Courses

A course is something you run on set dates — a first aid day, or climbing instructor training over three weekends — that people sign up to one place at a time. Set one up on the Courses page: the dates it runs (one per line, so three weekends is six dates), how many places it has, and a price per person for each kind of customer.

Every place is a booking. A group sending six people is one booking for six places, priced at their band. So deposits, invoices, card and bank payments, and the Owed list work exactly as they do for a camp. The Payments button beside each booking on the course takes you to it.

Accommodation is an add-on. If the course offers it, set a price per person and it’s charged only for the people who ask for it. Leave it blank and it isn’t offered.

When it’s full, people go on a waiting list. Adding somebody when there aren’t enough places puts them on the list rather than overfilling the course. When a place frees up, the course page says who is next — the first person waiting who fits, so a group of six at the front doesn’t hold up a single person behind them — and Offer a place moves them in. Nothing moves on its own.

Minimum numbers. Give a course a minimum and a number of days’ warning, and from then on the course and the Courses list both say how many more you need, so you can decide whether to run it in good time.

Advertising a course. Courses have a public page of their own, separate from your availability page and with its own link. Turn it on under Your public courses page at the top of the Courses page, where you can also give it an introduction, copy its link or replace it. Then publish a course and tick List on my courses page, and it’s shown with its days, ages, prices and how many places are left. If your availability page is on too, each page links to the other. People ask for places through a short form, and their enquiry arrives in Enquiries with the course named. Accept gives them a place and sends a confirmation listing the course’s days — or, if it has filled up since they asked, puts them on the waiting list and says so, so you can let them know. A draft or cancelled course never appears publicly, and the form asks for no medical details.

Activities and instructors. Add sessions for the course on its page, the same way as for a booking — the climbing tower for two one-hour sessions is two sessions. They get every check a session always gets: nothing runs twice at once, nobody is in two places, and a session short of instructors, outside the ages or missing a ticket is flagged. They appear on the schedule and the rota under the course’s name.

Sites and buildings. Tick what the course needs on each of its days. Those days are held on the calendar, by the whole day, so nobody can book them for anything else. If somebody already has a field on one of them, the course tells you which and holds the rest — the box stays shaded until it’s sorted. Cancelling a course frees its fields, sessions and instructors.

The register, and certificates. Once the course has started, tick who was there on each day and save the register. Days still to come can’t be marked, so a register saved halfway through doesn’t fill the rest with absences. When somebody has finished, Mark complete gives them a certificate number, and Print certificates produces a landscape certificate for each person, ready to print or save as a PDF. The number is theirs for good: undo it and mark them complete again and they get the same one back. Attending every day is pointed out, but completion is always your call.

Taking the register on a phone. Under the register, Make a check-in link gives a private link that opens today’s register on any phone with no login, so you can send it to an instructor or volunteer. Each person has a Here and an Absent button, and every tap saves at once; tap a mark again to clear it. It’s the same register as the course page, not a copy. Everybody marked Here is on Who’s on site until they’ve gone home: tap Gone home under a name, or Everybody has gone home at the end of the day — but not for anybody staying the night. Nobody comes off by themselves, so anybody still there the next morning is flagged. Ticking a day that has already passed on the course page doesn’t put anybody on the fire register. The link only works on the days the course runs and shows names and who booked them, never contact details, dietary needs or medical details. Make a new link stops the old one working, and Turn off stops it altogether. No signal in the field? Print a register gives everybody booked down the side, the days across the top and a few blank rows, to fill in by hand and enter afterwards.

In your reports, courses have their own section — places taken and how many completed. A place on a course isn’t counted as nights on a field, though the fields a course held are.

Message everybody booked. Near the foot of the course’s page, write a subject and a message and it goes by email to whoever made each booking holding a place — the car park has moved, bring waterproofs, it starts an hour later. Not the waiting list and not anything cancelled. It goes to the booker, not to each person on the course, because the course holds an address for the booker only. One email per address, however many places they booked; anybody with no email address is named after sending, so you know who to ring. Events have the same button, and the limit on how many can go in a day is explained there.

Names, dietary needs and medical details. You can type these in yourself, or make a private link for the booker and let them fill in their own people. Medical details are the one piece of health information Campsite Manager holds, so they are treated differently:

• only owners and leaders can see them — a helper running the course sees names and dietary needs, not medical history;
• they are never asked for on your public page, only through the private link once you’ve given somebody a place, and the link never shows them back to whoever opens it;
• they are deleted automatically 30 days after the course ends, along with dietary needs. The names are kept.

Put allergies under medical rather than dietary, so they get that protection.