The problem
Church buildings are busy: toddler group, choir, funeral teas, youth club, AA meetings, the food bank. With 30 bookings a month taken by email and checked against a paper diary at about 6 minutes each, that is 3 hours a month, and one double booking a month (the hall promised to two groups) takes another hour to sort out: 4 hours.
What the AI does
ChurchSuite's Bookings module shows every booking for rooms and resources on a planner, detects clashes at resource level and can make clash approval an admin-only task. Booking forms ask the questions you need for each booking, set-up and clear-down time can be added either side, and overseers get a daily or weekly email digest of new and changed bookings. Usage reports show how much each room is used, which helps the church council plan. Calendar events can create their room bookings automatically if the Calendar module is also used.
A worked example
A Methodist church in Wakefield with about 140 contacts has a hall, two meeting rooms and a kitchen used by church groups and regular community groups. A part-time church office administrator manages the diary.
Before
About 4 hours a month checking the diary, replying to booking emails and fixing double bookings
After
About 1 hour a month approving bookings and checking clashes ChurchSuite flags
What it's worth
About $60£45€54A$86C$85 a month in administrator time saved, against about $28£21€25A$40C$39 for ChurchSuite. 3 hours a month saved (4 minus 1), valued at an assumed $20£15€18A$29C$28 an hour. ChurchSuite prices include VAT and depend on active contacts: for 100 to 199 contacts the Address Book plus one module is $27.27£20.50€24.40A$39.36C$38.54 a month, and the full Suite is $60.52£45.50€54.15A$87.36C$85.54.
How to set it up
- List every room and resource (projector, urn, chairs) and who oversees each.
- Start the trial with the Address Book and Bookings module, add the resources and set clash approval to admin only.
- Create a booking form with the questions you need, such as numbers, set-up time and whether food is served.
- Give regular group leaders a login and ask them to book through ChurchSuite from a set date.
- Each quarter, run the usage report for the church council.
What goes wrong
- The tour page describes bookings by people with access to ChurchSuite. For outside hirers who need invoices, check with ChurchSuite or keep a separate hire process.
- Bookings made by phone and not entered still cause clashes. Agree that a booking only exists once it's in ChurchSuite.
- Hire agreements, insurance and licensing conditions are separate from the booking; the software doesn't check them.
- Adding several modules one by one can cost more than the Suite; price the whole set you plan to use.