Pit Farm Tennis Club reduce renewal and payment admin with LoveAdmin

Pit Farm Tennis Club

Pit Farm is a friendly, welcoming tennis club for all ages and abilities based in the heart of the beautiful countryside town, Guildford. The club which dates back to around 1897 boasts an incredible history and used to be home to key warm-up tournaments for Wimbledon, with the likes of the Australian Margaret Court playing on its grounds. Pit Farm currently has around 500 members which comprises adults and juniors who take part in everything from organised club tennis to social events and from coaching sessions to private lessons.

The Challenge - Before LoveAdmin

Like many other clubs out there, Pit Farm used to manage their membership admin in a very manual way. New member information was typed into spreadsheets, renewing members had to fill out paper forms and return them, emails were sent out using bcc posing a GDPR risk and members were paying their fees via cheque or bank transfer which meant time had to be allocated every week to cross-check bank statements against who had paid.

Managing their membership admin like this meant that there was a lack of easy access to information, a lack of accountability of work completed and a lack of ability to get tasks done quickly. Whilst the workload was split between 2 membership secretaries, adult and junior, they were still spending 7 hours a week on membership admin which increased to 25-30 hours during their annual renewal period. As all of their staff are volunteers, it was essential to reduce the time taken for these tasks.

The Solution - After LoveAdmin

After discovering LoveAdmin from a Google Search, Max Beech, Junior Membership Secretary took a deeper diver into LoveAdmin and a few other club management systems. The final decision came down to LoveAdmin for a number of reasons with the obvious one being that it does everything Pit Farm was looking for. Secondly, LoveAdmin provided a big win because of its ability to link family accounts for siblings and parents who come to the club together and lastly, Pit Farm wanted a system which is continuously improving – something that didn’t really come across with competitors. In particular, the club is looking forward to integrating their court booking system and track attendance using QR codes in Version 2 of LoveAdmin, due for release in Q1 of 2021.

LoveAdmin has drastically reduced the time that Pit Farm spends on membership admin. Now that members can pay online via card or direct debit and payments are reconciled automatically, Pit Farm’s membership secretaries can rest easy knowing that payments have actually been made without having to double-check this elsewhere.

During their renewal period this year, the club was in the process of handing over their adult membership secretary duties to someone new. In previous years, this wouldn’t have been possible due to the sheer workload, however with LoveAdmin, there was barely any work to do because LoveAdmin’s automation took care of most of it. This was great news for their membership secretaries because it gave them the flexibility to focus on other tasks. Additionally, Pit Farm has experienced several other benefits with LoveAdmin. They can now manage their membership admin on the go, registration forms are short and adaptable which have helped improve conversion rates, and they can quickly send out group emails to their latest member lists.

The Results

Max Beech, Membership Secretary says, “LoveAdmin has helped us to reduce admin time in particular related to payments, improve visibility, and enabled our members to view their membership status and keep their information up to date more easily.”