One Club, Start to Certificate — and Beyond
Tbilisi Fit & Wellness has 11 staff and no accreditation experience. This is the real path: free registration, free staff verification, free self-prep, Certification, and, later, full Accreditation — every step, every screen.
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Let’s follow this from the very beginning, the way it actually happens for a real facility. Meet Nino Beridze. She runs a fitness club in Tbilisi called Tbilisi Fit & Wellness. Eleven people work there: Nino as Director, one Administrator, five trainers, three cleaning staff, and one security guard.
One day a hospital she partners with, for clients recovering from cardiac procedures, sends her a message. They want to know if her club is accredited. She has genuinely never heard that word used about a gym before. So she does what anyone would do — she opens a browser and searches.
This is where your own journey would start too. You don’t need to know anything about accreditation yet. You just need a reason to look, and a search bar.
Common questions about this step
A: No. Seven facility types are published: Hospital, Ambulatory Clinic, Long-Term Care, Primary Health Clinic, Fitness & Wellness, Telemedicine, and Home Care. Fitness & Wellness has its own standard, not a version borrowed from hospitals.
A: No. Nothing on this page or the real site assumes prior knowledge. The whole point of the free registration and self-assessment steps that follow is to let someone with zero experience find their own footing.
A: The standard and the free tools are the same everywhere. Certification is delivered through a local National Adaptation Partner where one exists; Accreditation is delivered directly by ASF internationally either way.
A: No. Reading the standard, running the self-assessment, and registering the facility are all free, with no account required for reading and no card details required for registering.
Nino clicks the first result and lands on france-asf.fr. The first thing she notices is that this isn’t only for hospitals — Fitness & Wellness is one of seven published facility types.
That single word tells her something: this organisation was built with gyms in mind, not bolted on as an afterthought. She clicks it.
Common questions about this step
A: It’s the primary source — standards, fees, and the self-assessment tool all live there, and every other page in this walkthrough links back to it.
A: Because the risks and evidence look different: pre-exercise screening, AED readiness, and instructor certification currency matter here in ways a hospital standard wouldn’t capture well.
A: No. Everything up through free registration in Step 4 requires no account at all.
A: Yes — the Fees page is linked from the main navigation and covered in full later in this walkthrough, at Steps 9 and 14.
Here’s something Nino wasn’t expecting: the entire standard is public. No login wall, no “request a demo” form. She works through all seven standards and starts recognising her own club — and its gaps.
This is the step where you’d do the same: read the standard for your own facility type before anything else, so you know what you’re actually being asked to do.
Common questions about this step
A: Seven: Access & Arrival, Reception & Information, Environment, Care & Client Safety, Safety & Emergency Preparedness, Aftercare, and Governance.
A: Every criterion, in full, for free. Nothing is hidden behind a paywall or a “request access” form.
A: Most people spend thirty to sixty minutes reading closely enough to start recognising their own gaps, based on how Nino describes it here.
A: No. The self-assessment tool in Step 6 walks through every criterion one at a time — you don’t need to hold it all in your head.
Tbilisi Fit & Wellness
Before any assessment, any fee, any decision, there’s a step that costs nothing at all: Nino registers Tbilisi Fit & Wellness on Certificate.ge, ASF’s public organisation registry. Facility name, facility type, contact details.
This isn’t accreditation and it isn’t certification. It’s simply an official record that the club exists, that it’s a real organisation with a real address, and that it has taken the first step toward being assessed. Free, permanent, and visible to anyone who looks it up.
If you’re starting your own journey, this is genuinely where it begins — not the standard, not the fees, but a free registration that puts your facility on the record.
Common questions about this step
A: No. It’s free, permanent, and doesn’t obligate the facility to anything further.
A: Facility name, facility type, and contact details — the same three fields shown in the mockup on this step.
A: No. Registration is a separate, earlier, free step. Applying for Certification happens later, in Step 10.
A: Yes. Registration on its own creates no obligation to apply for anything. Many facilities register and use only the free self-assessment tools, indefinitely.
