School Management/Checkin Software

[dvcochran]

I was asked if I could research CRM and/or check-in software for our main school. We are looking for some kind of automated check-in, like a card swipe at the gym. Where it goes from there will be determined. I read through an older thread that talked about a few but none of them mentioned automated check-in. Is anyone out there doing this? Any insight or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

So this isn't quite what you're looking for, but one school that I went to had something for their kids: All the kids who could attend a class had their name on a board, and they got to put a sticker on each day they attended. Kind of a reinforcement for them as well. I'd imagine that it only works for a small school, or one where people stick around for a long time though.

If your focus is adults, you could do a similar thing with stamps, but again it would only really work with smaller class sizes.

 

[dvcochran]

So this isn't quite what you're looking for, but one school that I went to had something for their kids: All the kids who could attend a class had their name on a board, and they got to put a sticker on each day they attended. Kind of a reinforcement for them as well. I'd imagine that it only works for a small school, or one where people stick around for a long time though.

If your focus is adults, you could do a similar thing with stamps, but again it would only really work with smaller class sizes.

We have had a card system for years. Similar is function but without the visual. I want to learn more about automated check-in and how you can use it. Ideally there would be some kind of kiosk people would swipe their card or key at. Then a CRM type software to utilize the information into:
Attendance record
Billing/Payment record
Registration
Promotional tools - Automated emails, etc...

I have looked at several but it seems they are focused at either managing visitors or do not have a check-in functionality. I plan to visit our local YMCA and see how they are doing it.

 

[Bruce7]

We have had a card system for years. Similar is function but without the visual. I want to learn more about automated check-in and how you can use it. Ideally there would be some kind of kiosk people would swipe their card or key at. Then a CRM type software to utilize the information into:
Attendance record
Billing/Payment record
Registration
Promotional tools - Automated emails, etc...

I have looked at several but it seems they are focused at either managing visitors or do not have a check-in functionality. I plan to visit our local YMCA and see how they are doing it.[/QUOTE

Before my son-in-law started working for major software companies,
He wrote custom software for small companies.
If you can find someone like him, you would have a better cheaper product.
College students studying Computer Science would be a good place to start.
There are a lot of excellent programmers out there that don't have college, but they are hard to find.

 

[Bruce7]

Before my son-in-law started working for major software companies,
He wrote custom software for small companies.
If you can find someone like him, you would have a better cheaper product.
College students studying Computer Science would be a good place to start.
There are a lot of excellent programmers out there that don't have college, but they are hard to find.

 

[dvcochran]

Before my son-in-law started working for major software companies,
He wrote custom software for small companies.
If you can find someone like him, you would have a better cheaper product.
College students studying Computer Science would be a good place to start.
There are a lot of excellent programmers out there that don't have college, but they are hard to find.

It may end up going that way. My company can come up with something but it is usually hard to be cost competitive when starting from scratch. The case/customer management software market is saturated. Hopefully I can find a reasonably priced product that does the check-in and threads easily. I am very familiar with bar code and mag readers so I have a good idea of what the component cost should be.

 

[WaterGal]

Any of the modern martial arts/gym CRMs should have this feature. These include MindBody, ZenPlanner, Spark, and Kicksite. You can get a barcode scanner that connects to your computer by USB, which should cost you maybe $100 on Amazon. Or you can have a tablet set up in a stand where the student types their name in and selects their class. These programs will also handle payment processing, send e-mails, track belt ranks, and more.

 

[dvcochran]

Any of the modern martial arts/gym CRMs should have this feature. These include MindBody, ZenPlanner, Spark, and Kicksite. You can get a barcode scanner that connects to your computer by USB, which should cost you maybe $100 on Amazon. Or you can have a tablet set up in a stand where the student types their name in and selects their class. These programs will also handle payment processing, send e-mails, track belt ranks, and more.

I have looked at three, MindBody doesn't have to check-in features, spark is way too big in data size, ZenPlanner is pricey, and Kicksite looks interesting. I do not want to go cloud based as this point so that filters out several offerings.

 

[WaterGal]

Mindbody is literally built for gyms, and IIRC from the demo I did seemed to have the most robust front-desk features of any of them (including full integration with a cash drawer, which nobody else I've seen offers); I would be extremely surprised if it didn't support letting students check themselves in. It is, however, the most expensive of the options I listed.

I'm not sure that there's anything on the market that's not cloud-based. Studio Organizer used to be a desktop software (that's what we used when we first opened our school, and used a billing company to collect payments), but I'm pretty sure they're cloud-based now. If your location can't support cloud-based software for whatever reason, you might have to pay for someone to design that for you from scratch.