Customer Stories

How MagicBooking Helped Kids R Us Save 25+ Hours a Week Running Wraparound & Holiday Clubs (Cambridgeshire)

It would save me, if I went back, about twenty-five hours a week at least. - Poppy, Director, Kids R Us Out of School Clubs Limited

4 min read

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Challenges

Before MagicBooking, Kids R Us ran their clubs entirely on paper. Every booking, every register, and every payment had to be recorded and chased by hand – a process that ate into hours of admin time every single week.

“We used to do paper registers, paper for everything. For example, for holiday club, we used to literally write Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and have to write down everything the parents told us – which days they wanted their child booked in. We used to write it all down, chasing the parents for their payment. Everything was manual. It was a lot of paper.” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

Key Issues

• Paper-based holiday club registers written out day by day, by hand
• Manual payment chasing with no automated system in place
• Excessive admin time spent recording parents’ booking requests
• No scalable way to take on more sessions or bookings
• Business growth held back by the sheer volume of paperwork

Solution: MagicBooking’s Club Booking System

Kids R Us moved to MagicBooking after a demo showed them exactly how much time the platform could save – and the relationship they built with the team sealed the decision.

“We moved to MagicBooking because of what they could offer – it was a great system, but also because of the customer service. We really made a good relationship with the people there, and they made us feel like it was the right place to go.” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

“We reached out for a demo, had a demo online, really liked the system. They showed us everything in the back end and the front end for users, and we liked the look of it. It did a lot of stuff that, at the time, we were like, ‘Okay, wow, this is going to save us so much time.’” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

Impact

Since switching to MagicBooking, Kids R Us has been able to grow their business, cut hours of admin every week, and give parents a far smoother booking experience.

Easy Onboarding

Getting parents onto the system required almost no effort from the Kids R Us team.

“It was a very easy process in terms of onboarding – we literally just had to send them a link and say, ‘Look, sign your children up on here.’ It’s really easy for them to follow, but also if parents are having issues, we can just log on from the background and help them as well.” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

Major Time Savings & Business Growth

“What’s changed the most is that we’ve grown, because we’ve been able to. If I think back now to whether we would have been able to take on sessions as easily as we have, it would probably be a no, because there’d be a lot more paperwork.” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

Estimated time saved: at least 25 hours a week

“The fact that we have MagicBooking has saved so much time – we can open the account and get everyone signed up in a matter of minutes. It would save me, if I went back, about twenty-five hours a week at least.” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

Improved Parent Experience

Parents now have full visibility over their own bookings and balances, without needing to contact the office.

“Parents are always generally very happy with it, and I think it’s definitely improved their booking with us – how they can easily go on, view their invoices, view how much is left, all that kind of thing. I think it’s definitely helped.” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

Daily Operations Simplified By MagicBooking

MagicBooking has become the first thing the Kids R Us team checks every single day.

“Each day, me, myself, the office, the managers – we log on, that’s probably the first thing we do in a day: log on, check if we’ve got any bookings that have come through, check if we need to check any finances, go through any new users.” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

A Platform That Listens

Beyond covering everything Kids R Us needs day-to-day, Poppy highlights how responsive MagicBooking is to feedback.

“I go back to MagicBooking because they do literally everything you need, but also if there’s something where you’re like, ‘It doesn’t do this and I really need it to do this,’ you can go on and suggest that, and a lot of the time, it does come in for us at some point in time.” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

The Final Word

Asked what running Kids R Us would look like without MagicBooking, Poppy doesn’t hesitate:

“I don’t know what we would do – we’d have to employ a lot of new people.” – Poppy, Director, Kids R Us

For Kids R Us, MagicBooking isn’t just booking software – it’s the system the whole business now runs on, freeing up 25+ hours a week to focus on the children instead of the paperwork.

Ready to Take the Paperwork Out of Your Out of School Club?

If you’re still writing out registers by hand, chasing payments one by one, or turning away bookings because you don’t have the admin capacity to take them on, it doesn’t have to stay that way.

Book a free MagicBooking demo and see how our booking and payment system for breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and holiday clubs could give you back 25+ hours a week.

No pressure. No obligation. Just see how much time – and paper – you could save.