Next, Nino registers each of her eleven staff members by name. This is where Certificate.ge does something genuinely useful: it verifies that each person is real, checks their stated credentials, and confirms their information is current — not just collected once and left to go stale.
That verified status doesn’t stay locked inside ASF’s own system. It’s connected live to SheniEkimi, the Georgian health information site the public actually uses. Someone searching for a trainer or checking out Tbilisi Fit & Wellness on SheniEkimi can see, right there, that the staff are verified real people with up-to-date information, and that the facility itself is officially registered.
Still no cost. Still no assessment yet. This step is about making the people behind the facility checkable, in public, before anything else happens.
Common questions about this step
A: All of them, in principle — for Tbilisi Fit & Wellness, that’s all 11: Nino, Levan, the 5 trainers, the 3 cleaning staff, and the security guard.
A: That each person is a real, identifiable individual, that any stated credentials are genuine, and that the information on file is current rather than years out of date.
A: No. Staff registration and verification are part of the same free process as Step 4.
A: A verified badge next to the facility and its staff, so someone researching the club independently can see the same verification status ASF sees, without needing to ask ASF directly.
Now, still free, still entirely on her own schedule, Nino opens the self-assessment tool and every downloadable checklist and template that goes with it. No registration required beyond what she’s already done, nothing sent to ASF.
She scores the club honestly. Two trainers have current CPR certificates; three don’t. Nobody has ever run a practice emergency drill. Uncomfortable to admit, and exactly the point — she can fix all of this quietly, on her own timeline, before anyone official ever looks.
Common questions about this step
A: No. The tool and every checklist and template that goes with it are free, and nothing is purchased at this stage.
A: For an 11-person club working through all seven standards, budget two to four hours, done at whatever pace suits you — there’s no time limit.
A: No. Nothing is submitted to ASF from this tool. It’s for the facility’s own use only.
A: It becomes the starting evidence for whichever path is chosen next — Certification in Step 9 reuses exactly this groundwork.
Nino wants to see actual paperwork, not a description of paperwork. On the ISO 9001 Ready library for Fitness & Wellness, every one of its 103 documents is named in a free Excel index, no purchase required: a cleaning checklist for locker rooms and washrooms, an AED maintenance log, a staff training-record form, an equipment inspection log, a member complaint intake form.
One of them she can download in full, right now, for free, no account needed: the PAR-Q+ Screening & Risk Stratification Record, the actual pre-exercise health screening form.
The other 102, though, aren’t simply for sale on their own. Full access to download the complete pack is unlocked specifically by reaching Accreditation, not Certification, and not just by paying for the documents in isolation. It’s a reason to think further ahead, not something to act on today.
There’s a second, separate layer worth knowing about too: ASF’s Local Advisory Services include a Dedicated Accreditation Coordinator whose published scope covers providing SOPs, policies, templates, forms, and guidelines — provided progressively according to need, not limited to a fixed library. If a specific form a club needs genuinely doesn’t exist anywhere yet, that relationship is what produces it.
Common questions about this step
A: No. Only the free index of names and one free sample form are open to everyone. Full access to download the complete pack is unlocked specifically by reaching Accreditation — Certification alone doesn’t include it.
A: 92 are described as universal across fitness facility types, with the remainder depending on specific activities offered, such as aquatics or youth programmes.
A: Downloading the base pack is included. Having every document adapted with the organisation’s own name, dates, and logo costs five hundred dollars a year, for as long as that adaptation stays current.
A: So the facility knows exactly what it would eventually get, and can judge the quality for itself, before that’s a real consideration at all — not a reason to buy anything today.
The tool shows her a summary, one bar per standard. Nothing sent anywhere — just her own picture of where the club stands. Try the same idea yourself:
Three standards are genuinely weak. Now she knows exactly what to work on, using the free materials, before she ever applies for anything.
Common questions about this step
A: Green means the criterion is genuinely met, amber means it’s partly met or inconsistent, red means it isn’t met yet — the same three-colour system used throughout every later stage too.
