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Tired of grappling about for data on your community centre bookings?

  • Jess Davies
  • Jess Davies

    19th June 2025

Tired of grappling about for data on your community centre bookings?

When the monthly report becomes a treasure hunt

It’s the end of the month and you need to compile reports for your board. Your heart sinks — you know the drill: open multiple spreadsheets, trawl through paper booking forms and try to reconcile it all with your accounting software. The numbers never seem to match and you’re left guessing which version of the truth is right. Meanwhile, funding applications sit unfinished because you can’t produce impact data without first spending hours in the weeds.

This experience is common among community centre managers. Many small charities and community organisations spend a week preparing grant monitoring reports and estimate the cost at around £500 per report. That doesn’t include the time spent applying for funding in the first place. One study calculated that an “all‑in” grant process — including application, impact measurement and monitoring — could cost the sector more in staff time than the grant brings in. When data is scattered across calendars, spreadsheets and paper forms, it’s no wonder many charities are starting to question whether certain grants are worth the effort.1

Why disorganised data drains your time and money

Our conversations with UK community centre managers reveal a consistent theme: valuable data is trapped in disparate systems. Bookings live in one spreadsheet, customer records in another, and invoices in your accounting package. To answer simple questions like “How many people attended last month?” or “Which hirers bring in the most revenue?” you have to export data from multiple tools and piece it together manually.

External research underscores how costly this fragmentation is. Plinth’s analysis found that charities spend about 40 hours completing an average grant monitoring report. A huge amount of that time goes into identifying unique beneficiaries and collecting demographic data because registers aren’t centralised and funders ask for information in different formats. With many organisations reporting to 5–10 different funders, each with their own templates, the duplication is enormous. The problem is so acute that some organisations have stopped applying to certain funders because the reporting burden is “way too onerous.”2

Even when you secure funding, the hidden costs continue. Researchers estimate that small charities spend 38 % of their grant income on applications, while medium‑sized organisations spend 35 %. In total, charities in the UK spend at least £900 million every year just applying for grants.3 The takeaway? Manual data collection doesn’t just waste staff time — it directly reduces the resources available to deliver community programmes.

The pain points managers describe

  • Data lives everywhere: bookings, payments and customer details are spread across calendars, spreadsheets and paper forms. Aggregators and basic booking tools don’t allow you to capture the demographic or social‑value data funders ask for.
  • Manual entry & GDPR risk: staff copy information from paper forms into spreadsheets, increasing the chances of errors and compliance issues.
  • Reconciliation headaches: working out revenue and outstanding debt means cross‑matching bookings with your finance system. Managers told us they lose one to two days a month just compiling reports.
  • No visibility: it takes hours to wrangle exports into charts or graphs that trustees understand. Meanwhile, opportunities to act on trends are missed because data is out of date.

A better way: centralise your data with SpacetoCo

At SpacetoCo we believe your booking data should work for you. That’s why we designed an online booking system built specifically for community venues. Instead of juggling spreadsheets and paper diaries, our platform acts as a single source of truth. Bookings, customer records and payments live in one hub, accessible to your whole team.

Dashboards and reporting built for community venues

SpacetoCo’s dashboards surface the numbers you need in seconds. Within your venue management system you can view monthly and annual revenue, bookings, and attendance metrics at a glance. Revenue reporting and transaction history are baked in and monthly account reconciliation reporting automatically matches bookings with payments. Need to know which hirers contribute most to your income? Our reports show revenue ordered by hirers, helping you identify VIP customers without manual analysis.

We also understand that every organisation has unique data requirements. That’s why SpacetoCo’s custom tags let you track what matters to you — whether it’s programme categories, demographic information or social‑value metrics. Tags can be applied to bookings, spaces or guests and are fully customisable. Flag important tags so they stand out in your dashboard and filters. When generating reports you can filter by these tags or save favourite filters; reports will dynamically update as tags change.

Scheduling reports is easy. Using SpacetoCo’s Scheduled Reports feature, you can automatically generate reports at a time and frequency you choose and have them delivered straight to your inbox. Select the type of data — bookings, spaces, guests or verified applications — and choose daily, weekly or monthly schedules. You can even specify the exact time of day the report runs and send it to multiple users or external email addresses. This means trustees and contractors receive up‑to‑date data without you lifting a finger.

Data helps you supercharge your impact 

Centres that adopt SpacetoCo tell us the impact goes far beyond saved hours. By centralising bookings and automating reporting, they free up days every month to focus on community work. They can quantify their impact and demonstrate return on investment, which strengthens grant proposals. They also gain insight into which facilities and programmes are most used, helping them allocate resources effectively.

Our partners share their experiences:

“Double bookings report! The best report in the history of all reports.” – Cassie, Mitcham Community Facilities

“I am so glad to have this program you have no idea.” – Jacqui, Dunsborough Hall

Because data is readily available, venues can see trends in revenue and bookings early, enabling proactive decisions about marketing or pricing. When you can demonstrate the discounts you’ve given to community groups or the number of people engaged by your programmes, you’re better positioned to secure grant funding and local authority support.

More than reports: unlocking strategic benefits

Organising your data does more than streamline reports — it transforms how your organisation operates:

  • Win more grants: funders increasingly expect robust impact data. When you can provide clear metrics on revenue, attendance and social outcomes, you stand out in a crowded field. SpacetoCo helps ensure your reporting effort pays off.
  • Spot trends before they happen: dashboards reveal peaks and troughs in bookings, allowing you to adjust staffing or marketing in advance rather than reacting after the fact.
  • Strengthen community relationships: by identifying VIP hirers and high‑performing programmes, you can nurture key relationships and tailor services to community needs.
  • Enhance accountability and compliance: with user activity tracking and permission controls, you maintain an audit trail and comply with GDPR while sharing relevant information across teams.
  • Spend more time with people: less admin means more time for the human side of community work. Managers no longer lose days collating data; they invest that time in supporting volunteers, meeting residents and developing programmes.

Ready to see your data differently?

Data shouldn’t be a chore. With SpacetoCo, an online booking and venue management system designed for community centres, you can finally stop grappling for data and start using it to grow. If you’re ready to free up your team’s time, gain instant visibility over your bookings and strengthen your grant proposals, book a demo with our local team today. Let us show you how centralised data can unlock new opportunities for your centre and your community.

Sources: 
  1. Plinth: https://blog.plinth.org.uk/grants-cost-more-than-they-are-worth/#:~:text=Every%20month%20we%20speak%20to,got%20some%20numbers%20for%20you 
  2. Plinth: https://blog.plinth.org.uk/charities-spend-15-8-million-hours-reporting-to-funders-that-s-too-much/#:~:text=This%20gave%20us%20a%20total,broken%20down%20as%20follows
  3. Fundraising.co.uk: https://fundraising.co.uk/2022/07/28/small-medium-charities-spend-over-a-third-of-grant-income-on-applications/#:~:text=Inefficient%20application%20processes%20mean%20small,charities%20on%20applying%20for%20grants

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