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Solution · Operations & productionThe coach coaches, the fees watch themselves, and parents get one announcement instead of three versions of a rumour
Junior section: attendance, fees, messages
A robot runs the section’s daily life: sign-ups into groups, attendance ticked by the coach on his phone, fees recognised from the statement and reminded to parents politely and automatically, and a cancelled training announced to everyone at once, through one channel. Coaching, group placement and conversations with parents stay where they belong: with the coach.
Executive summary
The junior section is the fastest-growing part of many clubs and the most administratively starved: attendance in the coach’s notebook, fees in the treasurer’s spreadsheet, announcements across three chat groups.
The robot ties these worlds together: the coach ticks attendance on his phone in half a minute, fees recognise themselves from the statement by individual references, and a cancelled-training notice reaches all parents through one channel.
The treasurer stops being a debt collector among friends, parents know what and when, and the board sees the section’s attendance and finances without calling the coach; children’s data kept to a minimum.
sign-ups and groups in SharePoint; attendance from the coach’s phone; fees from the bank statement; messages to parents by email and text from one place
Business problem
The section is run by the coach, the treasurer and three chat groups. Each knows something different
A junior section grows faster than its administration. The coach has an attendance notebook that stays accurate roughly until the winter break. The treasurer has a fee spreadsheet, updated from the statement once a month, after which the awkward kind of emails go out. The parents have three chat groups, where news of a cancelled training reaches 80% of those concerned, and the remaining 20% stand at 5 pm in front of a locked hall.
Fees in a club are a delicate matter: the amounts are small, the relationships close, and chasing arrears falls to the treasurer, who is a friend of some athlete’s dad. In practice arrears grow not from bad faith but from missing reminders: a parent simply does not remember whether March was paid. After half a year the gap between the spreadsheet and reality can run to four figures.
Attendance is coaching knowledge that flows nowhere: who comes regularly, who vanished after the summer, who is ready for the older group. The board sees it once a year, in the annual report, when it is too late to react. And a parent asking whether their child actually attends gets an answer from memory.
Nobody at a club wants a corporate system; everybody wants Tuesday to look like this: the coach ticks attendance in half a minute, the parent gets the announcement, the treasurer chases nobody personally. That is exactly the size of this deployment.
How it works today
Below is what the work looks like before anything is automated.
- PersonSign-ups to the section by email, phone and word of mouth
- Risk of errorAttendance in the coach’s notebook, accurate until the first holidays
- Risk of errorFees in the treasurer’s spreadsheet, reconciled with the statement monthly
- WaitingArrears grow for lack of reminders; chasing them costs friendships
- Risk of errorAnnouncements across three chat groups reach 80% of parents
- WaitingAttendance reaches the board once a year, when reacting is too late
Why the current process costs more than it appears
The bill that never shows up in a budget.
- How many hours a month does the section cost the coach and treasurer beyond the trainings themselves?
- What is the real sum of overdue fees today, and who knows it?
- How many parents missed the news of the last cancelled training?
- Who besides the coach knows which juniors stopped coming after the summer?
Cost of inaction
The model assumes a section of 60 juniors, a monthly fee in the tens converted to euros, and 15% arrears born of forgetfulness, not bad faith. The treasurer knows your own numbers, if he ever has time to add them up.
The third line has no amount, because what the club loses there is not money but athletes: a junior who vanished in October is training somewhere else by February, or nowhere.
A model organisation with realistic proportions – the numbers exist so you can run the same maths on your own data; they are not a client result.
A shooting club with a junior section: 60 athletes in four age groups, training twice a week, a monthly fee, two coaches, a volunteer treasurer, Microsoft 365.
Tuesday, 4:58 pm: the coach opens the younger group’s list on his phone and ticks the present before the warm-up ends. Half a minute.
Thursday: the statement arrives. The robot recognises 14 fees by individual references, ticks them in the register, and sends three parents in their second month of arrears a polite reminder with the account number. The treasurer wrote not a single email.