A: Not at this free, private stage — there’s no pass or fail here. It’s simply information to work from before applying for anything.
A: Yes, as many times as useful. It’s designed to be rerun as the facility improves, not used once and discarded.
A: There’s no fixed cutoff at this private stage. Step 9 explains the real thresholds Certification actually checks — non-negotiable criteria at 100%, core criteria at 70%.
Ready to move from self-improvement to something official, Nino reads the Certification page. This, not full Accreditation, is the normal starting point — the same tool, the same criteria, at lighter thresholds, delivered locally through a National Adaptation Partner.
For a fitness club, it’s one hundred euros a month as a base membership. The assessment itself happens in two stages: an online video-call assessment first, at two hundred euros, and only if that’s passed, a short physical visit, at two hundred fifty euros. Full e-learning access is available separately at sixty-nine euros a month, no lock-in.
Nino decides she’s ready to apply.
Common questions about this step
A: Certification is faster, cheaper, and decided locally by a National Adaptation Partner; Accreditation is slower, more expensive, and decided internationally by ASF’s own committee.
A: €100 a month as a base membership, plus a two-hundred-euro online assessment and, only if that’s passed, a two-hundred-fifty-euro physical visit. Full e-learning access is a separate optional €69 a month.
A: Yes, nothing forces the sequence. But most facilities, including this one, start with Certification because it proves the same real standard at a fraction of the cost and time.
A: No, it’s differently scoped: Silver means the same criteria were genuinely verified, just at a lighter threshold and by a local rather than international body. It’s real, not a consolation prize.
Nino applies through her existing Certificate.ge registration — the same account from Step 4, now moving from “registered” to “in process.” She signs a short contract with the local National Adaptation Partner, and an online assessment is scheduled within days.
Common questions about this step
A: The local National Adaptation Partner — a coordinator reviews the self-declared evidence first, then a certified Monitor conducts the assessment.
A: Three to five days, based on the real process published on the Certification page.
A: The Director signs a formal declaration, and the facility needs to already be registered from Step 4 — there’s no separate new account to create.
A: No. The costs are the online assessment (€200) and, only if passed, the physical visit — there’s no separate application fee on top.
This is the moment that decides what happens next. The NAP Monitor reviews the evidence with Nino over video, criterion by criterion. Two outcomes are possible, and only one of them is a rejection.
If she isn’t ready yet, ASF doesn’t just turn her away. The Monitor tells her specifically what’s missing, and she goes back to the free self-prep tools from Step 6 until she is ready to try again — no penalty, no black mark, just more time.
For Tbilisi Fit & Wellness, the answer comes back: ready. That unlocks the physical visit, at two hundred fifty euros, a half-day, on site.
Common questions about this step
A: It isn’t a failure in the final sense — the Monitor explains specifically what’s missing, and the facility goes back to the free self-prep tools from Step 6 and tries again later, with no penalty.
A: One to two hours, conducted by video call rather than in person.
A: Only if the online assessment is passed — it’s the second, confirming stage, not a separate independent step.
A: Half a day, on site, the same length as the annual Monitor visit used later at the Accreditation stage.
The physical visit confirms what the online assessment found. Tbilisi Fit & Wellness is Certified, Silver badge, checkable on the public registry.
The one hundred euros a month doesn’t stop here, and it isn’t just a fee for a badge already earned. It funds continuing education for the staff, ongoing quality monitoring, and the expectation that the club keeps improving, not just maintains the bar it cleared on assessment day.
Common questions about this step
A: No. It’s an ongoing membership, not a one-time fee for a badge already earned — it funds continuing education, quality monitoring, and the expectation that the club keeps improving.
A: Staff keep their training current, the facility keeps using the evidence habits built during assessment, and the club remains reachable for its public registry listing to stay accurate.
A: No — that formal quarterly cycle is specific to Accreditation, covered later at Step 19. Certification’s ongoing requirement is the membership and genuine continued compliance, not a quarterly paperwork cycle.
