How Out There Forest School’s business grew from the woods

Jo founded Out There Forest school to focus on the holistic development of children

giving them the opportunity to develop personal and social skills in the natural environment. From a fully outdoor setting, with no permanent buildings at all, she needed to find a way to manage the administration of popular events whilst ensuring that she conformed to all the essential regulations associated with handling children’s data. “If you remove the walls then there are no walls to climb, there is no conflict and they are different children. That’s what I love the most,” she explains.

By design, the environment that Jo has created is removed from typical places to carry out administrative tasks. Bookwhen’s fully mobile platform was able to offer a solution, including schedule management and a payment platform, without compromising on the transformative experience Jo strives to provide, allowing her to manage the school’s bookings from any device, and any location.

“I’m not good at admin or technologically minded,” Jo laughs, “frankly, if I can do it, anyone can!” Some of her groups run weekly for 6 weeks and, with Bookwhen’s Course tickets, she doesn’t have to worry about overbooking, even when single ‘drop-in’ tickets are also available. In addition, if attendees join the course after it has started “It automatically pro-rates it and calculates the remaining amount!”

Data protection regulations are a necessary complication, “I need to know that information is in a secure format and that I am able to collect it easily,” Jo explains, “this was a challenge before because I had to find the form, get it filled in and make sure I kept it.” It is also important to establish children’s ages so they are placed in the appropriate group. Bookwhen’s customisable booking forms find out whatever Jo needs to know. Crucially, essential questions can be made mandatory, child-specific events can distinguish fields that younger attendees don’t have to complete, and attachments can be added to the event listing or confirmation emails so parents are fully informed of any requirements in advance. “Being able to do it all in one hit using Bookwhen is really handy.”

For Jo, the results she has been able to achieve through Bookwhen have been exceptional, “For what I pay, the time and the money I’ve saved on an admin person is really unbelievable,” she told us. This saved time has been devoted to coming up with new and exciting learning experiences for her students, and she has also seen an increase in attendance numbers because of her Bookwhen page, “It looks really professional and we definitely get more people booking because they look on Facebook, or on the website, and they can just go and book it.”