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Bookings, payments, registers and progress tracking in one connected place, so your team can focus on the next class.
AMES gives you one view across every pool you teach at. Whether you are a single teacher running weekend lessons or a school working across several sites with a larger team, bookings, payments, registers and progress share one record, and each person signs in once to see their part of it.
UK Governing Body
Swim England & STA
Typical Pricing
£8-£15 per lesson
Class Size
4-8 students
Juggling pool lane availability, swimmer ratios and session rotations across multiple time slots on spreadsheets wastes hours every week and leads to overbooking. Swimmers are spread across many weekly sessions, each with a different lane set-up depending on the age group and ability level. Picture the scenario: a parent phones to query a cancelled lesson while you are part-way through untangling a double-booked lane during Saturday peak time. You patch one problem only to create another further down the timetable. The knock-on effect of overbooking is not just inconvenience. It means refunds, frustrated families and long-term damage to your reputation that drives enrolments to competitors. Manual scheduling struggles to keep pace with a growing swim programme.
Parents constantly ask which level their child is on and when they will move up. Without a clear system, progress updates get missed and re-enrolments drop. Swim England and the STA each publish their own learn-to-swim stages and awards, and many schools layer their own colour-coded or animal-themed levels on top. Parents compare notes in the changing room after class, and inconsistencies quickly erode trust. Children who are moved up before they are ready struggle and lose confidence, while those held back too long become disengaged and leave. Both outcomes hurt retention. Schools that cannot show clear progression find that families vote with their feet at re-enrolment time, which makes forward planning hard.
When a child misses a class, finding a replacement slot at the right level with space in it is a manual job that frustrates parents and staff alike. Every make-up request means cross-referencing the swimmer's current level, age group, preferred times and the remaining capacity in possible sessions. Parents expect an answer quickly, ideally within the same phone call or message, yet staff are often left flicking between spreadsheets and booking systems. When a make-up slot is finally offered and the family does not attend, that space goes to waste. The cumulative effect is significant: lost teacher time, underused lanes, and parents who eventually stop asking for make-ups and cancel instead.
Swim England and STA qualifications, NRASTC, pool-specific inductions and DBS checks all expire on different dates. Keeping on top of renewals is a compliance risk you cannot afford. Beyond core teaching awards, the National Rescue Award for Swimming Teachers and Coaches (NRASTC) must be renewed every two years, and individual pool operators often require their own site inductions and first-aid training. If a qualification lapses, your insurance cover may be affected. Different pool depths and environments can need different qualifications too: a teacher cleared for a shallow teaching pool may not be covered for a deeper main pool. Tracking all of this across a team on spreadsheets is a risk waiting to happen.
A healthy waitlist is a sign of demand. A mismanaged waitlist is a source of lost revenue and frustrated families. This guide covers intelligent waitlist ranking, self-service make-up booking, credit policies, and how to turn your waitlist from an administrative burden into a growth engine.
Your pool timetable is the engine of your swim school business. A well-optimised timetable maximises revenue per lane-hour, minimises dead time, and keeps instructors productive. This guide covers modern scheduling approaches that replace spreadsheets with intelligent, visual tools.
Parents want to know what their child is learning, how they are progressing, and what happens next. A well-designed parent portal answers all of these questions before the parent needs to ask, reducing inbound enquiries and building the kind of trust that drives retention and referrals.
Make-up lessons are one of the biggest administrative headaches in swim school management. Parents expect them, but finding a suitable replacement slot at the right level with available capacity is complex. This guide covers policy design, scheduling systems, and self-service options that reduce your admin load.
Parents ask the same question every week: what level is my child on? Having a clear, consistent progression tracking system answers that question before it is asked, keeps coaches aligned, and gives you powerful data for retention and programme planning.
A progression framework is the backbone of your swim school's teaching programme. It defines what swimmers learn at each stage, how they are assessed, and when they move up. Done well, it gives parents confidence, coaches clarity, and your business the data it needs to grow.
Lane allocation is one of the trickiest operational challenges in swim school management. Get it wrong and you waste expensive pool time. Get it right and you unlock more revenue from the same facility. This guide covers configuration strategies, ratio management, and peak-time optimisation.
A compliance dashboard gives you a single view of every instructor's qualification status, DBS checks, venue inductions, and CPD records. When an auditor, insurer, or local authority asks for evidence, you can produce it in minutes rather than days. This guide covers dashboard design, alert systems, and integration with scheduling.
Every swim school instructor needs a matrix of qualifications, checks, and inductions before they can teach. Tracking all of this across a team of instructors, with varying renewal dates and venue-specific requirements, is a compliance task that can quickly spiral out of control without the right system.
Chasing payments is nobody's favourite job. Yet many swim schools still spend hours each week sending reminders, reconciling bank transfers, and following up on bounced Direct Debits. Automating your payment collection frees up that time and improves your cash flow predictably.
Swimming is the most in-demand children's activity in the UK, with over 4 million children taking lessons. This guide covers everything you need to launch a successful swimming school, from pool hire to Swim England affiliation.
Lay out your lessons, terms and one-off sessions across every pool on one live timetable that the office, teachers and families share. Each class has its own capacity, so a full class stays full and families are offered the waiting list instead. Families book and pay online in AMES Connect, trial lessons can be booked online at the price you set, and age ranges on levels help families find the right lesson. Changes made in the office reach teachers' registers and families' bookings without anyone re-keying them.
Import the award structure published by Swim England or the STA, or build your own levels, level groups and skills, or both. Teachers record skills from the poolside in AMES Teach, and families see the current level, the next level and their child's badges and certificates in AMES Connect. The dashboard highlights swimmers who may be due to move up, so progress conversations happen before re-enrolment rather than after a family has left.
Collect lesson fees by GoCardless Direct Debit, or by card, Apple Pay and Google Pay through AMES Pay, all from the same place as your bookings. Charge per session, per term or with credits. Sibling discounts follow the rules you set, failed payments are retried automatically with the parent told, and receipts stay with each family's record, so the office can see what is paid and what is owed without a separate spreadsheet.
AMES Connect gives families their bookings, payments, receipts, progress and messages in one app. Parents can see their child's current level and badges, report an absence and book a replacement lesson, update health and medical notes, and read noticeboard updates without calling the office. Messages reach your team with the family's details beside them, and the AMES mailbox brings email, SMS and WhatsApp conversations into one place.
When a parent reports an absence in AMES Connect, the lesson can return a replacement credit under the rules you set, and the family books a replacement lesson with space in it themselves. Waiting lists offer a freed place to the next family automatically, with a time limit to accept before it moves on. Your team stops brokering every swap by phone, and empty spaces are filled while there is still time to fill them.
Teachers take the register in AMES Teach with a tap for each swimmer, and attendance lands on the member's record straight away. Staff qualifications and documents, such as Swim England and STA teaching awards, NRASTC, DBS checks and first aid, are recorded with their expiry dates, and the qualifications page shows what has expired or is due to. You can require a qualification for an activity, so assigning a teacher without it is blocked or flagged. If you run your own pool, plant checks can be logged from AMES Teach too.
See how AMES can automate bookings, payments, and communication for your swimming business.
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