How Mini Swimming Saved 12 Hours a Week
A real case study: how one UK swim school replaced six tools with AMES and gave their team back a day and a half every week.
Steve Ames
Founder, AMES · 5 April 2026
How Mini Swimming Saved 12 Hours a Week
A real case study: how one of the UK's largest swim programmes replaced six tools with one platform and gave their operations team back a day and a half every week.
The Programme at a Glance
- 16,052 active members
- 156 classes per week
- 13,150+ bookings processed through the platform
- Multi-site operation across multiple pools
- One of the UK's most active and successful independent swim programmes
Mini Swimming is the kind of operation that exposes every crack in a system. At their scale, inefficiencies don't just cost a few pounds—they multiply across thousands of families and become existential risks.
What They Were Running Before AMES
Like most swim schools that reach their size, Mini Swimming grew incrementally. And like most programmes that grow incrementally, their tool stack grew the same way—a bit here, a bit there, add-ons and integrations and workarounds until the system was held together by habit and hope.
Before AMES, the Mini Swimming team managed their operation across:
| Tool | Purpose | Problem |
|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheets | Class rosters, attendance tracking | Version conflicts, manual updates, no real-time data |
| Payment processor | Direct debits and card payments | No link to bookings, payment queries had to be manually reconciled |
| Email & WhatsApp | Parent communication | 640+ messages per week, no search, no audit trail |
| Paper registers | Class attendance at the poolside | Lost sheets, illegible handwriting, no parent visibility |
| Calendar software | Class scheduling | No link to actual bookings or capacity, scheduling conflicts common |
| Folder sharing | Instructor management, compliance docs | No expiry tracking, inconsistent versions by site |
Six tools. Zero integration. The team spent 25+ hours per week on admin that a single platform could handle automatically.
What Changed
Mini Swimming became an AMES design partner. That means we built alongside them—their real world, their real numbers, their real headaches. And they got a platform built specifically for their problems.
Bookings and Classes
Before: Manual booking via phone, email, or WhatsApp. A staff member had to personally check class availability, confirm slots, and update a spreadsheet.
After: Parents self-serve through the portal. See available classes by time, level, and location. Book, change, or cancel with a click. The team at Mini Swimming went from managing every booking manually to handling only exceptions.
Result: Booking admin dropped from hours per day to minutes.
Payments
Before: Bank transfers, card machines, and manual reconciliation. Payment queries were the single biggest source of parent messages—"have I been charged?", "my payment didn't go through", "can I get a receipt?"
After: Automated payment processing linked to bookings. Parents see their balance, transaction history, and upcoming charges in their portal. Payment top-ups happen automatically. No chasing, no confusion.
Result: Payment-related queries dropped to near zero. Revenue visibility went from "we think it's fine" to clear, real-time numbers.
Registers and Attendance
Before: Paper sheets poolside. Handwritten attendance that had to be transcribed later. If a register was misplaced or illegible, the record was gone.
After: Poolside tablets (or phone-based registers) with real-time sync. Instructors mark attendance as families arrive. Progress notes are recorded digitally against each member's profile.
Result: No more lost registers. Parents see their child's attendance history. Instructors spend less time on admin and more time teaching.
Parent Communication
Before: WhatsApp groups and email chains with 640+ messages per week. No search. No structure. Everything running through the personal phones of the operations team.
After: Structured messaging through the platform with broadcast announcements, targeted comms, and an activity log. Parents get the information they need without the noise.
Result: Message volume dropped by 90%. Parents still get informed—but the team isn't living in their inbox.
The Numbers
| Metric | Before AMES | After AMES | Improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Admin time per week | 25+ hours | 11 hours | 14 hours saved |
| Parent queries per week | 640+ | <70 | 89% reduction |
| Monthly churn rate | 5.2% | 2.1% | 60% improvement |
| Replacement fill rate | 42% | 89% | 112% improvement |
| Tools to manage | 6 | 1 | 83% reduction |
Mini Swimming went from six disjointed systems to one platform and gave their team back a day and a half every week in the process.
The Insight That Changed Everything
The biggest learning from working with Mini Swimming wasn't about any single feature. It was about how the pieces connect.
A parent's booking is linked to their payment. Their payment is linked to their child's attendance. Their attendance is linked to their progress. Their progress is linked to their engagement. And their engagement is linked to whether they stay enrolled next term.
When these systems are separate, no one can see that chain. When they're connected, you can spot a parent at risk of leaving weeks before they actually do. You can see which class times have the highest drop-off. You can understand your revenue per member, your cost per class, your utilisation per pool.
Mini Swimming didn't just save time. They got visibility.
What the Mini Swimming Team Said
"We didn't realise how much time we were wasting until we stopped wasting it."
— Mini Swimming operations team
That's the pattern with every swim school that switches from a patchwork to a platform. The admin time, the message volume, the lost revenue—it's so normalised that operators don't even realise it's a choice.
It doesn't have to be this way. And at the scale Mini Swimming operates, it really shouldn't be.
If You Run a Swim School
Mini Swimming's story isn't unique. It's typical. Most swim schools running 500+ families manage their operation with a patchwork of tools because that's what's always been done.
Mini Swimming proved there's a better way. 16,052 members, 156 classes per week, multi-site complexity—and their team saved 12 hours a week in admin time.
What would your team do with an extra 12 hours?
Run an additional class. Invest in instructor training. Focus on parent engagement instead of payment chasing. Take back control of their weekends.
AMES is built with and alongside real swim school operators. Mini Swimming is one of our design partners—over 16,000 members running on the platform every week. Book a 15-minute demo or join the waitlist to see it in action.
About the author: Steve runs product and growth at AMES. AMES was built with Mini Swimming as design partners, solving real problems at real scale.
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Also on AMES: swim school management software · multi-sport activity management
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