Booking software for swim schools in Australia: terms, ratios and make-up lessons

Ask anyone running a swim school what eats their week and you will hear the same answer: make-ups. Children get sick more than any other customer group in any class business, terms are ten weeks long, and a parent who paid for ten lessons and got seven will ask about the other three.

That is not really a scheduling problem. It is a bookkeeping problem wearing a scheduling costume, and it is solved by how you SELL the term rather than by how you manage the calendar.

We make BookAndGo. Most of what follows is just how learn to swim works.

1. Sell the term as a block, and the make-up problem dissolves

Most schools sell a ten week term and then run make-ups as a separate ledger: a notebook, a spreadsheet tab, or the front desk remembering that the Patel family is owed two.

That ledger is the thing that breaks. It survives thirty families and collapses at a hundred, and it collapses in the worst way, which is quietly and in your favour, so parents notice before you do.

Sold as a prepaid block of ten lessons, a missed week is not a credit you owe and must track. It is simply a lesson still sitting on their balance, used at any class with room. The balance does the accounting, and a parent can see it themselves rather than ringing to ask.

2. Class size is a safety ratio. Treat it as one.

In most class businesses capacity is a commercial decision. In a swim school it is not. Four preschoolers to one teacher is a supervision decision, and the pressure to make it five for one family who really wants Tuesday is exactly the pressure the number exists to resist.

Put the real ratio on each class and let the booking page stop enrolments there. It removes the conversation entirely, which is the point. Nobody has to say no, because the page already did.

It is also worth setting different limits per level. A Water Babies class with a parent in the water for every child is a different supervision picture from six school age swimmers doing laps, and one blanket number for both is wrong twice.

3. Ask the medical questions properly, and ask them as choices

A teacher standing on the deck needs a small number of facts before a child is in the water, and free text buries them.

• Grommets or ear tubes. This is not a yes or no: the useful answers are no, yes with ear plugs, or yes with no head submersion, because each one changes what the teacher does.
• Asthma, epilepsy or seizures. Not because it stops a child swimming, but because it changes who stands where.
• Current ability, as a real scale rather than a parent's estimate. 'Never been in a pool' and 'can swim 25 metres unaided' put a child in very different classes, and a vague middle answer puts them in the wrong one for a fortnight.
• Anything that makes them nervous. Water confidence is most of the first term for a lot of children, and knowing the cause saves weeks.

Ask these at enrolment and they arrive before the child does. Ask them on the deck and you are asking a parent to recall a medical history over pool noise.

4. The free assessment is your enrolment funnel

A short level assessment before enrolment is worth running free. It puts every new swimmer in the right class, which prevents the fortnight of a child being bored or out of their depth, and it gets a family on site and talking to a teacher.

Charging for it reduces enrolments by more than it collects. Price it at zero and treat it as marketing, because that is what it is.

5. Waitlist the classes that fill

After school slots fill first and stay full. When a family withdraws in week four, that place is worth six weeks of revenue and it is worth nothing if it sits empty because nobody knew it opened.

A waitlist on the full class turns that into an automatic offer. In a business where one more swimmer in an existing class costs you nothing, an empty place in a running class is the most expensive thing on your timetable.

6. What to use

• Purpose built swim school platforms exist and handle levels, progression and assessments in depth. If you run multiple pools with dozens of teachers and formal progression reporting, that depth is worth paying for.
• General booking tools usually cannot express a class with a fixed capacity, which rules them out for anything other than private lessons.
• BookAndGo: classes with real per level capacity, terms sold as prepaid blocks that double as your make-up system, custom medical intake, waitlists, Australian data hosting and GST invoicing, flat AU$59 per month excluding GST with no per swimmer fee.