How PushPress Turned Embedded Accounting Into Done-for-You Bookkeeping for Boutique Gyms

Giving Owner-Operators Financial Clarity Without Adding Another System to Manage

PushPress knows boutique gym owners. And one thing they know for certain is that most got into the business for the love of coaching, not to reconcile bank feeds. 

“Our clients are owner-operators that wear many hats. Most don't come from a finance or bookkeeping background, and they often won't have dedicated help. Given everything they are responsible for, it's no surprise that having solid financial data to review even quarterly can feel out of reach.”

– Brian Aung, Co-Founder and Head of Fintech at PushPress

This creates a clear disconnect. Gym owners need consistent financial visibility to run a healthy business, but they lack the time, expertise, and support required to maintain it.

For the gym owners PushPress serves, that gap showed up as limited cash flow visibility, frequent cash crunches, last-minute scrambles to cover payroll or repairs, and little ability to plan or invest in strategic growth.

PushPress experimented with building their own accounting integrations to platforms like QuickBooks and Xero and even set themselves up as an accounting firm in those ecosystems.

But, over time, they ran into familiar problems. Integrations broke on edge cases and compliance updates. Maintaining custom connections chewed up scarce engineering capacity. And, most importantly, asking an overworked gym owner to connect and manage yet another ledger system added friction instead of removing it.

So PushPress set a new bar for any solution they would take to market:

• It had to come from a vendor with a mature, deeply featured ledger rather than a brand-new startup.
• It needed to provide direct access to accounting data in their warehouse so they could build reports and workflows of their own.
• It had to support a model where PushPress and their team could do the work for gym owners rather than pushing more tasks onto them.

In sum, they needed embedded accounting infrastructure that would feel invisible to their customers while giving PushPress all the control and data they required behind the scenes.

A Mature Ledger and a Ready-to-Launch Toolkit for Automated Bookkeeping

Brian Aung, Co-Founder and Head of Fintech at PushPress, had been thinking about embedded accounting for years. So, when PushPress committed to bringing a done-for-you bookkeeping service to market, he knew they needed the accounting equivalent of their payments strategy. 

Just as PushPress relies on Stripe to process payments instead of building payment rails themselves, they needed an accounting partner they could trust at the infrastructure level.

Tight checked every box. Tight’s ledger had more than a decade of real-world mileage, meaning the edge cases, compliance landmines, and long-tail bookkeeping quirks that typically sink new products were already handled. And the company’s maturity gave PushPress confidence that their team wouldn’t be chasing bugs on behalf of gym owners who can least afford them.

“Accounting is something that cannot break. Tight’s been around for over a decade. They’ve already solved the edge cases and compliance headaches that we don’t ever want our gym owners dealing with.”

– Brian Aung, Co-Founder and Head of Fintech at PushPress

Just as importantly, Tight fit PushPress’s data-first culture. Tight’s Snowflake integration meant PushPress could pull raw ledger data directly into their warehouse, generate financial statements for each gym, and build analytics that reflect the realities of boutique fitness businesses—all without fighting the limitations of a third-party UI.

Speed was the final requirement. PushPress needed to be able to launch quickly and without draining their core R&D team. Tight’s off-the-shelf approach made it possible.

Speed to Market, High Adoption Rates, and Record-Low Lift

Tight enabled PushPress to bring a fully formed, done-for-you bookkeeping service to market in record time, all while preserving engineering bandwidth and delivering a seamless experience for gym owners.

Early traction validated that gym operators are eager for a financial solution built directly into the platform they already trust.

Some highlights of the partnership include:

• Less than two weeks to launch: PushPress moved from contract to production in just 13 days—an exceptionally fast turnaround for a fintech product tied to accounting, compliance, and transaction data.
• Minimal engineering lift: Because PushPress relied on Tight’s ready-to-launch toolkit, the build required virtually no support from their core R&D team, allowing them to preserve their roadmap and ship without tradeoffs.
• Strong early adoption signals: At launch, PushPress had 100 gyms already on a waitlist, with 40 committed to a paid pilot.
• Seamless end-to-end experience for gym owners: PushPress’s new accounting functions give gym owners clean, current-year-to-date books shortly after onboarding. Plus, they get monthly financial statements delivered without ever having to log in to a ledger system.
• A durable long-term solution: PushPress now treats Tight as the backbone of its accounting stack, positioning its team to scale bookkeeping services without having to take on ledger maintenance or compliance risk.

“Tight moved fast with us, getting us from contract to launch in just over a week. Their team has been nimble, hands-on, and genuinely invested in making this a success.”

– Brian Aung, Co-Founder and Head of Fintech at PushPress

A Creative Partnership Built for Long-Term Growth

For PushPress, embedded accounting is now a core pillar of their mission to help boutique gyms run stronger businesses. Brian sees Tight as a long-term partner in their fintech strategy, supporting more frequent closes, smarter automation, and deeper workflow improvements as the product matures.

What stands out most is the partnership itself. Tight’s founders have treated the work less like a vendor relationship and more like a shared effort to bring better financial practices to an underserved market.

For gym owners, the impact is both simple and powerful: clearer financials, fewer surprises, and more time to help their members achieve their fitness goals.

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