Drop-ins, done right: how OLM's marketplace handles visiting members
A walkthrough of OLM's drop-in marketplace flow — how visiting members find your gym, pay, sign waivers, and check in without staff lifting a finger. Plus: what makes it different from cash drop-ins or Venmo.
The cash-and-Venmo problem
Most gyms handle drop-ins informally. A visitor shows up, pays $25 in cash or via Venmo, signs a paper waiver if anyone remembers, and trains. The revenue lands somewhere; the waiver lands somewhere else. The visitor's record exists nowhere if they ever come back.
When this happens once a month, it's fine. When it happens 30 times a month — Orlando around Disney trips, Las Vegas around UFC weekends, Honolulu in tourist season — the friction adds up to lost revenue, missing paperwork, and a roster full of phantom visitors no one can identify three months later.
The marketplace flow
Visitors find your gym through the OLM directory or a direct link on your website. They tap to drop in for an upcoming class, sign the waiver from their phone (with the SHA-256 audit trail and IP stamp), pay the $25 fee via Stripe, and walk into the gym. At the door, they tap their photo on the kiosk like any other member.
From your side, you see the visit on the live attendance feed, the waiver is signed and stored, the revenue is in your Stripe payout, and the visitor's record persists. If they come back next year, they're already in the system.
What the platform fee looks like
Drop-ins fall under the 3% category in OLM's pricing model. A $25 drop-in generates a $0.75 platform fee (3%); a $40 drop-in generates a $1.20 platform fee — proportional to ticket size, no per-charge cap.
Drop-in fees scale linearly with what you collect. So a Las Vegas gym with a UFC-weekend surge of 80 drop-ins ($2,000 in revenue) generates $60 in platform fees on those drop-ins — a fraction of what a tiered SaaS would have charged for the same month.
When members are visiting other OLM gyms
If your member travels and drops in at another OLM academy, the same flow works in reverse. Their existing OLM profile is recognized at the new gym; the waiver flow can be skipped if they've already signed the host gym's waiver. Their journal entry from that visit feeds back into their unified training journal at your gym.
This is a small thing operationally and a big thing culturally. Members who train consistently when traveling get rewarded for the discipline; their journal reflects continuous training rather than a gap when they're on the road. Gyms benefit from being part of a network where members travel rather than disappearing during travel.
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