Carol's investment in Bookwhen returned 10 times the value

Love Outdoor Learning provides outdoor activities for children in Scotland.

“It’s the type of thing that we would have done when we were kids,” owner, Carol, explains, “kids just don’t get outside and do that anymore. We’ve got weekend groups, weekday groups and we provide activities for schools, after-school clubs, holiday clubs, and training for the staff as well.”

As the number of bookings grew with their success Carol found Bookwhen when looking for a solution to help her save time on administering bookings and payments. She says, “I researched at first … Facebook business groups are a wonderful place to get recommendations so I went there and asked ‘Who uses what? and what are the pros and cons?’ Yours was the one that consistently had quality customer service. That was a big advantage, I knew I would have the support there for when I invariably have questions!”

“When we started, I was speaking directly to the parents for bookings, sending them an invoice and keeping track of it all on a spreadsheet. It was very time-consuming!” Carol says. Bookwhen automates this and, she explains, lets her, “monitor who is coming back to us,” via reporting, “I can look at exactly how many children I’ve got booked into each activity which means when it comes to my marketing and advertising I know exactly which groups I need to push, it lets me know what I need for resources to get my groups organised, it lets me know what staffing I need. It tells me all of that immediately! And it makes us look more professional as well!”

“The groups we run for 2-year-olds obviously aren’t appropriate for 16-year-olds, but the parents don’t always see that so it’s great being able to give them enough information prior to booking … Just the fact that we can put that all over the booking site and have that handy makes such a big difference!” Different ticket types can be created for different activities and recurring dates and entry duplication are useful tools to save time when populating schedules, “It is easy to get the groups out there really quickly!” Carol says.

Carol enthuses about the impact of Bookwhen on her business, “the money I spent on it I’ve recouped in time, 10 times over so it’s definitely worth it because the time that it has saved me is just invaluable!”