Friday, 1:40 pm: the venue cancels the evening training. The coach taps “cancelled” on the session, and the robot messages all parents of both groups by email and text. Nobody stands in front of a locked hall.
Month end: the board gets the section report: attendance per group, juniors absent three times in a row with a suggestion to call, the fee status. The coach phones two parents before the children vanish for good.
In the model year arrears fall by two thirds and section admin drops from 8 hours a month to two. These are model figures, not the club’s records.
Proposed solution
The foundation is a section register in SharePoint: juniors, groups, training dates and parental consents collected at sign-up through a form. Children’s data is kept to the minimum the section needs: name, birth year, group, guardian contact; the scope and retention are the club’s decision. Enrolling a new junior is a form filled in by the parent, not a slip of paper in the changing room.
Attendance is ticked by the coach in a simple phone view: the group list, a tap per present child, done. From those ticks the robot builds an attendance record nobody retypes: the board sees it in the monthly report, and the signal “absent three times in a row” goes to the coach with a suggestion to call, before the junior is gone for good. Fees recognise themselves from the statement by individual references, cash is ticked by the treasurer with a click, and reminders to those behind go out politely, automatically and without spending anybody’s friendships.
Announcements stop being rumours: a cancelled training, a changed hour or the section’s competition is announced from one place and reaches every parent by email or text, per their choice. The chat groups can stay for chatter; they stop being the only carrier of whether a child trains today. Coaching, group placement and pastoral conversations remain entirely with the coaches.
UiPath Orchestrator: the fee reminder schedule, announcements, reports and an audit trail of entries; UiPath Integration Service connectors to Outlook 365, SharePoint and Teams
A section register with form sign-ups, a phone attendance view for the coach, fee recognition from the statement, parent reminders, one-channel announcements and a monthly board report
The club’s bank statement via CSV/MT940 export; an SMS gateway for announcements on your own provider contract; the training calendar in Outlook
How the automated process works
- AutomationA junior signed up through the parent’s form, consents included
- PersonThe coach ticks attendance on his phone before the warm-up ends
- AutomationFees recognised from the statement; cash ticked by the treasurer’s click
- SystemReminders to those behind go out politely and automatically
- SystemA cancelled training announces itself to all parents through one channel
- AutomationThe monthly report: attendance, vanishing juniors, fee status
Human-in-the-loop model
Automation handles
- The section register, attendance from ticks and the monthly board report
- Fee recognition, reminders and arrears signals
- Announcements to parents through one channel, by email and text
People decide
- Training, group placement and sporting decisions: entirely with the coaches
- Conversations with the parents of vanishing juniors and pastoral matters
- Decisions on fee waivers and reductions: the board, not the robot
Before and after
Systems and integrations
The stack is short on purpose: one engine, one execution layer, one place where a person decides.
Inputs
- the sign-up form filled in by the parent
- attendance ticks from the coach’s phone
- the club’s bank statement as a CSV/MT940 export
- training dates and changes from the coaches
Automation layer
- UiPath Orchestrator
- UiPath Robots
- UiPath Integration Service
- UiPath Action Center
Target systems
- the section register and attendance in SharePoint
- fee reminders and announcements to parents
- the section’s monthly report for the board
Human touchpoints: ticking attendance at training; tapping “cancelled” on a session; calling parents after an absence signal
Technologies used
reminders, announcements, reports, a trail of every entry
Athe register, reports and dispatches where the club already works
Athe group list and tap-ticking, nothing to install
Afees from the CSV/MT940 export; no account access
Bannouncements to parents on your own provider contract
BHow we deliver this
From this description to a running process
We deliver this solution through our process automation service: first we measure the process on company data, then we build, test and maintain the robots.
Industry
Case studies
Delivered client work is described under Case studies.
Illustrative economic model
Numbers you can check against your own data.
The model assumes 60 juniors and arrears born of parental forgetfulness, not bad faith; the value of retained athletes is left unpriced, though for a club it is often the largest. Put your own figures into the calculator beside.
