Booking Software for Community Centres in Ireland
For the centre manager, the CE scheme staff on reception and the board: one diary of every room, hire invoiced in euro, and a booking page the community can use when the centre is closed.
A community centre run by a development association is four jobs at once: a crèche at nine, a youth club at four, set dancing at seven, and a christening party on Saturday. Community centre management software that keeps all four straight without a full-time administrator.
Ten rooms and hundreds of bookings in one live diary
The main hall is only the start. There is the sports hall, the crèche room, the meeting rooms, the kitchen and often a youth café, and on a weekday evening most of them are in use together. Axiom shows all of them on one grid, so whoever is on reception can answer "is anything free on Thursday?" without ringing anyone.
- Room-by-Room Visual Scheduler
Every room sits side by side on one screen, so a free hour in the meeting room is as easy to spot as a clash in the sports hall.
- Ten Rooms, No Overlaps
A booking that would overlap another in the same room is stopped before it is confirmed, so two groups never turn up for the same space.
- A Login for Each Person
The manager, the reception staff and the directors each sign in as themselves, with access set to the job they do. When a CE placement ends, that login is removed and nothing else changes.
Fill the weekly timetable once and let it run
Active Retirement on a Monday, the Foróige club on a Wednesday, Irish dancing on a Saturday morning. Each regular group goes in once with its pattern, and the term lays itself out in the timetable, with an invoice ready to prepare for any group you charge.
- A Term's Worth in One Go
Set a group's night and how many weeks it runs for, and the timetable builds itself out to the end of term. Fortnightly and monthly groups work the same way.
- One Change, Every Future Date
If yoga swaps Tuesday for Thursday, change the series once rather than 52 separate entries, and every later date moves with it.
- A Hundred Invoices, Not a Hundred Evenings
Each regular hirer's invoice comes off their own bookings with the dates and charges on it, in euro. Whoever does the accounts reads and sends, one group at a time, instead of building each one.
Nobody plans a birthday party during office hours
Room hire for a kids' party or a christening is usually arranged in the evening, after the centre has shut. Your own booking page shows which rooms are free and takes the request then, and payment can be taken online once the booking is confirmed.
- Every Room's Availability, Out in the Open
A parent looking for a Saturday afternoon sees what is free in each room and asks for it there, instead of leaving a message for Monday.
- Card Payments for One-Off Hires
Accept deposits and full payments online for events and one-off hirers. The money goes straight to the centre's account, which means fewer cash boxes at reception.
- The Right Note for Each Kind of Booking
Each booking type carries its own short note on the confirmation email, so a sports hall hirer gets different instructions from a meeting room hirer, along with a pointer to your terms.
- What Comes In Over the Counter
A fair share of a centre's income still arrives as cash at reception or a cheque in the post. It goes onto the same booking record as the card payments, so month end is one reconciliation and not two.
Community groups, residents and businesses, each handled on their own terms
The tidy towns committee, a residents' association, a local business running a training day: each pays differently and some you know far better than others. Axiom keeps every hirer on file with its own history, and you decide which bookings go straight through and which wait for someone to approve them.
- New Hirers Checked First
A request from an unknown hirer can wait for your team to approve it, while a long-standing group goes straight through. A paying hirer is assured nothing will be taken unless the booking is approved.
- Hirer Profiles
Every organisation that hires from you gets its own account, showing who to contact, what they have booked over the years, what they have been invoiced and what they still owe.
- Notes Where the Next Person Will See Them
Anything your team needs to remember about a hirer goes on their record as a note, so it is written down rather than left in the head of whoever took the call.
- Hirers' Details Out of Personal Inboxes
Contact details sit in one system, behind each person's own login, rather than in volunteers' phones. If a hirer or the Data Protection Commission asks where personal details are kept, there is one answer.
When a funder asks, the answer is already in the system
Whether you're reporting to Pobal or the county council, applying for a grant, or presenting accounts to your board, Axiom won't write the return for you. What it does is hold every booking, invoice and payment accurately in one place, so the figures behind it are complete rather than reconstructed.
- Figures That Reconcile Without Being Made To
Every payment and credit note shows what the account stood at before and after it went through. Your treasurer and the centre's auditor open the same account and read the same numbers off it.
