Key concepts

Protocol has a lot of features, but they all rest on a few core ideas. Understanding these makes everything else obvious.

Clients

A client is a person you coach. Each client has a record that gathers everything about them in one place, across seven tabs: Overview, Tracking, Calendar, Library, Personal, History and Billing. Personal holds the contact details plus the fitness, health, nutrition and behavioral profiles; Tracking holds check-ins, biometrics, workouts, habits, nutrition, labs and form submissions. The client list is your roster; the client record is where day-to-day coaching happens.

Vault templates vs. assignments

This is the most important distinction in Protocol:

• A Vault template is reusable content you build once: a workout, a meal plan, a multi-phase program, an intake form. It lives in your Vault and belongs to you, not to any one client.
• An assignment is a Vault template given to a specific client. Assigning doesn’t move the template and it doesn’t link to it either. Protocol takes a full, independent copy: every phase, day, workout and meal is duplicated into a new plan owned by that client.

That independence is the whole point. Edit the template afterwards and nothing changes for clients who already have it; edit one client’s copy, adjust their weights, swap an exercise, and the template stays untouched. So the same template can be assigned to as many clients as you like, and each of them can drift from it without disturbing anybody else.

The one exception is deliberate. When you assign a program from a client’s record you can switch on Link to template, and that plan’s content stays managed by the template instead: only its dates and status are editable on the client. It is off by default, and you can convert a linked plan into a normal independent copy later.

Roles

Protocol has two main roles:

• Coach / trainer: you. Full access to the dashboard, the Vault, billing, and settings.
• Client: the people you coach. They use the mobile app, not the web dashboard.

You can invite additional coaches and manage them under Team management in the profile menu.

Your app (white-label)

Your clients experience Protocol through a branded mobile app. Under My App in the sidebar you preview it and set its branding. Clients use the app to follow workouts, log progress, track nutrition, message you, book sessions, complete check-ins, and buy your products.

Where billing happens: two different things

Two billing surfaces exist and they’re easy to confuse:

• Shop, in the sidebar: how you bill your clients (products, subscriptions, invoices).
• Billing, in the profile menu: your own Protocol CRM subscription.

When this help center says “billing,” it means the Shop unless it says otherwise.