Schwimmschule Nemo: website, booking and administration in one system

The starting point

• Courses and participants in spreadsheets that nobody apart from the owner could read with confidence
• Sign-ups by email that had to be transferred by hand
• Payments matched against bank statements, reminders sent from memory
• Waiting lists as notes; a place that became free sometimes stayed empty for days
• Cancelled lessons meant phone chains with parents

What was built

A public website with a course overview, locations, prices and everything parents want to know before signing up, as good on a phone as on a computer.

Online booking with a basket: several children, several courses, one payment. Only places that are genuinely still available are shown.

Payment by credit card or bank transfer. Incoming payments land automatically with the right booking, even when the transfer only arrives days later.

An admin area for day-to-day work: customers, children, courses, bookings, waiting lists, payments, capacity, instructors and payroll.

An instructor portal with its own login: instructors see their courses and participants, but no payment data.

Self-service for parents via personal links: confirm a make-up session, switch course format, adjust a booking, without an account and without a password.

The result

• more than 500 courses in the system, of which more than 300 can be booked publicly and almost 200 are fully booked
• 7 locations and more than 20 instructors in one interface
• Payments run automatically, from the click to being matched in the account
• Waiting lists move up on their own instead of gathering dust in a notebook
• Cancelled lessons are handled through confirmed make-up sessions

The existing courses were imported from the spreadsheets already in use, without typing up a single one by hand.

The system behind this project is now our own product: Natarivo, the management software for swim schools and swimming clubs.

A decision that mattered to us

A click by a parent never automatically triggers a payment, a cancellation or the release of a place. It only records the request and creates a task in the admin area; the decision is made there.

That sounds like extra work, but it's the opposite: the owner keeps control over every transaction with financial consequences, without having to take every single request herself. For us, automating doesn't mean handing over decisions.

For the same reason, all data is stored on servers in the EU, with a deletion policy and automatic retention periods. With courses for children, that isn't a formality.