A: Yes, membership can lapse like any subscription; the badge and registry listing reflect current status, not a permanent, one-time achievement.
Certification solved the original problem. But six months in, the hospital partner raises something new: their own network is expanding into insurers outside Georgia, and those insurers will want a credential that means the same thing everywhere, not just locally.
Nino doesn’t have to do anything about this. Certification stands on its own, indefinitely, as long as membership continues. But she starts looking at what going further would actually involve.
Common questions about this step
A: No. Certification stands independently; moving toward Accreditation is additional, not a replacement, and nothing about the Silver badge is lost while Accreditation is being pursued.
A: There’s no fixed timeline. For Tbilisi Fit & Wellness it was about six months, driven by a specific business reason, not a schedule ASF imposes.
A: The published fees are the same either way — Essential at €375/month or Complete at €500/month — but the evidence and habits already built during Certification genuinely shorten the work needed at the Accreditation stage.
A: That’s a complete, valid, permanent choice. Most of the facilities ASF works with stay at Certification indefinitely; Accreditation exists for those with a specific reason to need it.
| Essential | Complete | |
| Monthly | €375 | €500 |
| Membership + yearly visit | ✓ | ✓ |
| Member council + ombudsman | — | ✓ |
On the Fees page, Nino finds the Accreditation tier: Essential at three hundred seventy-five euros a month, Complete at five hundred. It asks for more than Certification — core criteria at 85% instead of 70%, four quarterly submissions a year, and the decision comes from ASF’s own independent committee rather than the local NAP. In exchange, it’s internationally portable, with a Gold badge instead of Silver.
Try the same decision yourself, comparing both real paths:
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Nino picks Essential. It’s a longer process than Certification was — twelve to twenty-four months instead of weeks — but it’s the credential her hospital partner’s expanding network will actually recognise.
Common questions about this step
A: Both include accreditation membership, the yearly in-person assessment, Coordinator and Monitor certification, and e-learning for all staff. Complete adds a member council, an independent ombudsman channel, and two consultancy sessions a month.
A: Mainly where members are directly affected by safety issues, not just staff — for a club without that specific pressure, Essential covers the same core standard.
A: Yes. The published fee is per facility, not per member or per square metre; an 11-person club and a 40-person club pay the same published rate.
A: Yes, this is a package choice, not a one-time decision — facilities can upgrade when their needs change.
Because she’s already registered and already Certified, applying for Accreditation is mostly a formality — the same facility record, upgrading its ambition. No application fee here either; billing begins once the first quarterly cycle actually starts.
Common questions about this step
A: No. The same Certificate.ge record from Step 4 is used — applying for Accreditation upgrades the existing facility record rather than creating a new one.
A: No. Registration and application are free; billing begins only once the first quarterly cycle actually starts.
A: This varies by facility, but the published Accreditation timeline overall runs twelve to twenty-four months from application to decision.
A: It stays active and visible on the registry the entire time — Accreditation is being pursued alongside it, not instead of it.
Levan T. — Administrator (internal)
Independent certified Monitor (external — ASF recommends, no commission)
Accreditation requires four named roles, with one rule that never bends: whoever coordinates internally can never also verify the work. Levan, already familiar with the process from Certification, becomes internal Coordinator. Nino engages an independent Monitor for the rest.
Common questions about this step
A: No, this is an absolute rule with no size exception — the two roles can never be held by the same person, regardless of facility size.
A: The Monitor needs to be ASF-certified for the relevant standard; specific industry background is not the same requirement as the certification itself.
A: ASF doesn’t set it and takes no commission — it’s a market rate negotiated directly between the facility and the independent Monitor, roughly €300/month for a weekly visit in this case.
A: Yes, nothing requires a different Coordinator for Accreditation — the same internal Coordinator can continue, which is part of why prior Certification experience shortens the learning curve.
E-learning for the whole club is included in Essential, on GMJ Academy, ASF’s own training platform. Levan works through Coordinator certification while every other role takes the course that matches their actual work.
