- Sheila Namiq, Lettings Manager

City of London Academy is a buzzing, vibrant secondary school for 1,400 pupils in Southwark, London. We are lucky enough to have exceptional facilities, helping us to develop a specialism in sport; particularly Basketball. We are delighted to be one of only 10 schools in England to be awarded Basketball Academy status by Basketball England!

It is important to us that members of our local community also gets to benefit from our facilities, and we have been letting our Astro-pitch, spots hall, assembly hall , classrooms, dance studio and gym to various clubs and associations for a number of years.

Earlier this year we implemented BookingsPlus as our chosen lettings system and it has made a huge difference to our lettings process both for us, and for our hirers – it is so intuitive and easy to use. From my point of view as lettings manager, it has significantly reduced the time I spend on administration, specifically the financial management of our lettings process.

At the click of a button I am able to raise invoices or schedule for them to be automatically generated at a set time. This is a huge improvement on having to individually email invoices to clients! Another feature of the system that I find exceptionally useful is the debtor management dash-board – which flags up clients who have not paid invoices, and allows me to simply click a button to send an email reminder to all late payers. Having the system in place has certainly contributed to a smoother cashflow.

We have already seen an increase in both enquiries and revenue since working with BookingsPlus – a trend that is likely to continue as I can now dedicate time released from admin and invoice chasing to improving our social media presence and SEO. In a nutshell BookingsPlus is helping us to manage and grow our lettings business!

The revenue generated by lettings is re-invested in the Academy’s facilities, meaning that pupils benefit from an exceptional educational environment, supporting them in the sporting and academic achievements and improving learning outcomes. The school, pupils, hirers and local communities all win!