Before
The ORKA swimming school has a website with a schedule and an enrolment form, but the entire back office (who has paid, who has a pass, who showed up, how many spots are left in a group) lives in notebooks, on paper and over the phone. Every question like “has this parent paid for the month?” meant flipping through pages. As the number of groups and students grew, this stopped scaling.
What was built
One system for the whole school:
- Parents log in with a link from an email, so there are no passwords to forget
- Child enrolment in a few clicks, including a waiting list
- Passes and online payments, visible to both the parent and the school
- Attendance: the child’s class history without paper slips
- Reminders to the parent’s phone about classes and payments
- An owner’s panel where everything is visible: who enrolled, who paid, who came and how many spots are left
Technical challenges
Multi-tenant architecture from day one, with organization detection from the host, strict data isolation between schools and a verifiable test of the foundation. The second challenge was UX for parents in a hurry: signing in via an emailed link instead of registration, minimum steps from entry to enrolling a child.
What comes next
We’re rolling it out. The first version is going into the hands of parents and instructors. After the first weeks of use I’ll change this section from “will be” to “is” — how many hours a week go back to the school, how many students use the system and what parents say.
The application is being built for ORKA Szkoła Pływania.