Green Valley Community Center is the heart of Pottawatomie County, providing space and resources to support the area’s growing population. With four rooms that are completely unique in size and amenities, the facility serves as a multipurpose venue that can be booked out by anyone for recreational or business use.
Pottawatomie County, Kansas
Community Center
Green Valley Community Center (GVCC) needed an upgrade. Not in the literal sense, though that is exactly what AllBooked made possible, but in a way that would eliminate the manual booking process and allow them to scale.
Dustin Taylor, Clerk of Blue Township, explains that in recent years, the area has experienced the largest surge in population growth it’s ever seen. With this boom came an increase in facility usage requests—everything from birthday parties and church gatherings, to soup suppers—all of which were managed by a single person: the trustee. Almost just as quickly the bookings came in, did the trustee realize they couldn’t keep up.
Determined to not let a lack of resources hold their community back, or create burnout for the team, the board began searching for a solution. They needed a way to eliminate the admin tasks tied to bookings, like processing checks, handing off keys, and replying to emails about amenities, so the trustee could get back to the work that truly makes a difference in the lives of members.
Yet the benefits they derived from AllBooked were twofold: not only did it do the job it was originally hired to do, but it also quite literally “doubled their rents.”
An intuitive user interface streamlined booking and door access, facilitating easy bookings and independent entry
With hours each week spent on hands-on work, GVCC’s process was no longer sustainable—and they knew it. Before adopting AllBooked, reconciling 60 checks per week fell solely on Taylor. But shortly after implementation, the process became obsolete, and the platform delivered more value than they ever expected.
Taylor outlines the multitude of touchpoints involved in his old process: “I'd have to physically get to the reservation list, look through the trustees’s handwritten book of who reserves what spaces, gather all the checks I was getting, and check every single one off.”
With AllBooked’s automated online payment processing system, Stripe, the entire workflow was eliminated, as all payments are made directly within the booking window. They’ve gone from managing dozens of checks each week to none—and the time that used to be spent reconciling payments is now redirected back into more meaningful work for the community.
When asked about Stripe’s reporting functionality, Taylor emphasizes that it’s simple and hands-off: “We really just let Stripe do its thing every month. Matter of fact, we take the report it gives us and just review the charges for the last month.”
But the unexpected upside for the venue? More income. Easy payment options like one-time credit card entry and mobile wallets ensure customers only have to submit their payment method once, and from there, the system has it stored for all future bookings—completely removing any barriers to scheduling.
The results show. Taylor claims, “It's doubled reservations because people can go in there, pay, and then they're done.”
As a versatile, multipurpose facility, GVCC makes booking available to everyone—from local government officials in need of meeting rooms to families planning graduation celebrations. While booking is open to all, whether or not someone pays depends on the reason for their booking and who they are.
For instance, those in the public service sector can reserve spaces free of charge, while individuals booking for recreational use are required to pay a fee. Adding to the complexity, each space comes with its own pricing structure based on room size and available amenities. With AllBooked, the facility was able to handle all these intricacies—easily. With features like user tags and pricing rules in AllBooked, GVCC had complete control over who pays what (and who doesn’t), allowing them to tailor their booking model to their communities’ needs and eliminate unnecessary back-and-forth about rates.
As Taylor explains, “We can classify someone as a person that doesn't get charged, and they can go online and make reservations without having to enter a credit card, or we can charge someone $20 for a room.”
The obvious success metric for a booking platform is the number of reservations made. After all, easy booking means easy revenue. While automatic payment processing partially contributed to this metric by doubling the rents at GVCC, another major contributor was AllBooked’s intuitive user interface, which drove revenue growth to $2,000 per month.
“The way it worked before AllBooked is somebody would have to call or text our trustee and say, ‘I want to use the room on this date, and this is what I need.’ Then, he'd have to leave a key out in a mailbox—a physical key.”
Taylor further explains, “What held a lot of people back was that they couldn't make last minute reservations. If the trustee wasn't available, there was no way to get the key to the person who made the booking.”
Leveraging automation, AllBooked eliminated all administrative hassle for the trustee and simplified booking for their members—a powerful combination that quite literally opened the door to more revenue.
Taylor states, “We spend maybe 2 hours a week on the whole process, while before we probably spent 12 hours a week just doing the keys and getting the checks.”
Time has a cost, and with 86% of their workload now handled by AllBooked, they've reclaimed valuable hours to reinvest in their community center—and that’s exactly what they did.
While GVCC initially turned to AllBooked to tackle the manual, behind-the-scenes logistics of booking, they quickly realized the booking solution for their community center offered far more value than ever expected. Now that the team does the same work they used to do in less than 20% of the time they used to spend on it—and with an extra $24,000 per year in their pocket—they’ve been able to see their vision for the community center come to life.
Taylor explains, “It's just—we have time now. We had actual time to go and do a remodel of the community center.”
It’s no wonder that when it comes time to renew their AllBooked subscription, the team says, “yes, yes, yes, let's do it right now—we don't want to wait!”
