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Newsletter14 August 20264 min read

The admin hours nobody budgets for

Most club owners price their classes carefully and then give away ten hours a week for free. Here's where those hours actually go.

Originally sent to the Enrolio newsletter as "The admin hours nobody budgets for".

We asked a room full of club owners how long they spend on admin each week. The answers ranged from 'about two hours' to 'I genuinely don't want to know'. When we walked through it line by line, almost everyone landed between eight and twelve.

Where the hours go

  • Chasing late payments and reissuing invoices
  • Rebuilding registers every time a class moves or a student trials
  • Answering the same five parent questions on WhatsApp, email and at the door
  • Copying attendance from paper into a spreadsheet on a Sunday night
  • Manually working out who owes what for camps, costumes and exams

None of these are the job. They are the tax you pay for running the job on tools that were never designed for a club.

What actually moves the needle

Automating billing removes the biggest chunk in one go - monthly, termly, half-termly, payment plans and camp deposits all collected without you touching them. Digital registers remove the Sunday night. And giving parents a place to see progress removes most of the messages before they are sent.

"I got my Sundays back. That's the honest headline."
Club owner, Dorset

If you want to see what your own number looks like, the admin calculator on the site does it in about ninety seconds.