Fencing Business Software?

[edew]

What do folks recommend for software to keep track of the business of running a fencing club? I guess the primary functions are:

* keep track of names and contact info
* keep track of club membership payment, lessons or classes payment
* keep track of lessons or class schedules
* remind people to pay dues or class fees
* keep track of fencing-specific items like upcoming events that the client should attend, equipment neeed, etc.

I'm sure there should be something of the sort. Probably the same sort of software used by gyms and other athletic facilities to keep track of clients.

Any suggestions?

[Artisan]

Quickbooks is pretty versatile.

[Purple Fencer]

Originally Posted by edew

What do folks recommend for software to keep track of the business of running a fencing club? I guess the primary functions are:

* keep track of names and contact info
* keep track of club membership payment, lessons or classes payment
* keep track of lessons or class schedules
* remind people to pay dues or class fees
* keep track of fencing-specific items like upcoming events that the client should attend, equipment neeed, etc.

I'm sure there should be something of the sort. Probably the same sort of software used by gyms and other athletic facilities to keep track of clients.

Any suggestions?

Contact SwordPlay in Burbank and talk to Brian Danner (the salle manager). I think we had some custome stuff written a year or so ago, and he could probably give you a good idea of how it works. Best time...probably Tuesday around 5pm.

[mfp]

Originally Posted by edew

I guess the primary functions are:

* keep track of names and contact info
* keep track of club membership payment, lessons or classes payment
* keep track of lessons or class schedules
* remind people to pay dues or class fees
* keep track of fencing-specific items like upcoming events that the client should attend, equipment neeed, etc.

The better club software I've seen also allows members to check their account status and reminders, update their contact info and schedule lessons for themselves from anywhere using a web interface. (Luddites without web access just call in or walk in).

Typically after the switch to a member accessible web system, accounts are paid in a more timely manner, time spent on administrivial phone calls is reduced, postage costs go down and instructor/resource scheduling gets more efficient. For example when a lesson slot opens up, it's more likely to be picked up by another member if they can easily find out about it. Also some operations have found that allowing members to easily book on line has led to a sense of more "competition" for slots and better resource utilization and revenues.

However I have yet to see a fencing club use such software; it's becoming more common among flying and sailing clubs, though.

[wflaschka]

Originally Posted by mfp

The better club software I've seen also allows members to .... it's becoming more common among flying and sailing clubs, though.

mfp -- do you remember a specific club or website using this software, or do you recall the software name, or a logo? If there is commercial or opensource software, I can start looking, b/c this software is also something I could use. AFAIK Quickbooks is good for invoicing, but a club would need an Invoicing/Scheduling system with an online component.

[mfp]

Originally Posted by wflaschka

mfp -- do you remember a specific club or website using this software, or do you recall the software name, or a logo? If there is commercial or opensource software, I can start looking, b/c this software is also something I could use. AFAIK Quickbooks is good for invoicing, but a club would need an Invoicing/Scheduling system with an online component.

How about turning it around and looking at an online scheduling system with a backend Quickbooks component? A bunch of flying clubs use scheduling software from "Schedule Pointe":

http://www.schedulepointe.com/

I don't know of any of their customers near you, but if edew is interested in talking to clubs using Schedule Pointe, Diamond Aviation at San Carlos airport and the Palo Alto Flying Club at Palo Alto are users.

http://www.ksql.com
http://www.paloaltoflyingclub.com

Schedule Pointe hosts the scheduling website(s) and is run more like a service than a software package. You pay a monthly fee for the service instead of buying and hosting the software yourself. There used to be a free 3 month trial; perhaps that's still available.

I believe the Schedule Pointe package is flexible enough to be adapted to fencing club use. Most of the other software packages I've seen have been very flying club specific and/or custom jobs. However since the Schedule Pointe software/service is a very useful system, there very well may be other companies with competing products.

[hpfencing]

MFP--this looks like a great idea, however the links on the homesite of the site don't work.... Maybe there server is just own today though.

Where else does everyone else use?

I curently have all my "stuff' on an excell spreadsheat. i have a sheet for $$ like a bank book, a payment sheet for checking and scheudling students, and a contact sheet for getting in touch with them but the system is not the easiest to use or find info in.

[mfp]

Originally Posted by hpfencing

MFP--this looks like a great idea, however the links on the homesite of the site don't work.... Maybe there server is just own today though.

All the links on the schedulepointe.com site work just fine for me via both of the ISPs I have service with. I'd guess the problem is on your ISP's end.