Run the numbers on your data
An illustrative estimate based on your inputs. It models freed capacity, not promised savings.
Business benefits
- The coach ticks attendance in half a minute and gets a record without retyping
- Fees remind themselves; the treasurer stops chasing friends
- Every parent gets the announcement in time, by email or text
- A vanishing junior gets a call from the coach before leaving for good
- The board sees the section in a monthly report, not the annual one
The management view
- The section can grow without a proportional rise in volunteer work, which is scarce anyway
- The section’s finances become predictable, and arrears stop being a taboo subject
- Attendance per group is hard data for conversations about hall hours and intakes
Board-level KPIs
attendance per group · fee arrears · time for an announcement to reach parents · juniors recovered after an absence signal · section admin hours per month
Security and governance
The automation has exactly the permissions it needs. Not one more.
- Juniors’ data kept to a minimum: name, birth year, group, guardian contact; scope and retention set by the club, in line with GDPR
- Parental consents collected at sign-up and stored with the section register
- Fee reminders go solely to guardians and never mention the child in front of third parties
- The robot has no access to the club account; fees are recognised solely from the statement export
- Data stays in your Microsoft 365 tenant; the robots run in the EU region of UiPath Automation Cloud
Why now
Section intakes are growing while volunteer numbers are not; the difference is paid today with coaching time wasted on spreadsheets.
Parents expect nursery-grade communication: one channel, on time; three chat groups stopped being enough.
A quick-win deployment lands before the new season and the first wave of fees.
Relevant executive roles
Coaches and ticks attendance in half a minute; learns about the vanishing in time
Sees fees recognised from the statement; the robot reminds, not a friend of an athlete’s dad
Gets announcements in time and pays against an individual reference without guessing what for
Common questions and objections
Nothing. The attendance view opens in the phone’s browser from a bookmark; the group list, taps, done. If a coach prefers paper, staff can transfer his notebook weekly, though no coach has preferred it yet.
The opposite: personal chasing sours it. A polite, automatic reminder with an account number is as neutral as an electricity bill, and the board sets the tone and frequency. Sensitive cases, reductions and waivers always remain a human conversation.
Yes. The register, attendance, fees and announcements are per group, so further sections are further lists in the same system, with no new deployments.
When this is not the right solution
- A section of ten children and one group: a notebook and one chat group suffice
- A club expecting a full federation-grade club system with licences: we order the daily routine, we do not replace federation systems
- No consent for any children’s data in the cloud: then paper remains, and with it today’s chaos
A question for the next management meeting
How many juniors vanished from the section last season before anyone managed to ask why?
Implementation approach
Scope without ambiguity, before anything is signed.
We deliver
- A section register with form sign-ups and parental consents
- A phone attendance view for the coach and a record without retyping
- Fee recognition from the statement and polite reminders to parents
- One-channel announcements by email and text, and the monthly report
- A handbook for coaches and the treasurer, plus two weeks of assistance
We need from you
- The lists of juniors, groups and training dates, and the fee rules
- Access to Microsoft 365 and the club account’s statement export
- An hour with the coach and treasurer to walk today’s routine
Stages
Discovery
Groups, fees, today’s communication channels; an hour with the coach and treasurer
Rules
Data scope, consents, transfer references, the tone of reminders and announcements
Build
The register, the attendance view, fees, reminders, announcements, the report
Parallel run
A month: the notebook and spreadsheet beside the system, comparing arrears
Go-live
The section in the new mode from the next fee month
A quick win. Most of the work is a one-off listing of groups and fee rules; after that the section runs itself alongside the trainings, not instead of them.
Friday, 1:40 pm: the venue cancels the training. At 1:43 sixty parents have a text. At 5 pm nobody stands in front of the hall.
Count the overdue fees and the hours the section costs the coach and treasurer each month. Send us those two numbers; we will send back a section register design and the arithmetic of what the first season gives back.
Count the section’s admin hoursThe neighbouring process usually has the same problem
Attendance in a notebook, meal charges from attendance, parents’ bills by hand. Every month.
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