The Club Deportivo Social Juan A. Praderehas 86 years of history. Hundreds of members, membership dues, sports activities, and a board that runs everything on volunteer effort.
The problem wasn't a lack of systems. It was one very specific issue: the treasurer received bank transfers every month with no way of knowing which member each deposit belonged to.
The real problem institutions face
A club isn't a company. It has no IT department and no software budget. It has volunteers who give up their free time and make do with what they have: a spreadsheet, a notebook, online banking open in another tab.
That works until it doesn't. As the club grows, the administrative workload grows faster than the capacity of the people carrying it. And the cost isn't paid in money: it's paid in hours from people who would rather be running the club than matching deposits to names.
What we built
- A centralized member registry, with each member's dues status up to date, their history, and the sports activities they're enrolled in.
- Online payments: members pay their dues from their phone and the system logs it automatically. No more guessing whose transfer is whose.
- Manual entry as well, because the club still takes cash payments at the front desk. The system adapted to how the club works, not the other way around.
- Roles with different permissions: the board manages everything, each sub-committee's treasurer sees full information but can't modify it, and each member gets access to their own portal.
- WhatsApp notifications, because that's where club members actually read messages.
- An installable phone app, without going through app stores or asking anyone to download anything complicated.
The decision that mattered most
The system was designed around one constraint: the users aren't technical and many don't have email. Access was solved with an ID number and a PIN - something club members can remember without help.
That kind of decision doesn't show up in any requirements document. It shows up when you sit down to understand how the institution actually works before writing a single line of code.
The result
The system is in production with online payments active. Reconciling dues, which used to be hours of manual work, is now automatic.
An 86-year-old club doesn't need to turn into a tech company. It needs the administrative side to stop eating up the time of the people who keep it running.
Does your institution need something like this? Get in touch.