Team OctoSwimRiverside (name changed, spreadsheet real) ran 214 swimmers across two pools on one heroic Google Sheet. Eleven tabs. Conditional formatting like a motherboard. It worked, mostly, because one person understood it.
1:40pm - the export
Families and swimmers came out as one messy CSV: names in one column here, split columns there, dates in three formats. The AI import mapped the columns, flagged fourteen rows it wasn't sure about, and imported the rest. Total: about twenty minutes, most of it spent double-checking.
2:30pm - the timetable
The weekly schedule went in as classes: day, time, venue, teacher, capacity. OctoSwim generated eight weeks of real sessions from it, minus the May bank holiday closure. This was the part they expected to take a weekend.
3:45pm - the scary bit
Stripe onboarding - the step everyone dreads because it involves the word “KYC”. Business details, bank account, done before the school run. First real parent payment cleared into their account the next morning.
“The spreadsheet is still open in a tab. I just haven't needed it.” - the owner, two weeks later
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