Manager oversight of PT messages
Managers and owners can read any trainer–client conversation in the studio. What that covers, what gets recorded, and what to tell your team.
PT messaging is private between a trainer and their client — but not from the studio. Managers and owners can read any conversation in the studio, and that's a safeguarding decision rather than an accident.
What a manager can see
Every conversation in the studio, not just their own clients'. A manager or owner can open any trainer–client thread and read its full history.
They can also send into a conversation they aren't the trainer on.
Ordinary trainers see only their own conversations with their own assigned clients, enforced server-side.
Opening a conversation you don't own is recorded
When a manager or owner opens a conversation where they aren't the trainer, TelosGym writes an audit record: who looked, which conversation, and when.
Opening your own conversations records nothing — it's not oversight, it's just your job.
The record is written when the conversation is deliberately opened, not on every background refresh, so the trail reflects actual acts of looking rather than the app polling.
Being straight about a limitation
That audit trail isn't visible anywhere in TelosGym today. It's recorded reliably, but there's no page listing it — it currently lives in the Django admin only.
So treat it as: access is recorded and can be retrieved if it's ever needed, not as you can review who's been reading what. If you need those records, raise a ticket rather than going looking for a screen that doesn't exist yet.
What to tell your team
This is worth saying out loud rather than leaving people to assume:
- Trainers should know the studio can read their client conversations, and that it's logged when a manager does.
- Clients should understand the chat is with the studio, not a private channel that bypasses it.
A trainer who assumes chat is completely private may use it for things that belong in a phone call. A trainer who knows the position behaves accordingly — which is the point.
Good practice
- Don't browse. The trail exists so access is deliberate and accountable. Open a conversation when there's a reason.
- Have a reason you'd be happy to write down — a complaint, a safeguarding concern, a handover, covering an absent trainer.
- Prefer a handover to reading back when a trainer leaves. Reassign the client and let the new trainer start fresh.
- Say it up front. Cover it when you induct staff, not after something has gone wrong.
What this doesn't change
Oversight doesn't bypass the requirements on messaging itself. A manager still needs their own age verification to send, and the client still needs theirs plus a completed induction — see Age verification explained.