Case Study Preston Hedges Trust

For the Trust and schools, the biggest impact has been time saved and having additional income in our budget.  The fact that the service not only pays for itself, but has actually increased our income, is a huge bonus.  The parents having access to a dedicated point of contact, even in the holidays, as well as 24/7 booking, makes a substantial difference.  The fact that it’s easy to make bookings (both ad-hoc and permanent sessions), and Childcare Bookings’ ability to accept all types of payments (including the endless types of vouchers!), is great.

We wanted to provide a quality wrap around provision, whilst reducing administration for all staff members across schools and in the central Trust team.  In order to do this, we needed to maximise the profit of the clubs to support our budget, and remove the issue of bad debt that had accrued.  We also needed to provide families and carers with a professional booking and admin service that they could rely on.

It has completely changed my team’s involvement with wraparound admin – it’s been flipped on its head!  The central team no longer have any dealings with payment queries, and the removal of admin is such that we have been able to reduce our headcount, saving valuable money in our budget.  Office staff, and club staff, have been able to concentrate on their day jobs without having to deal with the typical booking and payment queries, or the day-to-day tasks such as managing registers and all the booking admin that goes with running the clubs.

A significant change is that I now have confidence in the booking system and its processes; before we were managing registers and bookings in excel, which, despite best efforts, is always prone to human error.  We now know registers are 100% accurate, and updated instantly.

Fantastic!  Right from the start the team have been completely engaged, they took the heavy lifting out of the onboarding process, providing communication templates and support throughout.  The onboarding process was much easier than I expected.  The whole team have been friendly, and nothing has ever been too much trouble.  We have worked really well together, adapting and reviewing processes as needed.

Our Club Managers report that “Parents find the booking system easy to use – they like having total control over booking their sessions, and that there is an administrator on-hand to help them out when required.  There have been no negative comments!”  The managers themselves say “The system is really user friendly, it’s very quick to check children and parent info, and the fact that it is paperless is a real bonus.  We can collect and dismiss children much more quickly and efficiently, and the fact that all of the booking & payment admin is done for us makes life much easier”.