GMJ Academy already has about a hundred courses live, and it’s growing fast: the catalogue is being built out toward more than four hundred, covering every role in every facility type ASF accredits, not just management.
Common questions about this step
A: All 11 — the same people trained for Certification, but the coursework goes deeper: core criteria now need to be met at 85% instead of 70%.
A: No. E-learning access for the whole club is included in Essential and Complete alike; nothing extra is billed for the courses themselves.
A: This varies by role; Levan’s Coordinator Certification course alone is a multi-module program, while trainers typically need one to two role-specific courses on top of what they completed for Certification.
A: Each completed course is logged per person, forming part of the evidence the Coordinator Portal and the Monitor both reference later.
Much of the evidence already exists from Certification. What’s new is the depth Accreditation expects — core criteria at 85%, not 70% — so Levan goes back through everything the Monitor originally verified and tightens it further.
Common questions about this step
A: The same categories of evidence — credential files, policies, logs — but Accreditation requires core criteria to be met at 85%, not Certification’s 70%, so gaps that were acceptable before now need closing.
A: For Tbilisi Fit & Wellness, roughly six weeks, mostly spent tightening existing logs and closing a handful of specific criteria rather than starting from nothing.
A: No — as Coordinator he leads it, but specific staff (trainers, cleaning team, security) contribute evidence for the criteria that apply to their own role.
A: Yes, most of it. Staff credential files and the emergency response plan from Certification carry over directly; only the criteria sitting between 70% and 85% need real additional work.
This is the Coordinator Portal Levan now uses every three months — something Certification never required, but Accreditation does.
Common questions about this step
A: For an 11-person club with seven standards to score, budget three to five hours per quarter, based on how long the first submission takes Levan.
A: It’s recorded honestly, with a note on what’s missing — a single red criterion doesn’t trigger an automatic penalty, but a pattern across multiple quarters would be visible to the Monitor at the next annual visit.
A: The same three-colour, criterion-by-criterion format, but this version is a real, dated submission on the record, not a private practice run.
A: Evidence needs to reflect current reality — a drill log from a year ago doesn’t support this quarter’s claim that drills are happening regularly.
This is Customer Voice, the same mechanism named in criterion 7.6 of the Fitness & Wellness standard, run day to day by PHIG (the Public Health Institute of Georgia) as ASF’s secretariat on the ground. A QR code goes up near reception. Feedback goes straight to ASF/PHIG, not to Nino first — the fastest way to catch a small problem before it becomes a complaint, and, if Nino wants it, a real monthly customer council besides.
Common questions about this step
A: Certification doesn’t include this formal mechanism — the full Customer Voice service, with its monthly council, is included specifically in Complete Accreditation; Essential doesn’t include it either.
A: Summarised patterns, not necessarily every individual submission — the point is that ASF/PHIG receives it directly, not that it’s hidden from the facility entirely.
A: It’s escalated by ASF, potentially informing the next quarterly review or the annual visit, rather than sitting unaddressed until the next scheduled check-in.
A: No. The QR code and feedback channel are part of the package Nino already pays for; there’s no separate fee for this specific mechanism.
Once a year, the independent Monitor spends a full day at the club — the annual visit — talking to staff Nino didn’t choose in advance.
Common questions about this step
A: Longer and more structured: a full day rather than a half-day, following a fixed schedule — evidence review, floor walk, staff interviews, and a closing conversation.
A: By the Monitor, not by Nino or Levan — specifically so the people interviewed aren’t pre-selected to give a favourable impression.
A: The visit is scheduled in advance as part of the annual cycle, but the specific staff interviewed and areas inspected aren’t chosen by the facility.
A: It’s raised directly in the closing conversation the same day, not held back for a later report the facility only sees after the fact.
The Monitor recommends. The Accreditation Decision Committee, with no relationship to this specific club, decides. For Tbilisi Fit & Wellness: Accredited.
Common questions about this step
A: People with no relationship to this specific facility — the structural point is separation from the Monitor who did the assessment, not a specific named panel this walkthrough lists.
