Excel costs no extra licence fee, but managing your lanes by hand costs staff time, leads to double bookings and loses you revenue when guests do not turn up. A booking system has running costs, but it takes much of this work off your team. Whether switching pays off depends on how many hours your team spends today on the phone, in the spreadsheet and on double-checking.
Is Excel really free?
Many operators assume their current method is good enough and cheap. Excel is already on the computer and quick to set up. What often gets overlooked is how much time and revenue managing everything by hand costs.
The hidden costs of managing bookings by hand
Staff time. Taking reservations over the phone, entering them in the spreadsheet, updating changes and checking for double bookings: it all adds up. Every call about a Saturday booking ties up someone at the counter who could be handing out shoes or selling drinks instead.
Mistakes. A single typing error can lead to a double booking. That annoys guests and costs revenue if they choose another centre instead. Because an Excel spreadsheet is not automatically kept in step with the phone, email and the counter, changes easily get lost, for example when two colleagues work with different versions of the file.
No automation. Excel sends no confirmations or reminders and takes no payments. Guests now expect to reserve a lane in the evening after work and get a confirmation straight away. Excel cannot do that.
How to work out your own Excel costs
For one typical week, write down:
- How many minutes does your team spend on phone reservations, updating the spreadsheet and double-checking?
- Convert the minutes into hours and multiply them by your hourly wage including employer costs.
- Count how many lane hours stayed empty because of double bookings, mistakes or no-shows, and multiply them by your lane price.
- Add the two amounts together and scale them up to a month.
Compare this total with the monthly cost of a booking system, including set-up and transaction fees. That shows you when switching starts to pay off for your centre.
What a booking system does instead
Less staff time. Guests book online themselves, and every reservation appears in the schedule immediately. Your team does not have to type anything up and has more time for the guests in the centre.
No double bookings. A booking system gives each lane to only one booking per time slot. Double bookings that you would later have to cancel with a lot of effort simply never happen.
Automatic messages. Confirmations and reminders by email or text message go out on their own. That improves your guests' experience and can also help reduce no-shows.
When switching pays off
Even though a booking system costs money at first, it can pay for itself through saved staff time and avoided losses. The calculation above shows you when that is the case in your centre.
If your team regularly sorts out double bookings, misses calls in the evening or does not know which lanes are free next week, Excel is costing you more than it saves. You can read about other mistakes that are typical without a booking system in the article 7 common mistakes when managing bowling lanes without a booking system.
What switching from Excel looks like in practice is explained on the page Booking system for bowling centres. One example of a system developed specifically for bowling centres is Flexybox.
