TeamUp Virtual Assistant: a VA who runs the timetable, the waitlist and the failed payments

TeamUp’s whole sales pitch is less admin, the product pages promise you back eight-plus hours a week, and to be fair to the software, its own share of the job really is small. The classes recur, the debits pull through Stripe or GoCardless, the waitlist promotes itself. What the pitch skips is everything the software can’t reach: the failed payment email that went out and got ignored, the enquiry sitting in your Instagram DMs that TeamUp’s lead forms never saw, the member on a hold that was supposed to end two weeks ago, the January discount code still live in June. That’s the work you’re searching “teamup virtual assistant” about, and it’s exactly the work a VA absorbs.

Australian boxes and studios picked TeamUp for good reasons. It’s honest software: priced by active customer count rather than per staff seat, strong on the class-and-course model that CrossFit, pilates and yoga actually run on, and mercifully free of the bloat the bigger platforms carry. But honest software still needs an operator, and in most single-location studios the operator is the same person coaching the 6am. This page is the specific version of that job, screen by screen.

The daily rhythm a VA runs in your TeamUp

Morning, before the first class finishes: the calendar pass. Tomorrow’s schedule checked against reality, a sick coach swapped out before the app shows a class nobody is running, capacities right so the popular 5:30pm isn’t oversold and the Tuesday midday isn’t set to 20 for the 4 who come. Courses get their own check, because a six-week beginners block has fixed enrolment and its own registration window, and a mistake there follows you for six weeks. If a class was cancelled, everyone registered gets communicated with, not just refunded a credit silently.

Then the waitlist, which deserves its own paragraph because it’s where TeamUp is half automatic and half not. TeamUp can auto-promote the first person in line when a registration drops, and when your settings are right, that runs itself beautifully. But the automation lives inside your registration and cancellation windows. A member who pulls out 45 minutes before class, inside your cut-off, opens a spot the system won’t fill, and the difference between that spot going to the next person on the list or going empty is whether someone was watching. Your VA is the someone: they configure the windows properly per class in the first place, then work the exceptions the configuration can’t reach.

Then money. TeamUp flags failed payments and even emails the member automatically, which sounds like the job is done and is precisely why it isn’t. An automatic email about an expired card converts poorly; a follow-up from a human at the studio converts well. Your VA works the failed and pending payments daily: chases the expired card before the next billing run rather than after it fails again, retries the declines worth retrying through your Stripe or GoCardless connection, applies the approved credit or plan adjustment, and flags anyone whose payment pattern says they’re halfway out the door. For a membership business this is the same discipline as invoice chasing anywhere else, compressed into a daily ten-minute habit that most owners only manage weekly, which is exactly how a $180 monthly membership quietly becomes a churned member.

Then memberships proper. Holds applied and, more importantly, lifted on the agreed date, because a hold that never ends is free training and a hold applied late is a billing complaint. Upgrades and downgrades processed to your rules. Class-pack balances kept honest so the ten-pack that should have two sessions left has two, not four. New joiners chased for the waiver and PAR-Q that TeamUp’s forms collect but won’t nag about twice, so nobody trains unsigned.

Weekly and monthly, the layer most owners never reach: attendance, revenue and retention reports pulled and summarised into five minutes of reading, discount codes reviewed and expired on schedule, the on-demand content library kept organised so members paying for it can find it, and the check that’s specific to this platform, the billable-customer review. TeamUp’s pricing tiers step up with active customer count, but active means customers who registered or purchased during the billing month, not everyone sitting on your list, so archiving old names is hygiene rather than savings. The review that matters is the billable list in the subscription settings: a monthly pass over it, cross-checked against holds and recent attendance, catches a membership still billing someone who has left or a recurring registration nobody cancelled, and keeps the customer list clean enough that the retention reports are worth reading.

The honest bit

Things TeamUp will not do, whoever you hire, and better said plainly.

The lead tools are real but narrow. TeamUp’s Lead Management gives you capture forms, lead sources and automated follow-up emails, and they’re worth setting up properly. But it only knows about prospects who fill in one of its forms: the enquiry in your email, your DMs or a phone message never enters it, and there’s no pipeline of stages and follow-up tasks the way a sales CRM would run one. If lead follow-up is your biggest leak, and for growing studios it usually is, the VA runs TeamUp’s forms and sequences and works everything else in your inbox like a proper enquiry queue: fast first reply, trial booked into the calendar, reminder, and the follow-up after the first session. The tool covers a slice; a person covers the rest.

The waitlist automation obeys your cut-off windows, as covered above, and late drops inside the window need a human. The failed-payment emails send themselves, but an email is not a chase, and an expired card gets fixed by a member who was asked properly, not by a third automated reminder. Marketing is thin by design: TeamUp’s notifications cover the operational messages, but campaign email lives in Mailchimp or wherever you run it, connected by integration, not built in. And the on-demand content feature stores and sells your videos; it doesn’t film, edit or program anything.

None of this is a criticism of the platform. TeamUp charges you for software and gives you software. The gap between what it flags and what actually gets done is the job description on this page.

What stays with you

TeamUp’s staff permissions draw most of the line for us. The VA gets a staff login scoped to the operational surfaces, calendar and registrations, customer records, the billing screens they need to work payments, with owner-level business settings and the connected Stripe or GoCardless gateway switched off. Because TeamUp prices by customers rather than seats, that login costs you nothing, and because permissions are set per staff member, it starts narrow and widens only when you decide it should.

The judgement stays yours regardless of permissions. Membership pricing and plan structure, the call on whether a struggling long-term member gets a hold or a hard conversation, refunds, what the intro offer actually is, and every last rep of the programming and coaching, which no admin hire touches. Your VA assembles the picture, works the lists and does the chasing that the automations can’t. You make the calls that were always going to be yours.

What it costs and where to start

TeamUp admin sits on our admin tier, $12-17 AUD an hour excl GST, typically 10-15 hours a week for a single location, which lands around $500-1,100 a month and covers the calendar, waitlists, membership admin, failed-payment recovery, the enquiry inbox and the monthly reporting and archive sweep. Placement takes 7-10 business days, with 5-7 days supervised inside your TeamUp before any solo work, a $500 refundable deposit credited to your first month, a 30-day recalibrate-or-replace guarantee, and no lock-in beyond 14 days notice.

For the wider picture, the fitness studios page covers how a VA fits a box or studio beyond any one platform, the calendar management task page covers the scheduling craft, and the VA cost guide has full pricing. Otherwise book a discovery call with Jenn, who takes every call herself and has placed 87+ VAs into Australian businesses since 2024. Bring two numbers: last month’s failed payments, and your active customer count versus how many actually trained. Between those two lives most of what a TeamUp VA will earn you.