BAYS Sporting Facilities started using Pitchbooking in 2020. Founded and operated by Andy & Suzy Rounding, BAYS is a charity set up to provide football facilities and coaching to children and young adults.

BAYS works alongside other charities that support under-privelaged children and children with mental health issues. The facility also supports the local school with their sports curriculum and provides a premium 3G pitch for hire by local grassroots football clubs and 5aside groups in the community.

We spoke to Andy to get some feedback on his experience using Pitchbooking so far.

“Prior to using Pitchbooking we used a combination of spreadsheets and calendars that recorded the bookings and manually created invoices. With changes and cancellations, particularly during Covid, the process was hugely time consuming and ineffective. We looked for an online solution that did away with the spreadsheets and one that could invoice automatically.”

The 3G pitch at BAYS is split into quarters, enabling four bookings at any one time and maximising the potential for revenue generation on the facility. Over the course of the last year, over fifty frequent and vetted users have had bookings on the pitch, ranging from club coaching, team training & matches and casual 5aside games.

Managing all of these users and streamlining their bookings is only part of Andy’s day to day. What administrative changes or differences has he noticed since he started using Pitchbooking?

“Loads! The amount of time to manage the process has been cut enormously.”

The majority of users at BAYS are long standing block bookers. Using traditional spreadsheets and calendars can be very time consuming. One of the main complaints we hear from facility managers when we talk to them is just how burdensome this process is. That’s why we recommend Pitchbooking Subscriptions for those who handle a high volume of block bookings and it’s what we recommended to BAYS during their initial set up. They are now processing over £1500 per week in subscription bookings through the system.

Subscriptions enable facility managers to set up a block booking for the required period of time. The booking will recur automatically each week and more importantly, Managers can then choose to automate the weekly payment or in BAYS’ case, generate invoices to collect the payment manually.

“[Pitchbooking] takes away 95% of the admin burden of recording, monitoring and billing users. Most of our users are block bookers so sending regular invoices is easy. Using the calendar we can easily see who has booked which pitch, when for and then use the invoicing feature to sort the payment.”

To find out more about Pitchbooking Subscriptions click here.

Now that a year has passed since BAYS have been using Pitchbooking, we asked Andy for the three key benefits he has experienced.

1. “Huge time savings.”
2. “Better accuracy on usage & no double booking errors.”
3. “Better utilisation of the pitches leading to improved revenue.”

To learn more about how Pitchbooking can help manage your facilities, visit our solution page or contact us on info@pitchbooking.com