Comparison
Bookwhen is a good general booking tool. It sells places for choirs, yoga studios, workshops and clubs of every kind. Once the booking is taken, a forest school still needs a register, a ratio and a risk assessment, and those often end up on paper. In the Forest School App the booking is the register, and the register carries everything the session needs.
Once the booking is paid, you still need to know who turned up, how many adults that requires, which risk-benefit assessments apply to the fire you're lighting, what you noticed about a child who finally used the bow saw, and whether the parent who never reads emails has consented to photographs. A booking tool isn't built for those.
A confirmed booking is a place on the session register, with allergies, medical notes and photo consent attached and kept current by the family. Families agree to and sign your terms and conditions on the way through, and every booking keeps the exact terms they saw.
Mark children in and the adult-to-child ratio updates with them, worked out from who is actually in the wood. See how ratios work.
Keep a library of assessments and stack the ones this session needs onto it, snapshotted as they were on the day. A dynamic risk log covers what changes on the day.
Tap what you saw, against the NETA development areas, while it's still happening. They build up per child across the term into a record of each child's learning journey.
Many woods have no signal. The field app holds the entire session offline (register, assessments, observations, photos, incidents) and syncs when you get back to signal. A web-only booking page can't do that.
Concerns are visible to your designated safeguarding lead and nobody else: not other staff, and not administrators.
When to stay
Bookwhen is good at what it does, and sometimes switching would be a step down. If you run a broad mix of events that aren't forest school and you want one place for all of them, a general tool fits better than a specialist one. If your bookings are working fine and the paperwork side is already sorted, or you don't take bookings at all, because a school pays you per block, there's no reason to move.
Every leader, assistant and volunteer gets a free account. You only pay if you're the forest school running the sessions. Solo is £8 a month for a freelance leader, Team is £29 a month flat however many staff and however many woods. When a family pays by card through the app we charge 1%, plus Stripe's card fee; cash and bank transfer bookings cost nothing extra. See full pricing.
You don't have to move everything at once, and we'd suggest you don't. Set up one group and one term's sessions, run a fortnight of them in the wood, and see whether the record at the end is the one you'd want if somebody asked. Keep taking bookings wherever you take them now while you do. The free trial needs no card.
When you're ready to move, we'll bring your families over and set up your forest school for you. We can take the data straight from most booking systems, so there's nothing to export. Email us to get started.
Switching questions
No. They tap your link, choose a session and book with their email, no app, no password. If they want to manage bookings later they get a passwordless portal: enter the email, pop in the code we send.
Yes, through Stripe. You connect your own Stripe account, so payments go straight to you. Free sessions and cash-on-the-day work too, and cost nothing.
They carry on exactly as they are. Starting here doesn't touch a booking system you're already using. You can run the two side by side for a term and move the bookings across at a natural break, like the start of September.
It's built for forest school and outdoor education. If most of what you run isn't outdoors with children, you'll be better served by something general.
Free for 30 days, no card. Keep your current bookings running while you do.