About us

Your focus: running amazing clubs that help brilliant kids have a great time in your care

Our focus: saving you masses of time and stress, by integrating and automating your admin

You know why you do what you do. Here’s our why…

We love out of school clubs!

The benefits of extra curricular activities for children’s learning and personal growth are so obvious that we hardly talk about them any more.

We all love that the kids get new experiences, learn new skills, make different friends and benefit from genuine wraparound and holiday care. Their enthusiasm is infectious.

And many working lives just wouldn’t be possible without your quality childcare. It’s not just the kids that are lucky to have you!

These are the most important foundations of your childcare and educational provision. Acknowledging how highly they’re valued isn’t done enough.

Kids Club HQ came about as a desire to help solve a secondary problem: the complicated practicalities of running clubs and after school care. To make everyone’s lives a bit easier.

Especially yours.

Then you can spend more time and energy on the truly important stuff.

How Kids Club HQ was born

Kids hear “Clubs” and get excited. Adults hear “Clubs” and give a little sigh at the thought of the impending forms and cash payments faff.

I know I did. As a dad, I just didn’t understand why I had to repeatedly fill in the same information for all my daughter’s clubs.

So one day I just asked,

"Why don’t you have an online system for this?!!"

The surprising answer

You don’t want to spend hours doing admin tasks either. Let’s face it, it’s no one’s favourite part of their business. It’s an unavoidable necessity for all of us. But there are so many elements to after school club organisation that are traditionally all separate entities.

Everyone understands the safeguarding requirements. But then you’re also juggling registers, bookings, collecting payments, chasing payments, issuing invoices, lists of medical information, fielding parent/carer inquiries about last minute places…You know!

When I blurted out my ‘Why don’t you have an online system for this?’ question, the answer genuinely took me by surprise. They told me that they’d love a connected admin system, but they couldn’t find any appropriate software.

What?!

I’ve been running my software company, Joined-Up Solutions, since 2005. That means that I build websites, custom online systems and mobile apps for a living.

I knew that the tech capability was there – why wasn’t the software?

As we carried on talking, they said that the software they’d looked at just didn’t meet their needs. Either, it was too complex and too pricey; or it didn’t do enough to be useful.

The lightbulb moment

My problem solving instincts took over and Kids Club HQ started, in my brain, right there and then.

I took my usual approach to tech design – what is the problem? For all clubs and after school care, this is to rid everyone – you, parents/carers and school staff - of the massive admin headache.

But it needs more than a one-size-fits-all solution. Every club has its own set-up and we’ve worked hard to make things as configurable as possible whilst maintining an ease of use. So your Kids Club HQ software does everything you need to minimise the time you spend on admin. And, as you grow, the features are there to make this seamless.

Kids Club HQ Values

To be honest, I didn’t really sit down and think about business values until we were putting together this website. Who does?! And really, they’re based on who we are as people.

Kids Club HQ business values are very simple:

  • Family first - We work to support our family and lifestyle, just like you. We’re not living to work.
  • Moral integrity – Basically, being a decent human.
  • Quality work – Though our combination of precise thinking, agile processes, and a calm, focused attitude.

What difference does this make to you? The way we work means that you won’t get things like:

  • The hard sell
  • Misinformation about our services or industry colleagues’
  • Hidden costs that suddenly pop up at the last minute

It means you will get things like:

  • Carefully considered software that hasn’t been built in a rushed panic
  • Friendly, responsive and helpful support
  • Real humans to talk to, who actually listen

Sound good? We look forward to working with you, book a demo today using the button below.