The camp office, from the first application to the last bus home

The situation

A camp office is quiet for eight months and then everything happens at once. Applications arrive by mail, email and phone; the bunk list lives on a whiteboard that nobody is allowed to erase; a spreadsheet says who paid, until it doesn't; and the forms that are still missing are discovered the week the buses leave.

The people running it are not office managers by trade. They are the director, a relative and whoever is free. Camp management software existed, but it was built for large American camps and priced like it, and none of it knew what a bunk, a division or a camp mother is.

What we built

• Families apply online once: campers, grades, forms, signatures and a card payment, through a link the camp sends.
• The office accepts or declines in a few clicks, and places campers into bunks on the screen instead of the whiteboard.
• Every balance and every missing form is one list, so the office knows who still owes and what is still outstanding without asking.
• One message reaches every parent, by email, text or a recorded phone call, and a person approves it before it goes.
• Payments and charges flow into the camp's own books, with QuickBooks and Xero connected, so nothing is entered twice.

It knows what time of year it is

Before registration it is about last year's families and the price list. During registration it is applications, acceptances and bunks. In the weeks before camp it is forms, buses and balances. In camp it is the infirmary log, the hotline and the messages home. The screens change with the season, so the office is never looking at the wrong thing.

Families do the typing

A parent fills in the application once, on a phone, with the campers, the grades and the forms the camp asks for. Nothing is typed again in the office. A family that came last year is invited back with their details already filled in.

Two ways to have it

A camp can own its copy outright, on hosting in its own name, and run it with its own staff. Or we run it for them: the setup, the phone number and hotline, the card payments and the season call, for a yearly price. Either way the camp's information is the camp's.