReadyHermes Apps panel does not list a connection to those products, and we did not find a route from Hermes into them that we could verify, so this page does not claim one. Do not expect the agent to see your bookings, take a member off a class or change a membership in that software.

It can still be useful alongside it, in two ways. It can work from emails the software sends you or that members send you, and it can work from a sheet you export and upload, such as a list of members with their status. The sheet is then a copy: it is only as current as your last export, so check the date before you act on it. If your day mostly lives inside the management software, this agent will help with the email and the paperwork around it, not with the software itself.

What it cannot do, and what stays with you

• Take payments. The agent cannot charge a card, collect a direct debit or refund anyone, and you should not give it that access. It can read a sheet that shows who has not paid; the money side stays with your payment provider and with you.
• Give health or medical advice. Questions about injuries, pregnancy or conditions need you or a qualified person. You can tell it to flag any email that mentions health and leave it undrafted.
• Decide on freezes, refunds or exceptions. It drafts the reply to your policy; you decide the outcome and press send.
• Answer the phone or run the front desk. It works in email and chat, not on calls, and it does not stand at reception.
• Send announcements to everyone. Keep it to replies and to reminders that people asked for. Marketing messages to people who did not ask for them can break email and messaging rules where you operate, and it is your responsibility to know them.
• Always be right. It can misread a date or pick the wrong row. That is why the replies wait as drafts, and why a sheet of prices it can quote from beats letting it remember.

Member data and health information

Member lists, payment status and anything about someone’s health are personal data, and looking after it is your responsibility as the owner. This page does not tell you what the law requires where you operate; check that with the right source for your area.

Practical steps that cost nothing: put only what a job needs into the sheets the agent reads, leave health details out of them, and do not paste more of a member’s history into the chat than the task requires. When the agent drafts a reply, the text of the email goes to an AI model provider to produce it, so decide what you are comfortable sending that way before you start.

Setting it up

On ReadyHermes, the Apps panel connects Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Sheets (among many others): you pick the app, sign in to Google, and the connection appears under your connected apps. You can also ask the assistant in the chat to connect an app. If your assistant is paused, the panel asks you to choose a plan before you connect apps.

If you would rather run Hermes yourself, it ships with a Google Workspace skill that covers Gmail, Calendar and Sheets. You create your own Google sign-in credentials in Google Cloud Console and run its setup step, which is more work than clicking Connect. See how to install Hermes Agent, and Hermes Agent and MCP for other ways to add tools.

1. Make one Google Sheet with your prices, class times and policies, one row each. This is what the agent quotes from.
2. Connect Gmail, Google Calendar and that sheet. Tell the agent your sign-off and your rules, including “send nothing” and “flag anything about health”.
3. Run the draft job by hand once, read the results, and correct it in plain words. Only then ask for the schedule.

For the wider picture across any small business, see an AI assistant for small business owners. If the timetable is the main headache, an AI calendar assistant goes deeper on that part.

Gym admin on ReadyHermes

ReadyHermes runs your own Hermes Agent for you, so there is nothing to install: a new assistant is ready in about 10 seconds and you chat with it in the browser or from Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, WeChat or Lark. The free trial lasts one hour, time to try connecting Gmail and asking for a first draft. If you choose a plan, changes to settings that restart the assistant take about a minute.

One thing to be clear about: the assistant starts as your private assistant, set up to talk to you. The simplest route for chat-app enquiries is to forward or paste the message to it and let it draft the answer for you. And ReadyHermes has no connection to Mindbody, Glofox or similar gym software.