Customer Stories

How Emmer Green Primary School Streamlined Admin, Improved Parent Experience & Impressed Ofsted with MagicBooking

Time-saving has been the biggest benefit for us — it has streamlined invoicing, payments, and debt management.
Matt Heaps, Emmer Green Primary School

4 min read

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Challenges

Before adopting MagicBooking, managing wraparound care at Emmer Green was a highly manual process.

The school relied on spreadsheets, paper invoices, and manual bank statement reconciliations—making administration time-consuming and prone to human error.

Key Issues

• Manual admin overload: Bookings, payments, and invoices were managed through spreadsheets and paper records.
• Inefficient payment tracking: Cash allocations had to be manually processed from bank statements.
• Limited flexibility for parents: Booking processes lacked ease, leading to increased administrative burden for amendments and cancellations.

Solution

Emmer Green Primary School implemented MagicBooking, streamlining wraparound care management.

Emmer Green Primary School recalls the transition being smooth, finding that they were good to go after two training sessions. The process was quick and well-supported, enabling staff to take full advantage of the platform’s features from day one.

Impact

Since implementing MagicBooking, Emmer Green Primary School has seen significant improvements in efficiency, financial oversight, and parent satisfaction.

Improved Administrative Efficiency

MagicBooking has drastically reduced the time spent on bookings, payments, and cancellations. Staff no longer rely on spreadsheets and manual processes, freeing up valuable time for other priorities.

Administrators no longer rely on spreadsheets to manage bookings. They can now track bookings, allocate payments, and oversee outstanding balances more efficiently. For club staff, the digital registers, streamlined check-in/out system, and centralised access to contact and allergy information have been particularly beneficial.

"Parents have really taken to the flexibility MagicBooking offers. From an admin point of view, it’s much easier to track bookings, allocate payments, and manage outstanding balances." – Matt Heaps, Emmer Green Primary School

Enhanced Financial Oversight

With automated invoicing, reminders, and centralised reporting, the school has greater control over finances.

The introduction of card payments has reduced cash allocation efforts by half, and the administrative workload for processing cancellations and booking changes has been eliminated.

Debt management has improved significantly, and admin time spent on cancelling bookings or chasing outstanding balances has massively reduced.

Even Ofsted took note of MagicBooking’s electronic check-in/out functionality during a recent inspection!

Increased Parent Satisfaction

Parents appreciate the flexibility and ease of managing bookings online. With MagicBooking, they no longer need to book a term in advance or book separately and then manually process payments through online banking.

Consequently, Emmer Green Primary School has seen an uptake with a definite increase in bookings, as well as a decrease in parents amending and cancelling bookings.

"Parents are happy with how easy the system is to use. After just one use, they become very confident with it." – Matt Heaps, Emmer Green Primary School

The Final Word

MagicBooking has transformed the way Emmer Green Primary School manages wraparound care—cutting admin time, improving financial processes, and enhancing parent experience. Looking ahead, the school plans to implement the Parents’ Evening module in the new year to further streamline operations.

"We’ve saved huge amounts of admin time, and everything—booking information, attendance data, and invoices—is now centralised. The system does exactly what we need it to do, and if we ever need support, the MagicBooking team is always helpful and responsive." – Matt Heaps, Emmer Green Primary School