Southwell City Football Club – “LoveAdmin has really made a difference, in the current environment”
Community Football Club Management
Southwell City is a community football club that offers football to over 350 local players across 32 teams. They cater for both males and females, from the age of 5 to veterans, making it a welcoming hub for all. The club has a long history, dating back to 1893 and currently plays its football on the War Memorial Recreation Ground in the market town of Southwell, Nottinghamshire.
The challenge - before LoveAdmin
Prior to using LoveAdmin, each coach at Southwell City was responsible for collecting their own team’s subs which parents paid in cash. John Cunningham, now in his 9th season and Chairman of the club described this as a “terrible way of collecting subs” and a “logistical nightmare” because cash went missing, payments weren’t tracked, and some weren’t even collected. Following this, the club tried out a direct debit system, but because this was manually maintained, it created a lot of extra work for their treasurer.
Payment reconciliation was another thing that wasn’t done very well. Each team had a bank account and at the end of a season, the club looked at how much money was in each account and how many players were in each team to give them a rough idea of the number of payments made. It goes without saying that this proved to be very inaccurate.
As for managing member information and new registrations, this was done in a “20th century” way. Parents filled out paper forms and the club’s secretary typed up information from these forms into a spreadsheet. This was the same case when an existing member renewed their membership each season. It was apparent that the club needed a more automated system to reduce admin time and keep a better hold of payments.
The solution - after LoveAdmin
When working through their wish list, Southwell City gravitated towards LoveAdmin's football club management software as it ticked their boxes when compared to other systems in the market.
LoveAdmin has taken away the “headache” that coaches faced when collecting subs from over 350 players. As the system collects and reconciles payments automatically, coaches can focus all of their attention on the next generation of footballers. The club collects a lot more money than before, and they can see exactly who has paid and who hasn’t. They’ve also gained greater clarity into how much cash is flowing in, and this has made it easier for them to forecast their financial position. They can determine how much money they have and where to spend it which was particularly handy with a recent project that focused on improving their clubhouse.
Southwell City doesn’t have a big churn of players – typically kids who start out at a young age stay with the club for 6-8 years. Once they’re set up on LoveAdmin, they “roll along” as renewals are done automatically year on year. This means the club has had much less renewal admin to do at the start of every season. For new registrations, a web link is sent out so that members can register online, and they are automatically added into the club’s database. From a GDPR perspective, the club has found LoveAdmin valuable as member information is stored securely which was something they couldn’t handle all that well in the past.
The group email feature is another aspect of LoveAdmin that’s worked really well for Southwell City. They use it to send regular emails to parents and it takes just a few minutes to create them using the email builder. Having the latest contact information in their LoveAdmin database means that there’s no hassle of importing new emails lists, which was the case with their old email marketing service.
The results
Overall, Southwell City Football Club have reduced their payment admin by 50% with LoveAdmin and John had many positive things to say – “One of the benefits we found with LoveAdmin is that we’ve collected a lot more money per season than we’ve ever done before because we’ve filled some of the holes that were appearing with our previous payment collection methods.
“We’re very pleased with LoveAdmin and the support we’ve received. It’s really made a difference for us, especially in the current environment we’re in.”
Want to know more about our game-changing football club management software? Get your FREE demo today.