A: Yes, in principle — the Monitor recommends, the ADC decides independently, which is precisely why the decision carries weight beyond one person’s judgement.
A: This isn’t specified with a fixed number of days in what’s published here; the structural guarantee is independence, not a particular turnaround time.
A: The facility would receive specific reasons, similar in spirit to the readiness gate at the Certification stage — not covered in detail in this walkthrough since Tbilisi Fit & Wellness’s outcome here is a decision to accredit.
The certificate is real, dated, and checkable on the public registry — the hospital partner can verify it in seconds.
One more thing becomes possible now, for the first time: full access to download the ISO 9001 Ready documentation pack for Fitness & Wellness. This was never something Nino could simply buy on its own — that access is unlocked specifically by reaching Accreditation. Now that she’s here, having every document adapted with Tbilisi Fit & Wellness’s own name, dates, and logo costs five hundred dollars a year.
Common questions about this step
A: It becomes accessible to download as part of reaching Accreditation; the adaptation service, at five hundred dollars a year, is a separate step she’d choose to take if she wants it customised to Tbilisi Fit & Wellness specifically.
A: No — this access is specifically unlocked by reaching full Accreditation, not by Certification, regardless of how long the club had held its Silver badge.
A: It places the organisation’s own name, dates, and logo into each document, rather than Nino needing to do that editing herself across all 103 files.
A: It recurs — five hundred dollars a year, for as long as the facility wants the adapted versions kept current.
A lot of people, hearing this whole story, assume it ends at the certificate. It doesn’t, and this is the part that’s easy to miss: Levan opens the Coordinator Portal again for 2027-Q2. Then 2027-Q3. Then Q4. Then the Monitor’s annual visit happens again in 2028, and again the year after that, and the quarterly rhythm never actually stops for as long as Tbilisi Fit & Wellness stays accredited.
Each quarter is a real submission, not a formality — the same seven standards, scored honestly, evidence attached. Each annual visit is a real Monitor, on site, talking to staff who weren’t chosen in advance, exactly like the very first one back in Step 21.
The certificate on the wall marks the day Tbilisi Fit & Wellness first met the bar. What actually protects the hospital partner’s trust in that badge, three years on, is that nothing about this rhythm has ever been allowed to quietly stop.
Common questions about this step
A: Not by design — each annual visit follows the same structure as the first one, full day, Monitor-chosen interviews, regardless of how many years the facility has been accredited.
A: A sustained pattern of missed quarterly submissions or failed annual visits, rather than any single bad quarter — this walkthrough doesn’t detail the exact lapse process, but the ongoing obligation is real, not symbolic.
A: The published package price (Essential at €375/month in this example) is what continues; nothing in this walkthrough shows it increasing simply because the facility has been accredited longer.
A: Not while remaining Accredited — the quarterly cycle is a defining feature of Accreditation specifically, unlike Certification, which doesn’t require it at all.
Free registration. Free staff verification. Free self-prep tools. A Certification that cost far less than Accreditation and could have been the whole story. And, eighteen months later, an Accreditation that was only a natural next step because the free groundwork and the Silver badge had already been done.
Nothing here was a shortcut, and nothing was locked behind a paywall until the club was actually ready to pay for it. That’s the whole design.
Common questions about this step
A: Certification: roughly €1,650 in the first year for a fitness club, reusing entirely free registration, staff verification, and self-prep work that comes before it.
A: Free registration and verification, roughly €1,650 for the first year of Certification, then Essential Accreditation at €4,500/year from the point of applying onward — the exact total depends on how many years elapse between stages.
A: Yes — that’s the real staff count used throughout this walkthrough: 1 Director, 1 Administrator doubling as Coordinator, 5 trainers, 3 cleaning staff, and 1 security guard, with no additional hires required.
A: Every price, process step, role, and linked page in this walkthrough reflects what’s actually published on the real ASF site at the time it was written — only the persona, Nino, and the specific club, Tbilisi Fit & Wellness, are illustrative.
Run an ambulatory clinic instead? Read that walkthrough.
