How does your yard handle school bookings?

[jumping.jack_flash]

Similar problem on the livery/small riding school yard I'm on. They have a white board with days of the week on, with two regular evenings that lessons are held for outsiders who are having 'riding lessons' from 16.00 - 18.30.

We did try a phone ap for online booking system, as the yard chat was bonkers with people pre booking . .

The on line thing was a good idea . .but then showed people were booking monthly in advance.

Obviously every yard has people that will 'hog' the school . .

As long as common sense, and people are fair/ able to share the school, then the white board is actually the best solution! . . People can visually see what's going on for that week.

The yard owners are really good at trying to accommodate all . .

They did not allow outsiders to book the school, but welcome them to join into pre booked clinics if there are spaces.

Yes, I get a little self conscious if I go to ride in the school and others are in there . .but if I booked it just for myself, these people would only be on the outside looking in . .

Schools are always tricky to accommodate everyone.

My one wish would be, those that are lucky enough not having to work, if they made better use of the school during other peoples working hours, rather than booking and squeezing lessons in to the hours 'after work' ��

 

[chaps89]

Yard where share horse is has 2 outdoor and 1 indoor school. There is a folder with a column for each school split into rows for half an hour slots, starting from 8am to 8pm. If someone wants to do in-hand work, it is first come first serve, a half hour slot only and sole use, for safety and fairness reasons. Otherwise it's a free for all, although generally if the school is already booked for a lesson (with a horse on-site) people will try to avoid double booking and sharing. So then it's pot luck if there will be 2 or 3 of you or just you. Generally though it's rare to have to share. Occasionally all of the schools will be out of use for external events or shows but that's fair as it is across the board.

Yard where I hire a school has a whiteboard and you just write date and time down, it's sole use only and bookable for hour slots only. Liveries get preference over external visitors and so I am only allowed to use it weekdays during the day in term time or at weekends. Bit frustrating as I'd love to get in in the week but at least I know what the rules are and it doesn't get changed on me and I'm grateful to have somewhere to use at all that I can hack to.

If your yard owner is amenable which it sounds like they are, could you put it into place rules around sharing/lessons/advance notice etc so it might become more equal/fair and at least everyone knows where they stand?

 

[ossy]

We can only book arena for an actual lesson, normal riding/schooling is not a bookable activity and even then you can only book solo use max 1hour per week anything above is additional cost. If i couldn't get into an arena to ride daily id seriously questions why i was on that yard.

 

[TheFizzPony]

We have a whiteboard with a week drawn up onto it. Every day we have 2 hours where you cannot book the school, we also have an hour or two where only liveries are allowed to use it. Bookings are for half an hour each unless you have a lesson or there is more than one of you in there.

We can book general use of the school from a week to immediately before we want to use it, although lessons etc. can be booked much further in advance, in this case you write a date down with your booking

 

[HashRouge]

That situation would drive me up the wall! Surely the YO should just say that if it's not in the diary, it doesn't count. Bet the RI would remember to write them in if the other option was to turn clients away!

 

[CrazyMare]

We used to have a booking system. It was a nightmare as some people would book it for no sharing back to back all evening. I couldn't ever book very far ahead as had uncertain finishing times at work, I often ended up not able to ride.

We now don't have a booking system for the big)(best) school and all tjise who couldn't possibly share before have got over themselves!!!

 

[mynutmeg]

What about suggesting 2 mornings a week and a different 2 evenings a week are reserved for shared use only?
That way those reasonable (!!) people can at least be assured of 4 sessions a week, and those that couldn't possibly share have plenty of opportunity to book their sole use slots.

This sounds like a good solution!

Well I was wondering about something like this because we all have a whatsapp group too, but today there are (I think) 6 or 7 bookings and the same applies most days so it would become quite difficult to remember scrolling back & forth esp when some are booked weeks in advance. But something that we can all access easily would make it easier, so if outside bookings were made they could be added straight to the diary rather than needing to go and physically write it in a book which is kept somewhere else... Hmm. Food for thought.

thanks everyone, just another case where you really can't please all the people all the time.

Not for riding or horses but I'm part of my univerisity's community first responder scheme. The scheme has 2 cars which we can book to take out. The diary is an excel spreadsheet type thing that is on some sort of online storage thing so as soon as you make any change to it it gets updated. The link is pinned to the top of our facebook page so you can always access it.Something like that would allow anyone to update and book when they wanted to regardless of where they were and allow you to check whether it's free to use.

Only yard I've ever been on that was booking was a paper diary you wrote in and everyone there seemed obsessed with only riding alone. Otherwise, even on busy yards, it's been a free for all unless a specific lesson in which case you could pay to use the indoor sole use or else lump in with everyone else.
I love my current yard - there are 3 or 4 of us that use the school so if we're booking for a lesson it's just posted on the fb page and we go from there but my current yard is tiny (13 horses, 5 of which belong to the yo who pretty much doesn't use the school as she's endurance aimed) although the down side is the school is a bit crappy - on a slight slope with just a sand surface that varies from thin and hard to deep and soft - definately teaches the horse to balance themselves tho

 

[Polos]

It was quite a similar system at a yard I was previously at and to be quite frank was a PITA.

If I were running a yard, whose clients predominantly worked, which Thank heavens I'm not then I'd probably work it so that peak times midweek (6am-9am and 4pm-7pm) were non bookable and for shared use only. Outside those times you either pay to book sole use or take your chance to ride shared.
Same would apply to externals.

Agree with this as you'd never get to ride otherwise!!

I'd be a bit annoyed if people from outside the yard where constantly in the school having lessons so there was no where for me to ride and I have to say I probably would move yards because of it. It's important to me that I am able to ride my horse.

I'm on a private yard now so no issues but on a previous yard you just wrote in the diary if you where having a lesson and what you where doing but you couldnt book the school exclusively.

 

[Kezzabell2]

we just have a white board, we have to book 24 hours in advance. If someone is in the school but there is no booking up, they have to deal with the possibility of sharing with someone else!! but to be fair, there aren't many people that use it now.

 

[criso]

Small yard so we book if we want sole use for a lesson or vet exam etc but fairly easy to work around each other and share.

But when I've been on bigger busier yards that had a lot of people riding after work restrictions were put in for evenings. Periods where you are expected to share, no lunging or loose schooling if others wanted to ride and children to ride before as school gets out earlier than work (though exceptions made where parents couldn't bring them till later).

In the winter on a big yard, then you have a period between about 6pm and 8pm which is the only time working people can ride and in the dark, a school is the only option. If this gets used with sole use, then many people are going to put in the position of not being able to ride during the week.