[hpfencing]

Links are working fine now. Thanks for the site it looks great and we are going to look into it. Do you have a clue how much it cost a month to use?

[wflaschka]

Schedule Pointe looks nice, I can see how it would be useful to many clubs / schools. Missing (at least from the Health Club demo I went thru) is downloadable reports and invoicing based on utilization of trainers(coaches), courts(classes), and membership fees.

I did a reverse lookup on Yahoo. Schedule Pointe's competitors are here: http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Ec...sk_Management/. So there are a lot of options to check out. Some might include invoicing.

Thanks, mfp, for the quick and useful response!!

[dreadfoily]

I would also keep track of: Grades, as in their results from competitions and you may find something designed for Teachers.

Also I would look for things that can do projections, like: what kind of software could crunch up some numbers for your students and come up with a 'scenerio' for their future training tactics.

[edew]

No, I don't want that. I just want a way to keep track of money coming in and for what purpose. If fencer X paid $200 for several things, I want to keep track of what things (lessons, group classes, membership dues, etc.)

[zeissg]

I saw this software when looking around the internet. The vendor seems to have a broad selection of club management software (equestrian, martial arts, etc.)... I haven't used it, so I can't vouch for it, but I think it has a trial download.

http://www.getphysicalsoftware.com/fencingsoft/

Gary.

[mfp]

Originally Posted by wflaschka

Schedule Pointe looks nice, I can see how it would be useful to many clubs / schools. Missing (at least from the Health Club demo I went thru) is downloadable reports and invoicing based on utilization of trainers(coaches), courts(classes), and membership fees.

The various "Reports" menu items for the "System User" in the "Flight School" demo are probably closer to what you're looking for than what's in the Health Club demo.

I'm more familiar with the flying club software from myfbo.com than Schedule Pointe, however the members I know at Schedule Pointe enabled clubs seem pretty happy with it. In addition to online scheduling, both offer support for clubs and members to view invoices and account statements online as well as tracking payments made on members accounts, charges for monthly membership fees, money spent on group classes, money spent on instructors, money spent on equipment and money spent on aircraft and fuel. Drop the bit about aircraft, change "fuel" to "beer" and you're not far off from what many fencing clubs need.

The reason I suggested checking out Schedule Pointe rather than MyFBO is that the MyFBO package has lots of other stuff that's too specific to flying, while the Schedule Pointe folks seem open to adapting their software for other uses.

[Craig]

This is old, but still relevant to the clubs discussion. Moving over.

[aamct2]

When in doubt (or lack of finances), there are always spreadsheets to keep track of anything.

An example of a free office suite is called OpenOffice. It includes a nice spreadsheet program, called Calc. It's available at:

http://www.openoffice.org/

Spreadsheets may not be fancy or meet all your needs, but they can be extremely useful.

[lanyingjie]

Okay now that I see this thread, am just going try use this to ask if there's any open source solution that we could adapt to run a club?

My coach has tasked me to develop a web based system and I'm hoping to use some open source system without having to write one from scratch, simply don't have that kind of time. Open source is preferable, and if possible, based on PHP so I can hack around with it and maybe rewrite bits I don't like.

Any ideas? Or should I just stick to a normal Mambo CMS or something.

[veeco]

For scheduling classes and lessons: Google Calendar
For keeping track of moneys: Google Spreadsheets
For lesson plans: Google Docs
For emails: Gmail

Need I say more?? :-)

[aamct2]

I don't know about pre-built open-source web-based solutions. But most will probably use MySQL as a back-end database to store everything. More information about MySQL:

http://www.mysql.com/

Building a simple one using PHP shouldn't be hard. O'Reilly Publishing does a great book on making PHP websites that use MySQL. More information about this book:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webdbapps2/index.html

As for not web-based solutions, a lot can be done with spreadsheets. You can keep track of just about everything with a simple spreadsheet. You have to manually enter the data, but it's not hard. The best free open-source spreadsheet (in my opinion) is Calc. It's a part of OpenOffice. It also has the advantage of being able to save/edit in most Microsoft file formats. More information about OpenOffice:

http://www.openoffice.org/

~aamct2

[wahrman]

shameless plug

Originally Posted by veeco

For scheduling classes and lessons: Google Calendar
For keeping track of moneys: Google Spreadsheets
For lesson plans: Google Docs
For emails: Gmail

Need I say more?? :-)