- Six Years of Tuesdays, Still on File
Each booking stays attached to the room it used, the group that made it and what they paid. When a group tells you they have always had the small hall on a Tuesday, you can check.
- The Three Hirers Who Have Slipped Behind
With a hundred groups on the books, the hard part is spotting the few who have quietly stopped paying. Every account carries its own balance and the dashboard carries the total.
- VAT as It Applies to You
Tax rates are set by the centre, so an invoice carries VAT at the rate you have set, or none if the centre is not registered for VAT.
The documents a funder or the council asks to see
Grant applications and service agreements ask you to evidence the policies you say you have, and they rarely ask at a convenient moment. A document vault for the centre keeps them in one place, with every earlier version kept alongside the current one.
- Your Own Policies, Filed by Category
The child safeguarding statement, the safety statement, the fire safety plan. Set up the categories your centre actually uses rather than working around somebody else's list.
- Evidence That Holds Up Later
A funder asking about last year's programme wants the policy as it stood then. Every version is kept and dated, so the answer is a document rather than a recollection.
- With the Hirer, Not in a Folder
A regular group's public liability cover and its Garda vetting confirmation can be attached to its account, so whoever is checking a booking finds the paperwork next to the hirer it belongs to.
- Ready When a Grant Is Checked
A refurbishment paid for by the Community Centres Investment Fund comes with a grant agreement and the commitments in it. Keep the agreement and its supporting documents in the same vault rather than assembling them again when the grant is checked.
- A Hundred Groups, All Expiring on Different Dates
Nobody holds that in their head. Each document carries its own review date and whoever is named on it is emailed before it comes round, so you find out a certificate has lapsed before the group turns up without one.
Six rooms let at once, and one number over all of them
Each room has its own limit, but the building has a limit of its own too. Give the centre a maximum and Axiom adds up every booking in every room that overlaps in time, and checks the total against it.
- Counted Across Every Room
The sports hall, the two meeting rooms and the studio running together are added up, not judged one at a time. A centre reaches its limit through the total, which is exactly how it fills up in practice.
- At the Time It Actually Overlaps
Two groups that share only half an hour are counted together for that half hour, and separately either side of it. A morning group and an afternoon group never add up.
- Refused Before It Is Taken
A booking that would push the centre past its maximum is turned down as it is made, by your own team or by a hirer booking online, rather than being found later by somebody reading the diary.
Centres that prefer to judge each hire themselves can leave the capacity check switched off. When it is on, Axiom works from the headcount a booking was taken for. How busy the room gets on the night is still for your staff to manage.
Between one group leaving and the next arriving
The set dancing class wants the floor clear, the AGM wants rows of chairs and the party wants tables along the wall. Each booking carries its layout and its extras, so the caretaker knows how to set the room before the group arrives.
- Who Turns Round Which Room
Chairs, tables and the audio and video kit get attached to the booking that needs them, so whoever is resetting a room can see what the next group has asked for rather than guessing at it.
- The Layout Chosen When the Room Is Booked
Save each room arrangement your centre uses, with notes on how to set it out. Whoever takes the booking picks one, so the team resetting the room knows what it should look like before they walk in.
- One Room Closed, the Rest Open
Slots are opened room by room, so a fortnight of work on the sports hall leaves the meeting rooms alone. Take the sports hall's slots out and nothing can be booked into it while the work runs.
The centre is there for the community,
not for the paperwork.
Most centres run on a small paid team, CE scheme staff and a volunteer board. Every hour Axiom saves at the desk is an hour back for the groups that use the building.
One system for everything
The diary, the invoices, the hirer records and the documents in one place, instead of a spreadsheet, an inbox and a filing cabinet.
Less of the repetitive part
A term of bookings goes in once, each date can prepare its own invoice, and confirmations and cancellations go out by email without anyone writing them.
Figures ready for the board
Bookings, invoices and payments are kept up to date as they happen, so a board meeting or a grant return starts from a record that already exists.
Ready to run the whole centre from one diary?
Start free for 28 days, no card required. Send us your rooms, your regular groups and your hire rates, and we'll set them up and stay with you while the team settles in.
Start free for 28 days. No card required.
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